Modern Omens

  This is one of those blogs that's going to seem completely obvious to some of you, but I have found that for many pagans and polytheists we get so caught up in our idea of our spirituality being a certain way - read: primitive - that we can be a bit blind to some things. Like the way that modern life and technology intersect with ancient Gods and spirits, for example. Recently a friend of mine had posted a blog "All the Small Things" where he mentions what he calls Pandora-jacking, or a deity using the Pandora music system to convey messages. This got me thinking of how we often focus so much on ideas of spirit communication that are based on older methods - dreams, oracles, card decks, natural omens - that we may ignore other methods just because we are biased against anything more high tech. So I thought I'd compile a list of things that are modern means of communicating with deities and spirits that I use or am familiar with that other people might consider or find useful:

1. Music - Daniel mentions 'Pandora jacking' in his blog but I've seen this happen through multiple means, including the radio and my MP3 player. The idea is that the songs and song lyrics which play seemingly at random actually provide insight or messages. For example, when I am asking Macha for an omen and Sara Bareilles's song Brave comes on simultaneously (this has happened so often I actually think of it as Macha's song now). 
2. The Television as Oracle - basically the same idea as music except with the television. 
3. Omens and portents, oh my - most pagans will tell you to keep your eye out for natural omens like animals or weather phenomena, but I have found that omens can come in a variety of forms, some of them quite unexpected. I'll never forget driving on the highway one day, worrying about how to handle a problem relating to a Norse spirituality issue, when a truck passed me with the words written large on the side 'Need a hand? Call Odin today!' (it was a moving service named Odin, I kid you not). 
4. Synchronicity - This is one of my personal big ones and I especially pay attention to it on social media. Repeated messages with the same theme, recurrences of the same animal, deity, or concepts, or seeing a message relating to something I had just been talking or thinking about can all be significant. 
5. Numbers - numerology isn't my thing, but I have many friends who swear by the significance of seeing the same numbers repeated. For instance if its always a certain pattern of numbers when you look at the clock. 
6. High tech bibliomancy - with this method instead of flipping to a random page in a book for insight you would do the same thing on a kindle or other e-reader. It works the same way, but using modern technology. 
7. Tech glitches that aren't - when our technology, be it phone, pc, or anything else seems to malfunction but in such a way that it provides a repeated message. For example a phone ringtone resetting itself to something that has a specific meaning to you

Do any of you have other examples of modern omens?

