Symbols, spiralling around in circles.
Technically this is not a post about Midir but in a way it has something to do with him, he's always whispering something and actually there is nothing technical about it. This ramble will start with the point that I've been contemplating Celtic Brooches on and off all week and it will spiral out from there. So, the shape of the brooches have always intrigued me and I'm fascinated with the fact that the one found in Ardagh at The Back of The Hill hadn't little glass beads or jewels on it but was delicately made and finished none the less with great love, with a beautiful simple shape and features, enamelled in blue and yellow. What can it have meant for the designer and the wearer?
( For more on that dig visit our site here: http://creativeardagh.blogspot.com/p/the.html )
Then this week my mother gave me a few "Tara brooches", indeed one was mine already so that's another story. They are modern ones, not worth anything but useful for costumes when Annette and I are storytelling. I photographed them together with a miraculous medal because I want to jump in, up to my neck like fools do, and suggest they were much more than brooches to hold up cloaks. I don't mind being the fool, it doesn't embarrass me in the slightest, in my recollection the fool often pointed out truths to the lords and ladies so it's an interesting role to take on and I believe Midir might approve.
Were the brooches as important to the wearers as the miraculous medal was to our mothers who insisted we wear them to stay safe? Were we always wearing talisman on this island? Was it natural for the Irish to embrace the miraculous medal as much as the cross around the neck, even more natural as it represents the mother protection? Looking at the shape of the Celtic Brooch I can't help feeling it's planetary, Moon or Sun, Goddess in any case and the wearers wore it for protection. Then I was thinking of the different styles and perhaps they represented your tribe or clan or the sacred site you lived closest to, again bringing in the Mother Mary connection, each site she is said to have appeared on has an image slightly different for that site and a medal. I was christened with Guadalupe as my second name and was given many images of her and medals. If you look at the image of her she is so much more like a First Nation Goddess than a Christian Mother of God so it's easy to see why she was accepted so lovingly in Mexico. Likewise here in Ireland, land of the Goddesses, Áine, Gráinne, Danu etc etc, loved and revered in the landscape and rivers, Mary was embraced.
So, I am suggesting the brooches were the miraculous medals of the people living here long, long ago. I pondered that a while and wondered about the pin and if it had some protective nature and the glass beads and the location of them on it, were they representing stars? And the symbols, well they are easier as lots is written about the symbols whether it's accurate or not. Then I let it sit with me.
Continuing the journey outward on my spiral, two books I'm currently reading, Mythic Ireland by Michael Dames, 1992, Thames and Hudson, and Mythical Ireland by Anthony Murphy, 2017, The Liffey Press, wildly different from each other yet strangely not, kept bringing me back to it with the imagery in the books as much as the words. The shape of the sacred sites are as the brooches and in particular on page 107 of Mythic Ireland, a drawing by the author of Rannach Crom Dubh is so much like the brooches. He mentions the buried 'stone staff' of the Dagda and I can't help wondering if the pin in the brooches is calling for protection of the wearer from The Dagda? A drawing on page 153 of Mythical Ireland of a Stone Henge no longer there draws me in too.
Who knows? Nobody, as there are none of these people here to verify or deny.
Annette and I went to visit our friend Brendan on friday (who we often call Midir's current representative on earth and he accepts the title graciously) to get some hazels. We got some lilac and spindle too. Nothing would do me but to plant 9 in a circle around my well, no doubt inspired by Anthony's book and thinking of the Boyne and another 18 more in a spiral because I'm off on another thought mission about spirals this week. I get the strangest notions that I must follow. Now I have two brooches planted in my garden. Will they protect us? I can't say. I'm master of nothing and expert in less. I'm just a fool jumping in.