Liquid Wisdom

Ceridwen and Bóinn's Waters. Imbas Dispatch #17

A Chairde, Friends,

There is an Irish medieval text that ushers us to peek into the world of the filí, the ‘poet-seers’ of old, those who were said to have the light of foresight. The text proclaims that the bank of a body of water was a place where mystical knowledge was revealed to poet-seers. Water was prophecy for our ancestors, and water and the goddess have a tendency to flow together in Celtic mythology, not exclusively so, but feminine waters always bubble up wisdom. Let me share two examples.

Awen Flows

In the Tale of Taliesin in the Welsh tradition, we meet Ceridwen, sorceress, shapeshifter, keeper of the magical cauldron that lives at the bottom of the lake, Llyn Tegid. Part of Ceridwen’s name may come from gwen (like in Gwenhwyfar, a sister of my own name Jennifer) meaning ‘white’, ‘fair’, ‘blessed’. I mention this because as you will see, each of the main protagonists we meet today holds this essence in their name.

In our story, Ceridwen has a resplendent daughter, Creirwy, along with a son, Morfran, who is described as hideously ugly. To help her afflicted son, the goddess brews a potion in her cauldron that will transform him into the most enlightened of folk. The first three drops of the liquid are to endow the gift of awen—poetic inspiration or wisdom that illuminates (a Welsh parallel to the Irish concept of imbas). After the first three drops are consumed, the rest of the cauldron’s juice becomes a fatal poison, meaning that no one could access wisdom after Morfran. That was the plan anyway...

Ceridwen leaves a young novice called Gwion Bach tending to the cauldron. His job is to stir the mystical soup for a year and a day, which he does diligently. But as fate would prescribe, the boy accidentally scalds his thumb while stirring the pot and instinctively puts it in his mouth to soothe the scald. In doing so, he unwittingly absorbs the awen intended for Morfran.

When Gwion Bach realises what he’s done, he flees panic-stricken, looking over his shoulder at an enraged Ceridwen in hot pursuit. With his new powers, he manages to transform himself into a hare to flee faster, but Ceridwen, not to be outwitted, responds by shapeshifting into a greyhound; the boy then becomes a salmon, the goddess an otter; he a small bird, she a hawk; until finally Gwion Bach becomes a grain of corn, and Ceridwen a hen who gobbles him up.

Ceridwen grows pregnant from this budding grain of corn. She resolves that she will kill Gwion Bach as soon as he is born but he is such a radiant infant, she cannot bring herself to murder her new son. Instead, Ceridwen sews the child up in a leather bag and casts him into the sea. He survives, eventually washing up on the shore where he is discovered by Prince Elffin ap Gwyddno, who is fishing for salmon. The prince is so shocked by the baby’s white brow that he cries out, ‘Dyma dâl iesin!’ (‘What a beautiful forehead!’) and calls the wee one ‘Taliesin’, meaning ‘Radiant Brow’. Taliesin grows up to become Wales’ most enlightened poet-seer.

Imbas Flows

This echoes An Bradán Feasa, ‘The Salmon of Knowledge’, in the Irish tradition. Here we have the file, the poet-seer Finegas, like Prince Elffin, fishing for salmon. But not any salmon. This salmon lives in the waters of the River Boyne, the Goddess Bóinn, the great ‘White Cow’ that flows through the land beneath our feet and the stars above our heads. Bóinn was once a woman who liberated a well, a well whose wisdom was kept secret, hidden away by her husband Nechtan and his cupbearers, wise waters these men did not wish to share. The well was surrounded by nine hazel trees whose hazelnut fruit would fall into its waters to be consumed by salmon—hazel and salmon were symbols of divine inspiration to our ancestors. Bóinn liberated the well, becoming its waters allowing this hidden knowledge to flow as a river towards those who valued the mystical wisdom of nature.

One of Bóinn’s salmon, the elusive bradán feasa, is caught by Finegas after seven long years of fishing. He is elated; finally, finally, the day has come where he will become the most sagacious of the filí. Finegas has a young apprentice called Demne whom he instructs to cook the salmon, with strict warning not to eat a morsel of his magical catch. As Gwion Bach did for Ceridwen, Demne follows his orders, but accidentally scalds his thumb on the flesh of the fish. Instinctively, he puts his thumb in his mouth to soothe the scald, but in doing so absorbs its otherworldly imbas. Finegas accepts this fate and Demne moves through a rite of passage where, like Gwion Bach, he receives a new name, ‘Fionn’, meaning ‘bright white’, ‘fair’, ‘lustrous’, ‘blessed’. He too grows up to become a shining poet-seer.

‘..the womb in which the basis of all good knowledge is boiled i.e. poetic inspiration of the Boyne [Bóinn].’

The quote above is from the early medieval text, The Cauldron of Poesy, where the river Boyne is described as the womb of the Goddess Bóinn, where ‘all good knowledge is boiled’. It is from her waters that Fionn receives enlightenment through the salmon that she liberated, and it is from Ceridwen’s cauldron, symbolic of her womb waters, that Taliesin becomes enlightened. Both Taliesin and Fionn receive their awen and imbas from the goddess. This may seem intentional or not, but as we know where the dán, the soul’s destiny is at play, there is always divine intention.

Journal Prompt

In both of these tales, we see how divine inspiration comes unexpectedly from waters. Feel into a time in your life when wisdom revealed itself to you in a way that you did not anticipate. How did this change you?

We live in societies devoid of magic, but magic flows all around us. Magic is completely natural—it is the unseen mysticism of nature that infuses all of life. Just as it pulses through the river, it pulses through your veins. Drawing upon how wisdom revealed itself to you in a way you did not anticipate, how might you open yourself up to new unseen possibilities for your life right here, right now?

Wishing you a restorative Sunday, free from scalding thumbs! Though speaking of thumbs, there is an age-old tradition on these islands of chewing your thumb to gain wisdom, for another time…

Croí isteach,

Jen x

Sources:

The Colloquy of the Two Sages, Immacallam in Dá Thuarad in Revue Celtique XXVI. pp. 4-64, 284-5 by Whitely Stokes.

Myths and Legends of the Celts by James McKillop.

The Caldron of Poesy in Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 32. 1981, by Liam Breathnach.