the Nature of the Gods: how I define Deithe and an-deithe

The subject comes up occasionally - what makes a God a God?

It's a good question, really, especially if you haven't thought about it before. I'm pretty strongly against the idea of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience - basically all the omni's usually attributed to monotheistic deities - as qualities of individual deities. There's just a level of cynicism in me that finds it impossible to to believe that anything that, well, grand for lack of a better term could or would have any interest in me on an individual level and my own experience does support the idea that we matter to the Gods and spirits in some way. I do believe there is some grand transcendent divine consciousness that holds everything together, beyond even my understanding of the individual Gods but I do doubt that such a thing would be any more aware of individual beings as I am of the single cells in my body or of the separate grains of sand in a desert. If there is such a grand divinity I would think it is so vast and beyond our ability to comprehend that it would effectively be almost impossible to connect to or engage with. Rather I think, perhaps, that this grandness is the spirit of our reality itself*.

Which is where the individual Gods come in. Whether or not we accept that there is a larger grand divinity - and I don't know that it matters whether we do or not - I do believe that there is a hierarchy of Gods and spirits that we can perceive and interact with. I base this concept on my own personal observations and experiences, so I won't claim that its some sort of universal truth or spiritual absolute, but its an approach that works for me. I like to use the concept of a hierarchy because I find that is basically how it works with the beings at the highest level having both the most power and the least interest in humanity and those at the lower levels having the least influence and the most interest in humanity.

At the highest level we have the most powerful spirits, beings that for simplicity's sake we call Gods**.  Gods have the greatest and most pervasive degree of influence over the widest areas, and the fewest limits on their actions and influence. I have seen Gods take an active interest in individuals for both good and ill, and I think it is always unwise to forget the level of power a deity is operating with. There is a range, of course, from an upper end of extremely powerful to a lower end of still-a-god but not as powerful. Gods also, again in my opinion, have the greatest scope of knowledge both of current events and of things yet to come. Why do Gods have an interest in individual people? Well that's going to vary by each person, but ultimately the Gods have their own purpose and agenda, and sometimes they need us to forward that. They work on a scope and scale that is so vast it can be hard sometimes for us to understand the why - although sometimes its pretty obvious. They need us, and we need them, on different levels.

Besides the Gods there are also a wide array of spirits, including those who are almost Gods themselves to those who are almost on the same level as humans, and those below us (influence-wise). Many of the Good Neighbors can be just below the Gods as far as influence and power goes, which is part - I think - of why they have always been so respected and feared. Others however are much closer to us and less dangerous to us. And if you take, for example, a spirit like most ancestors or human ghosts, they are very close to us indeed influence wise and while they can and do help us and provide us with information they usually aren't a significant threat to us unless something unusual is going on (or unless it is an ancestral spirit that has been or is being elevated to a higher level, which is possible - nothing is fixed, everything is fluid). The closer a spirit is to us the more logical it is for that spirit to want to help us or to need our energy.

All of this is of course very loose and there is a lot of grey areas. What I might call a God someone else might call a fairy and neither of us would necessarily be wrong. And I do believe that there is the potential for movement both up and down in this system, so that an ancestor who is honored and prayed to by enough people over enough time can become a deity and a deity who is forgotten and ignored for long enough can lose power. Much like so many other areas of life nothing is set in stone; rather our relationship with the Gods an spirits is a symbiotic one where both sides benefit. I'd also argue that ultimately it really doesn't matter whether what you are connecting to is a god, per se, or a powerful spirit, or one of the daoine maithe, if it does benefit you to have that connection.


*as an animist I believe that all, or almost all, things have spirits, including the world itself, and the solar system, and so on. When I sat down to contemplate this article I had to carry that idea outwards and admit that it is possible that there is, ultimately, a spirit of the manifest universe which could be viewed or perceived as the divine source. Whether or not other realities have their own such spirit I could not say.