Why I don't think Danu is Anu

  So something that comes up fairly regularly is the question of whether Danu and Anu are the same goddess or two distinct individuals*.
  I want to say up front that this is one of those fun things that scholars disagree about so what follows is not meant to be conclusive but merely reflect my opinion and the evidence I base that opinion on.
  I tend to believe that Anu and Danu are different goddesses and this is why:
1. The names have different meanings. Danu is related to the word for flow while Anu has a meaning related to wealth or abundance. We also see cognates to each as distinct individuals in other Celtic cultures like the Welsh Don and Anna (although in fairness Don and Anna are also sometimes conflated)
2. Although many people try to argue that Danu is actually a confusion of Dea Anu* or De Anu there are several problems to my mind with this. Firstly it assumes that the pagan Irish and the monks writing down the stories were unfamiliar enough with their own language that they would have conflated de Anand into Danand (and then not realized this was a new deity), which I'm very doubtful about. Old Irish is not pronounced exactly as modern Irish is, for one thing, but even if it was I find it hard to believe that native speakers would have confused JAY AHN-ahn for DAHN-ahn as it requires not only dropping a vowel but also shifting and dropping a stressed syllable and changing how the initial 'd' is pronounced entirely.
3. One main example given to support the above theory is that both Danu and Anu have sites named after their paps (no really) and that this somehow suggests they were the same Goddess and the sites had the same name which over time was corrupted into two different versions. However as with the above example the problem is that in Older forms of Irish the two place names are not sufficiently similar in my opinion. Keating in his Foras Feasa ar Eirinn refers to the site attributed to Danu as "Dá Chích Dhanann" and the Onomasticon Goedelicum locorum et tribuum Hiberniae et Scotiae calls it "Dá Chich Danainne" while the Sanas Cormac refers to Anu's site as "Dā Chīch nAnund". However even if we accept that the name of this single location was incorrectly attributed to both goddesses instead of one, that doesn't prove they themselves are a single deity. Effectively the argument is that the eclpising of Danann to nDanann and of Anann to nAnann render the names identical; however this occurs only in situations where the names are eclpised, generally in the possessive. This also presupposes a sort of chicken-and-egg argument where the name of the location would have to have somehow overshadowed or obscured the deity it was named for to a degree that the local populace forgot whether it was Anu's breasts or Danu's. I find that idea highly suspect.
4. Which leads me to the main reason I disagree with the conflation of these two deities - we do have examples of each name occurring separately uneclipsed. In the Lebor Gabala Erenn we are told that Anand is the personal name of the Morrigan but the Morrigan and Danand appear together, for example, in the same redaction of that text, only a dozen verses apart:
"Ernmas had other three daughters, Badb and Macha and Morrigu, whose name was Anand"
then, shortly after in a list of women of the Tuatha de Danann:
"Danann, mother of the gods. Badb and Macha, greatness of wealth, Morrigu"
Although I know that people question the veracity of the LGE, particularly between redactions, I find it hard to credit that the authors would identify the two goddesses as different in the same version of the same text if it was understood in oral tradition that they were one being. While we can certainly criticize the written texts on several levels to give validity to the argument that Anu and Danu are the same goddess conflated in written texts we must first believe that the examples of them as individual goddess given in uneclipsed versions of their names are not reflecting genuine oral tradition, and I am just too skeptical of that to believe it. We would have to believe that people recording stories they had heard all their lives were making these mistakes, and I just can't credit that, personally. It smacks too much of the hubris of modern times saying that our ancestors were more foolish and stupid than we and unable to realize what we find obvious relating to things in their native language and with their own native culture.

I cannot say that I am right and those who believe differently are wrong, but that is what I believe and why I believe it.

* Dea Anu or De Anu meaning 'goddess Anu'. This is also problematic as goddess is usually given in Old Irish as bande not de
* The names appear in the texts as Danand and Anand and later as Danann and Anann. These are both the genetive forms, however the assumed nominatives would be Danu and Anu which are the way they often appear in modern paganism.

