sheepfilms
AnasAbdin
h
tumblr dot com
will byers stan first human second
oozey mess
if i look back, i am lost
🪼
trying on a metaphor
Claire Keane
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
pixel skylines
Product Placement
ojovivo
occasionally subtle
cherry valley forever
JVL
No title available
Show & Tell
One Nice Bug Per Day
seen from Malaysia
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from France
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Iraq
seen from Lithuania
seen from Philippines
seen from India
seen from France
seen from Germany
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@the-coley-zone
doomscrolling tiktok together and I turn to you and ask, "why doesn't your algorithm recommend any videos with Black people?"
doomscrolling tumblr and I turn to you and ask, "why don't you reblog anti-racism when it makes you feel uncomfortable?"
The Mythological Cycle of Irish Mythology: Tuatha Dé Danann and Ireland’s Gods
The Mythological Cycle is the part of Irish mythology where the gods are still in charge of Ireland. The Tuatha Dé Danann hold the country, the Fomoire press in from the sea, and the Milesians (the human Irish) haven’t arrived yet. Medieval Irish texts most often shorten the longer name to Tuatha Dé, and this overview does the same. Most of what later cycles assume about Irish gods comes from texts in this cycle: how Lugh got to Tara, why the river Boyne is named for Boand.
If you haven’t read the four-cycles overview, start there. This article focuses on the cast of the Mythological Cycle and the world they inhabit. The Ulster Cycle overview comes next.
The waves of settlers
The Mythological Cycle’s central conflict is the Tuatha Dé’s struggle for Ireland against the Fomoire. The cycle assumes readers already know that several other peoples lived on the island before the Tuatha Dé arrived. That backstory comes from Lebor Gabála Érenn (the Book of Invasions), the medieval Irish pseudo-history that frames everything else1.
The waves, as the medieval compilers had them:
Cessair. The first and least canonical. In some versions, she’s Noah’s granddaughter, who fled to Ireland with fifty women and three men before the Flood. Almost no one survived. Medieval scholars treated her as a late, possibly apocryphal addition to the framework.
Partholón. Came from Greece by way of a long migration. His people cleared four plains, brought farming and brewing, and were wiped out by a plague.
Nemed. Came from Scythia. His people suffered under heavy Fomoire tribute and attacked the Fomoire tower at Tory Island. The survivors split three ways: some became the Fir Bolg, some the Tuatha Dé, some sailed to Britain.
Fir Bolg. Returned to Ireland from Greece. They established the first kingship and divided Ireland into the five provinces that later kingdoms inherited. They lost the First Battle of Moytura to the Tuatha Dé and were given Connacht as their portion.
Tuatha Dé Danann. Came from “the northern islands of the world” carrying four treasures from four cities: the Lia Fáil (the stone that cried out under a rightful king), the Spear of Lugh, the Sword of Nuada, and the Cauldron of the Dagda. They won the First Battle of Moytura against the Fir Bolg and the Second against the Fomoire.
Milesians (the Gaels). Arrived after the Tuatha Dé and defeated them. The Tuatha Dé retreated into the sídhe, the fairy mounds, where most subsequent Irish tradition leaves them. {:.timeline}
The Mythological Cycle stories are set during the Tuatha Dé’s reign, before the Milesians arrived. When the old gods reappear in the Ulster Cycle and after, they’re already figures of the sídhe.
The cast and the texts
The Tuatha Dé are the gods of Ireland. The full name Tuatha Dé Danann means “the tribe of the goddess Danu.” The Fomoire are their adversaries: older, sea-borne, often described as malformed or one-eyed, but also intermarried with the Tuatha Dé in important ways. Lugh’s mother is Fomoire. Bres is half-Fomoire. The conflict between the two groups is family business as much as it is cosmic war.
The cycle is held together loosely. There’s no master text. Modern editors group these works under the Mythological Cycle:
Cath Maige Tuired (the Second Battle of Moytura), the closest thing to a centerpiece
Tochmarc Étaíne (The Wooing of Étaín)
Aislinge Óenguso (The Dream of Óengus)
Aided Chlainne Lir (The Death of the Children of Lir), a late composition
Aided Chlainne Tuireann (The Death of the Children of Tuireann), also late
The dindshenchas poems and prose for places associated with the Tuatha Dé, especially Boand and the Boyne
Lebor Gabála Érenn itself, as the framework
The cycle is a grouping, not a single book. The texts were written down at different times by different hands. Reading them together is a modern editorial choice.
