Gobnait, Queen of Honey and Lady of Smithcraft
Mythic Ancestor Profile
🪄Your Mythic Ancestors eBook, which you can read online here and download in full on PDF below, is your ever-expanding compendium of Celtic deities and archetypes, exploring their stories, symbols, and creative inspiration. We’re now 101 pages in and I hope you are feeling supported by this rich lineage that you belong to.
A Chairde, Friends,
So Gobnait has been knocking on the door here again. Her first knock came a few years ago, a knock that I kept passing onto others. I knew practically nothing about Gobnait, about her as a saint with pre-Christian roots, an old goddess. I just knew of her association with bees, so when I came across anything related to her on my path, I would pass it on to bee-obsessed friends. Until her knock got louder and early one January morning, I responded, ‘Gobnait, if you’d like to speak through me, I’m ready to receive what you have to say.’
A story flowed, the one I told at our Full Moon Fairytale Céilí, where I also shared how when we open ourselves up to the spirit of co-creation with an archetypal image like Gobnait, we can find inspiration in how energy can never be destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. The energy of 6th-century Gobnait, the smithing and bee-loving abbess, is still with us.
Then, the other evening, I went to see the new Bridget Jones film where one of the main characters who’s a science teacher uses the scientific reality that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, to explain how the energy of our loved ones can live on around us even after they’ve passed. I beamed at the screen, because in my experience Gobnait is a potent ancestor to work with to invite more synchronicity into your life (you can find another synchronistic Gobnait experience here).
A few of you have been in touch about how deeply Gobnait’s story is resonating with you and it genuinely feels like she is wanting to be remembered and lived into more. Even in Ireland, she is not well-known, especially outside of Cork and Kerry, and the Aran Islands, places that hold an ecology of memory of Gobnait. We can find remnants of her life in brief mentions in Féilre Óengusso, ‘The Martyrology of Óengus’, written by a 9th-century bishop called Óengus who held deep love for Gobnait, and in our oral lore that is wedded into place.
For this mythic ancestor profile, I have decided to share in writing my retelling of Gobnait’s journey to live into her dán, her creative destiny and in doing so, find her ‘place of resurrection’, the place where she would become who she was always meant to be. But first, as story and place are fite fuaite, inextricably woven in tales of Gobnait, I want to share a little about her place in the Irish landscape.