In
Celtic mythology, there is a relation between the ruler and deity, and
that of the ruler and the land. The king was wedded in a sacred marriage
to the goddess that was supposed to ensure the fertility of the land.
Quite often in ancient religions or myths, the earth and land was often
represented by the feminine entities, such as the goddesses, or they
were the personification of the land or e
arth. The goddess of the land often had the attributes of the mother goddess or the fertility goddess.
Of course, it is not necessary that she is a goddess; she may be the
queen or the representative of the goddess, like a priestess. The king's
consort, whoever she may be, she is often described as the "Sovereignty
Goddess". The future fertility and prosperity of the kingdom depends
upon the mating the king mating with the sovereignty of the land.
In Irish mythology, there were number of women or goddesses who were
the Sovereignty of Ireland. Among them were Morrigan (and her triple
aspects as the goddess of war – Badb, Nemain and Macha), Eriu and her
sisters Banba and Fodla.
The three sisters, Eriu, Banba and
Fodla were each a poetic name of Ireland. They were Sovereignty of
Ireland, as well as Danann goddesses. However, Eriu was the most famous
of the three sisters. In the Lebor Gabala (Book of Invasions) and Cath
Maige Tuired (Second Battle of Mag Tuired), Eriu had a lover, named
Elatha, who was Fomorian king. She became the mother of King Bres of
Ireland, when Nuada lost his arm. With the defeat of the Fomorians in
the second battle of Mag Tuired, she was one of the wives of the hero
Lugh Lamfada, as consort. When the three grandsons of Dagda murdered
Lugh, Eriu married one of the brothers, named MacGreine. Her sisters
married the other two brothers – Banba to MacCuill and Fodla to
MacCecht. So Eriu was the mother of one king and the wife of two kings.
When the Milesians arrived, the three sovereignties of Ireland knew
that the Milesians would conquer Ireland, so each queen tried to
persuade the Milesians to name the land after her name. Eriu, the last
queen to approach the Milesians, promising them victory over her people.
Eriu and her sisters fell with their husbands in the Battle of Tailtiu.
As they had promised, the Milesians named the entire isle to Eriu, Erin
or Eire, which is another name for Ireland.
One of the most
amazing goddesses was Morrigan. Morrigan was the daughter of Delbáeth
and Ernmas. Morrigan also had two sisters, Badb and Macha (and possibly
of a third named Nemain).
Here she is seen as three separate
figures. However, it is altogether possible that Badb, Macha and Nemain
were all one person, known as the Morrigu, but each one represented one
aspect of the goddess. So the Morrigu were the triple goddesses of war.
They were also the sovereignty goddesses of Ireland, married to the high
kings.
Badb and Nemain had been named as the wives of Neit, a
shadowy figure in Irish myths, while Macha was the wife and consort of
Nuada Airgedlámh. Macha and Nuada died in the Second Battle of Mag
Tuired. Macha was also said to be the wife of Nemed, the leader of the
Nemedians, a race that had settled on Ireland before the arrival of the
Tuatha de Danann.
Before the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, the
god Dagda encountered a beautiful woman at Glenn Etin at Samhain night
(the eve before the battle). Dagda seduced and slept with this woman. It
is believed that this woman was Morrigan, and she foretold victory to
the Danann, promising aid. Each year, on Samhain night, Dagda had to
mate with Morrigan, to ensure the fertility and prosperity of Ireland,
because the war goddess was the sovereignty of Ireland.
Sovereignty goddesses were not limited to marriage with the high king of
Ireland. Each province in Ireland had a sovereignty goddess in their
province. There were also another Macha, who was the sovereignty of
Ulster, and in the neighbouring province, Medb (Maeve) was the
sovereignty of Connacht. There are uncertainty of whether the Ulaid
Macha was the same queen/goddess as the Nemedian Macha and the Danann
Macha.
However, the idea of sacred marriage between a king
and the goddess doesn't just appear in the Irish and Welsh myths. In
fact, a king wedded to the goddess was a very ancient ritual of many
different ancient cultures. And like the Celtic myths, the sacred
marriage had to do with the fertility of the land.
The one that
come to my mind is the myth of the Sumerian goddess, named Inanna, whom
the Babylonian called Ishtar. Inanna's attributes combined the Greek
goddesses Aphrodite and Athena, because she was the goddess of love and
war. Inanna had also being identified as the Phoenician fertility
goddess Astarte, and the Egyptian Isis (Auset). So in a sense, Inanna
was the sovereignty goddess of Sumer.
In the Norse mythology,
the sacred marriage was called hierós gámos, though the marriage was
between the sky god and the earth goddess. Since agriculture was
important to the Scandinavians, the union of the between the deities,
would ensure the fertility of the land. The soils required not only to
be fertile, but it need sunlight and rain.
According to the
Sumerian myths, she was the wife of Dumuzi the shepherd god. For some
reason, Inanna descended into the Underworld, and Ereshkigal, the
goddess of the dead, trapped her sister Inanna in her domain. However,
Enki the god of wisdom send two of his creature to rescue Inanna. When
Inanna escaped from her prison in the Underworld and fled to her home in
the heaven, Ereshkigal send her demons after her sister. Inanna managed
to protect herself and her children, but she could not protect her
husband. Dumuzi was dragged into the Underworld. However part of his
spirit escaped death.
As sovereignty of the land, Inanna was
said to be the bride of each king. Each king was seen as the incarnation
of Dumuzi, the husband of Inanna. So each king actually married and
mated with the priestess of Inanna (Ishtar).