**there really is not good definition for god or deity that isn't just circular logic. For my purposes I tend to define 'deity' as extremely powerful being who can influence all levels of reality to the greatest degree; following along with that however not-Gods or 'spirits' are beings with lesser degrees of influence.

words for Fool in Old Irish

I can't stand April Fool's Day, but in the spirit of the holiday (no joke) I thought I'd do a fun short post on the different words for fool in Old Irish and their contexts. Much like my previous blog about the word 'witch', saying fool in Old Irish isn't a straightforward matter because there are a variety of options each with different nuances.
   First we have the words which are used for people with diminished mental capacity - equivalent in English to simpleton or halfwit: amal, amlán/amalán (literally 'little amal'), or ammatán, buicell (but can also be a type of satirist), buicne, cáeptha, óinmit^
  Then we have the legal terms, used to describe mental incompetence: báeth (also used for people lacking morals, implying animalistic behavior), fer lethcuind (halfwit), druith (imbecile)
  Entertainingly there is also a  term for a fool that is also a word for a young cow: báethán
  Straightforward words meaning foolish, unwise people: ainecnae, báethlach (clearly related to the similar legal term, implies boorish behavior), díuit, duí, meile, meraige (someone who is feckless or flaky), óinsech (particularly a foolish woman), tibre (of the sort being mocked by others),
  Professional fools, ie jesters (drúth* is the overall name for this type of fool): boibre, bocmell, buicell, óinmit^, rindainech,


^óinmit is a bit of a special case. It is used to refer to someone who is simple minded but also could be clever in certain regards - what we might call an idiot savant. It is thus also a term for one of the prefessional grades of jesters
*Drúth is a complicated word meaning a variety of contradictory things including a professional jester, imbecile, prostitute, and later confused - probably as a homynym - with druí

Irish - or Celtic?

Recently a news article hit both the Irish cultural community and the pagan community. Titled 'Man’s discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish' the article discusses an archaeological find, the genetic analysis of the bones found, and one main academic response to it. The response focused on is that of Barry Cunliffe, professor of Archaeology at Oxford University, who sees the find as supporting a lack of Celtic presence in Ireland; however what many readers don't seem aware of is that Cunliffe has been advocating for this view since at least 2001. John Koch, who is also quoted in the article, was the co-editor of 'Celtic from the West' with Cunliffe and is another strong proponent of the theory. So it should be clear that the article has some serious issues with bias out of the gate. While reading the article may indeed give the impression that this find is hugely significant for Irish culture it really doesn't seem to be, and offers little that is new or revolutionary.

In the 15 years that Cunliffe's 'Celtic From the West' theory has been circulating, so far nothing has radically changed in academia regarding the Irish as Celts. This finding really isn't that groundbreaking - we already knew that at that time in Ireland the people were pre-Celtic and while its interesting that there's a genetic tie to modern Ireland other studies have also shown a strong genetic tie to Spain which does support a Celtic migration to Ireland. So its all still up in the air - and none of the genetics really explains the cultural end anyway.

Some basic points about all this:

1.  The bones were found in 2006; Cunliffe's first 'Celtic from the West' anthology was published in 2010 as a follow up and expansion to his 'Facing the Ocean' published in 2001. So in short this idea of Celtic culture originating on the Atlantic seaboard is not new at all, nor is the idea that the Irish may have been the origin of Celtic culture or perhaps even that what we call insular Celtic may have been a separate culture that merged or influenced Celtic culture on the continent. 
2. DNA is not culture. Just because the bones show that 2,000 years ago people had a genetic tie that isn't to known Celtic peoples and is related to modern Irish people doesn't actually mean anything from a cultural perspective. Culture isn't transmitted genetically. Also, again this is old news dating back several years at least when genetic studies started to come into vogue.
3.  The Irish don't stop being a Celtic culture just because Ireland had pre-Celtic inhabitants and modern Irish people are genetically related to them. Celtic is a language group with loosely associated cultural markers like shared art forms and related myth. What made a culture Celtic was speaking a language within the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages. Irish is a Celtic language, and while the article does suggest that this may be re-assessed until it is and until the Celtic languages are reclassified as non-Indo-European and specifically until the Goidelic and Brittonic languages are re-classified as non-Celtic by the standard academic definition Ireland did have a period where Celtic culture influenced it and is still considered a Celtic country today*. I would personally be really, really surprised if that ever changed. 
4. Let me repeat: Celtic is a language group with loosely associated cultural markers like shared art forms and related myth. What makes Irish paganism Celtic from a certain point on is the language spoken and patterns of myth and deity that are shared with other Celtic cultures, although it should be noted that the language is the main factor. This really only matters to scholars, for the most part. The modern pagan idea of 'Celtic paganism' has always been a vague generality that causes more problems then it fixes. The only thing this article does for Irish pagans is to highlight the fact that Irish paganism is and has always been its own thing, only tangentially related to its 'cousin' Celtic cultures (although for a variety of reasons that have little to do with anything in this article). 