Nuances of the words "Witchcraft" and "Witch" in Old Irish

 How's that for a boring blog title?
 Seriously though, one of the reasons that I tend to be such  strong advocate for an omniglot approach or at least attempting to have a basic understanding of terms in other languages that relate to our practices is that often there are nuances within those terms that are - quite literally - lost in translation. And we shape our understanding, our conceptualization, of things based on our own reference language. In psychology this is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and it says that language shapes our thoughts and behaviors in line with the culture of that language.
   To give you an example, in English when we think about colors we think of shades on a spectrum of light, so that 'red' is certain frequency usually appearing as a fairly standard red which we then modify with words like 'light' or 'dark' (I'm speaking generally here of course). In Irish on the other hand color is not an abstract concept but a concrete one referring to actual physical colors and this gives us multiple words translated as the same color which aren't actually the same. Uaine is green but its a vivid, bright green, while glas is also green but can be a grey-green or sea green. Dearg is red, but so is rua; dearg being bright rua being more a natural hue. And in old Irish there are an array of words for red that all refer to different shades of blood or states of blood. My point here is that the languages themselves have different ways of understanding something as basic as the concept of colors.
   In English we have the word witch and it gets a lot of play in modern paganism. And I do mean a lot. When you read translations of Irish myths and texts you'll run across witches and references to witchcraft but here's where the language issue comes in because what is being translated as 'witchcraft' in English may have been one of at least 8 different words in Sengoidelc: ammaitecht, diabultacht, dolbud, gliccus, pisoca, sidaigecht, tuaichlecht, tuaithe. Each of these has distinct nuances and undertones that are important in context. I'm going to take a look at each term one by one so you can see what I mean. I'm also going to offer some modern equivalents, or at least my opinion on what modern equivalents might be, to help clarify.
  ~ Ammaitecht - defined by the eDIL as "a. profession or activity of an ammait, witchcraft, evil influence; b. foolishness". An ammait is defined as "a woman with supernatural powers, a witch, hag, spectre; a Fury" and also "a foolish woman". Interestingly however an ammait is also equated with a bandrui or female druid, meaning the two terms were seen as the same. This might explain why ammait and ammaitecht are also connected to foolishness as after the conversion period the Druids lost much status and were reduced in the law texts to the equals of fools*. So ammait and ammaitecht are associated with female Druids, and ammaitecht is seen as a profession.
 ~  Diabultacht - defined as "witchcraft, enchantment" this is pretty obviously based off the Latin loan word Diabul (Latin - diabolus) meaning the Devil. Indeed in the eDIL this type of magic is described as 'melancholia' or deep sadness. This is the sort of witchcraft that is classically associated with witches in a Christian framework, who sell their souls to the Devil and cause misery in other people. A more accurate definition from a pagan perspective might be diabolism,
  ~ Dolbud - defined as witchcraft or sorcery, the word also means "invention, formation, the act of forming". The example sentences used in the eDIL come from the Gaelic Journal: Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge and associate this type of witchcraft with the magic of forming geasa, or ritual taboos. This type of witchcraft then is focused on manifestation. 
  ~ Gliccus - defined as witchcraft or sorcery, gliccus also means cleverness, skill, and ingenuity. 
  ~ Pisoca - also piseoga, defined as witchcraft, sorcery, or magic, specifically the use of charms and spells. Bean phiseogach is translated as witch in English but clearly has the implication of a woman who uses charms and spells in particular. Probably closest to what modern pagans understand a witch to be. 
~ Sidaigecht - defined as witchcraft or magic. However this one is clearly more complex than just that definition. The base word "sidaig" refers to a dweller in a fairy hill, or in other words a fairy so this is rather particularly the magic of the sidhe. One might refer to this as fairy magic for better accuracy rather than witchcraft as we understand it.
 ~ Tuaichlecht - defined as "cunning, witchcraft" tuaichlecht is derived from the word for cunning 'tuaichles' and we see it in examples like "le draidhecht ocus tuaichlecht" (of magic and witchcraft). A better translation for this one based on a modern pagan understanding might be "cunningcraft" in the sense of the art of the cunningman or woman.
 ~ Tuaithe - defined as witchcraft or sorcery and related to the word tuath, meaning "northward, turning nothward, perverse, wicked". Tuaithe is a complex word that is associated with both the Good Folk (tuath-geinte) as well as witches (tuaithech or bantuaithech), and to make things more complex although the word tuath has strong negative associations bantuaithech is also defined as 'wise woman' and tuaithech by itself only means "a person with magic powers". We might tentatively conclude then that this particular type of witchcraft is associated with the Otherworld and can be sinister in nature or benevolent, rather like the sidhe themselves*.

    Looking at words for witch we have:
    ammait or benammait - both are feminine and as discussed above besides meaning witch are also  equated to a female Druid.
    badb - female only, originally the name of a War Goddess, later used for spectres, and eventually for human witches.
     ban-cumachtach - female, literally 'woman with magical powers'
     ban-cumachtach sithe - female - 'fairy witch'
     bean phiseogach - female, witch
     cailleach - female, hag, witch, crone
     cumachtach sithe - male, fairy witch
    doilbhtheach - male, "person with magical powers", practitioner of dolbud, witchcraft of manifestation (usually translated as sorcerer*)
    lucht piseog - 'sorcerers' but more literally 'people of witchcraft'
    tuathaid/tuaithech - male, person with supernatural power, witch ~ bantuathaid/bantuaithech - female, same as tuaithech, also defined as 'wise woman'




*We see a similar pattern of reducing the power of a term and its associated being with the word "Badb" which was the name of a Goddess and later became a word for a human witch. See Fergus Kelly's Guide To Early Irish Law for a more detailed discussion of the legal position of Druids in the law texts and of women who practiced magic.
*Tuaithe is the witchcraft that I practice so I may be a bit biased in how I perceive its definition.
 * in several cases the exact same thing being practiced by a woman will have her being called a witch in translation, but a man will be called a sorcerer, as we see with bean phiseogach and lucht piseogach. The only change between the terms is the gender of the practitioner(s).


copyright Morgan Daimler