Since the legend
of King Arthur and the Grail had also borrowed and used Celtic motifs
and symbolism, they had also used the symbolism of the sacred marriage.
In the Welsh myths, Guinevere was known as Gwenhwyfar, a queen and
goddess of Britain. So Gwenhwyfar was a personification of Britain; she
was the sovereignty of Britain. When Arthur married Gwenhwyfar
(Guinevere), he was wedded to the land (Britain).
However, in
the mainstream Arthurian literature, Guinevere not only representing the
kingdom of Logres (Britain), but the source of Arthur's earthly power
came from the Round Table.
There were several versions on the
origin of the Round Table, but original table (told by Wace, in the
Roman de Brut, c. 1155) was constructed so that all knights were equal,
with no one having precedence over the others, regardless background
(see the Life of King Arthur and Origin of the Round Table). The Round
Table had nothing to do with Merlin and the Grail. But as the stories of
the Grail became entwined with Arthur's knight, the origin of the Round
Table was changed.
As early as 1200, a poet named Robert de
Boron wrote a trilogy concerning the Grail: Joseph d'Arimathie, Merlin
and Perceval. According to Boron, the Round Table was constructed by
Merlin, using the Grail Table of Joseph of Arimathea as a model. Also
Merlin made the table round because the circle was like the Earth. To
shorten this story Merlin had originally built this for Uther Pendragon
(Arthur's father), but at his death, King Leodegan of Camelide, the
father of Guinevere, received the Round Table from Uther. When Arthur
married Guinevere, Leodegan had bestowed the Round Table (and 100
knights) to Arthur as a dowry. (More detail about can be found in the
legend of Excalibur, the Origin of the Round Table, and Merlin and the
Grail.
The whole point of this story is that Guinevere was very
much the symbol of the wholeness of the Round Table and the kingdom of
Logres, in some way, she represented the power of kingship more so than
Arthur himself. The Queen was one with the kingdom and the fellowship of
the Round Table. The health of the kingdom and the fellowship of the
Round Table depended upon Guinevere, since she owned the Round Table.
In the Mort Artu (Death of King Arthur, part of the romance in Vulgate
Cycle), the Round Table had split because Guinevere was caught in her
bedchamber with her lover Lancelot. She was to sentence to death, but
Lancelot rescued her. War resulted with Arthur and his kinsmen against
Lancelot and his kinsmen, and the division between two factions was
symbolised the division of the Round Table. The division and war had
seriously weakened Arthur's own power. However, the Round Table had
further fractured when Mordred, his illegitimate son, acting as viceroy
in Arthur's absence, had seized kingship and the kingdom. In this
version, Mordred tried to force Guinevere into marrying him, but the
queen had managed to escape.
In some early versions, it was
Mordred, not Lancelot, who was Guinevere's lover. Mordred in the early
legend was Arthur's nephew and the brother of Gawain. The king was
absence in the war against Rome, when Guinevere had willingly seduced
her husband's nephew. Through marriage to the Sovereignty of Britain
(Guinevere), no one could prevent Mordred becoming the king of Britain.
Like the later legend, Mordred's usurpation was short-lived.
In
whichever versions you may have read Arthur's kingship was in crisis.
By marrying his aunt, the Queen, Mordred had a legitimate claim to the
throne and crown. Whoever marry the Queen, has the key to the kingdom,
because the Queen was the kingdom.
In the legend of the
Grail, the Grail King, sometimes also known as the Fisher King or the
Maimed King, was more closely associated with the fertility of the land
than Arthur. Because the Grail King was maimed, his kingdom became a
desolated and barren Waste Land. (There are several version of his
maiming, so I won't go over this, but if you are interested, then read
the Fisher King.) Since the Grail King was wounded in the thighs and
became sterile, so his land became barren.
To restore the
kingdom and the fertility of the land, the Grail King must be healed.
Again, there are many versions of how the king was healed, but the most
common version was that Grail hero, had to ask the correct question
about the mystery of Grail: "Whom does the Grail serve?"
The
whole point of this is that land was linked to the king's health, as if
he was actually wedded to the land. Cause damage or injury to the king,
then the land will suffer too.
As can be seen, the Grail King and his land shared a common theme of the Celtic myths.
The wholeness of the kingdom depended upon the king being completely
healthy. This bring us back to the Irish myths, where a king who
suffered from physical imperfection or disfigurement, he was barred from
kingship. Nuada lost his arm in the war against the Firbolgs. With only
one arm he had to abdicate to Bres. Bres was physical beautiful and
healthy, but he was unfit to rule as well, because he was a tyrant and
the most ungenerous of king, which made him unpopular with his people.
Such was Bres' tyranny that Nuada was first given a silver arm, so that
Nuada can rule again. Later, Miach, the son of Dian Cécht, restored
Nuada's arm, so that there was no uncertainty of Nuada's right to rule
Ireland.
Another famous king that was disqualified from ruling
Ireland was Cormac Mac Airt was disfigured. Cormac, the high king of
Ireland, lost one eye, so he had to abdicate to his son Cairbre
Lifechair.
During
the 1890s, a German woman named Agnes Richter was institutionalized for
a mental illness. She wasn't allowed to use conventional writing
instruments, but she was allowed to sew. Richter was a good seamstress,
so she embroidered hundreds of mysterious words and phrases on a
straightjacket. Gail Hornstein, a psychologist, wrote a book about her
exploration of this unique artifact and what it reveals about Richter's
mind.