 In the end the article is interesting but it is far from groundbreaking and should in no way effect you personally as an Irish pagan (or pagan following Irish Gods). We already knew that the pre-Celtic people's at the very least had influenced and shaped the Irish Celts into the unique culture that they became. How much or how little is an intriguing question but one that ultimately shouldn't change how we as individuals approach our spirituality. It is still tied to the land, to the myths, to the folklore. It is still everything it was before, whether we call it Celtic or we call it Irish or we call it something else. Academia will be arguing over this for a long time to come and short of necromancy will probably never know for certain what language those pub bodies spoke or what Gods they honored, whether they were the source of what we now call Celtic or whether it grew in Eastern Europe and spread west - and for us, even as Reconsctructionists - it doesn't really matter. I'm an Irish Reconstructionist Polytheist, however you slice it, and while there's a convenience in using the term Celtic I've always been aware of its limitations and pitfalls. Nothing about my beliefs or practices is changed by this article, nor should yours be, because knowing the ultimate source of Irish culture as we understand it historically is interesting but in the end neither essential nor impactful to modern paganism. 

*Celtic outside academic classifications does have some problematic connotations and misuses, but its beyond the scope of this article to address those, and as well the misuse of the term in my opinion shouldn't in this case effect its usefulness as an academic discritpor.

Ostara versus Easter - or Lets All Just Color an Egg

Every year there's a lot of commentary that floats around the pagan community claiming several things about the holiday of Ostara, most of them untrue. So lets take a look at the urban legends and the realities, shall we?

 Firstly the idea that Easter is related to the Goddess Ishtar. Ishtar is not pronounced 'easter'; it's a pretty straightforward name actually and is pronounced 'ishtar' just like it looks. Her symbols were not rabbits or eggs but rather storehouse gates, lions, and stars with different numbers of points (Ishtar, 2016).  The Christian holiday itself was not stolen from or dated based on the pagan holiday; it developed on its own based off of Jewish traditions and was originally known as Pascha in Latin, only later becoming known as Easter; as late as the 8th century the holiday was still known as Pascha in England. So I can say conclusively that the idea which goes around that Constantine in the 4th century C.E. speaking Latin was calling the holiday Easter (for the record it still isn't called Easter in most languages that aren't English) is false and he didn't invent the holiday itself. As a Christian holiday Pascha (Easter) seems to have been well established by the mid second century (Melito, 1989).This is at least 200 years before Constantine's lifetime.

original meme author unknown: "bullshit" label courtesy of Ian Corrigan

So that's that one.

Now the other main idea that get's tossed around is that Easter is stolen from or based on a Germanic or Anglo-Saxon holiday or Goddess named Ostara/Eostre. I can't even give an example of this meme because honestly most of them are blatantly offensive in the way they are worded but the gist of it is claiming that Ostara/Eostre was an ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess celebrated in spring whose symbols were rabbits and eggs and Christians stole it all, etc., etc.,

Let's start with the rabbits and eggs because that keeps showing up in all of these memes. The concept of "Easter" bunnies (originally hares, "Osterhase") cannot be dated before the mid-1500's and the eggs appear to have started in the 1600's, both in Germany (Bauer, 2016). In 1682 Georg Franck von Franckenau is the first to explicitly mention the rabbit bringing eggs in De Ovis Paschalibus where he describes the folk practice and the way people get sick overeating the eggs. This appears to have been because eggs - like meat and milk - were on the Lenten 'don't eat' list and so eating them on Easter was a treat (Newell, 1989). Unlike milk and meat however eggs could be preserved more easily and a hard boiled egg played a role in the Jewish Passover meal making eggs both abundant, desirable, and symbolic at Easter (Newell, 1989). Coloring eggs was also a widespread folk custom in many cultures, and while it was surely used by pagans it was easily adapted to Christian symbolism as well. There doesn't seem to be any certainty of exactly where the idea of hiding eggs for kids to find came from, but there is evidence that it began in Germany and spread from there to England and America. 

 The name of the holiday is likely derived from a word that means "east" and may be related to the name of an obscure Germanic or Anglo-Saxon goddess about whom we know virtually nothing. The name of the goddess - Eostre to the Anglo-Saxons and Ostara to the Germans - is probably related to the same root as the word east: both etymologically come from the proto-Indo-European root aus- meaning 'to shine' and likely relating to the dawn. Our only source of information on Eostre is the Venerable Bede who wrote in the 8th century: Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes (Giles, 1843)

[Eostre-month, which is now interpreted as the Paschal month, which was formerly called Eostre and celebrated in that month: now the Paschal season is called by this name calling the joys of the new festival by the ancient name of the old]

From this we know that there was an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre who had a holiday celebrated for her around the same time as Easter/Pascha but basically nothing else. And we already know that Pascha as a Christian holiday was well established long before this. So we appear to have a case of the new religion's holiday being called by the name of the old one in part due to a coincidence in timing. 

About a thousand years later Jacob Grimm would go on to write about a hypothetical German goddess he called Ostara who he reconstructed based in part off of the German name for the Christian holiday of Easter, Ostern, and a name for April of Ostermonat (Grimm, 1835). He further supposes based on this a connection between this name and the direction of the east and the idea of dawn and spring, as well as widespread connections between Ostara [the goddess] and contemporary Christian Easter celebrations including bonfires and drawing water at dawn which had special properties (Grimm, 1835). Although it is possible that Grimm was noting genuine pagan folk practices that had survived his connection of these practices to a goddess named Ostara are impossible to prove*

So in the end we have the name of a goddess which is etymologically connected to the word east as well as the dawn, and likely related to other Indo-European dawn or spring goddesses. But basically there is no real information about her, no known symbols, no myths**. As with the Ishtar claims we can say that this holiday was not taken and turned into the Christian Easter, which as we've mentioned already existed many centuries prior and with a different name. It is true that English and German speakers use a name for the Christian holiday based on the pagan one and it is possible that some pagan folk practices were maintained but that was not a matter of intentional theft by the Church - rather it was the people converting to the new religion themselves refusing to give up certain things. 

While these practices and names may or may not be originally pagan,  why does it matter? These are fun folk custom that we can practice today, pagan or Christian, whose origins are more or less lost to history. So lets stop arguing over whose holiday is whose and what traditions belong to who - color an egg, make a little nest for the Osterhase and put the eggs in, jump a bonfire, and have a great holiday whichever one you celebrate.

*that story about Ostara and the bird getting turned into a rabbit which then laid eggs is entirely modern

**I am not however arguing that Eostre/Ostara never existed, just that Grimm's evidence of her folk customs in 19th century German is pretty shaky. 

References

Ishtar (2016) Encyclopedia Britanica 

Melito of Sardis (1989) "On the Passover"  http://www.kerux.com/doc/0401A1.asp

Bauer, I., (2016) Der Osterhase

Giles, J (1843) The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede

Newell, V., (1989) Eggs at Easter; a folklore study

Grimm, J., (1835) Deutsche Mythologie

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