The Christian and monastic layer, briefly
The series opener covered this argument in detail. The short version: every Irish mythological text we have was written down by Christian monks. Most surviving Mythological Cycle material comes through Lebor na hUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow, c. 1100) and the Yellow Book of Lecan (late 14th century)2.
The point lands hardest in this cycle, because this is where the gods themselves appear as characters. Mark Williams’s argument in Ireland’s Immortals is that the Tuatha Dé as we have them are partly a medieval Christian construction2. By the time the texts get written, the Tuatha Dé have been euhemerized: presented as ancient kings rather than as gods.
For practical reading: take the stories as evidence of how medieval Ireland thought about its old gods, not as transcripts of pre-Christian belief. Some pre-Christian material survives in the texts. Identifying which parts is a scholarly question without tidy answers.
Major figures
These are the gods and figures the reader will keep meeting.
The Dagda. “The Good God.” Not “good” in a moral sense, but “good” as in skilled at everything. He carries a club that kills with one end and revives with the other. He owns the cauldron of plenty. He’s a comic figure as often as a powerful one.
Lugh. A latecomer who becomes the cycle’s most important young god. Skilled at every art, hence his epithet samildánach, “of many talents.” Half-Fomoire by his mother, Eithne. He kills his grandfather Balor at the Second Battle of Moytura.
The Morrígan. Goddess of war, fate, and sovereignty. She often appears as a crow or as a washer at a ford. She sleeps with the Dagda before Moytura and shapes the outcome of the battle through prophecy and choice.
Brigid. Daughter of the Dagda. Goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. She mourns her son Ruadán with a keen so terrible it invents the form. The Christian Saint Brigid is a related but separate figure, and the two were deliberately blurred by medieval scribes. For a longer treatment of both Brigids and how they fit together, Courtney Weber’s Brigid: History, Mystery, and Magick of the Celtic Goddess is the place to start.
Manannán mac Lir. God of the sea and the Otherworld. He crosses into every other cycle and turns up in voyage tales and royal legends alike.
Nuada and Bres. Two early kings of the Tuatha Dé. Nuada loses his arm in the First Battle of Moytura and loses his kingship with it. Bres takes over and turns out to be a tyrant. Their handover triggers the Second Battle of Moytura.
Boand and Aengus. Boand is a goddess of the Boyne. Aengus (Óengus) is her son by the Dagda. Aengus is the cycle’s god of love and youth, and he gives the cycle one of its loveliest stories.
The major stories
Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Moytura) and the Coming of Lugh
The cycle’s central narrative. The Tuatha Dé have lost their king Nuada, who lost his arm in the First Battle of Moytura against the Fir Bolg. The half-Fomoire Bres takes the kingship and rules badly, exacting tribute from the Tuatha Dé and humiliating the Dagda. A young god named Lugh arrives at Tara and proves himself master of every art the gatekeeper can name. He takes command of the Tuatha Dé, and they face the Fomoire at the Second Battle of Moytura, where Lugh kills his grandfather Balor of the One Eye. The story has some of the cycle’s most famous set-pieces: the Dagda’s grotesque bargain with the Fomoire, the Morrígan’s prophecies, Brigid’s keen for Ruadán.
Translation: Cath Maige Tuired (Elizabeth Gray, CELT)
Story Archaeology: the Battle of Moytura series (Episodes 1–12) and the later wider-audience series (also 12 parts) are the deepest treatment of any text on this list.
Candlelit Tales: Lugh & Balor of the Evil Eye (Ep 06) on YouTube; Lugh Samildánach (Ep 122) on SoundCloud.
Tochmarc Étaíne (The Wooing of Étaín)
A three-part text. Étaín is wooed by the Tuatha Dé god Midir. His jealous first wife Fuamnach turns Étaín into a fly and blows her on the wind for centuries. Étaín is eventually swallowed by the wife of an Ulster king and reborn as a human. As a human, she becomes the wife of Eochaid Airem, High King of Ireland. Midir tracks her down across lifetimes and wins her back through a fixed game of fidchell, an Irish board game. The story is one of the cycle’s richest treatments of the Otherworld and reincarnation.
Translation: Tochmarc Étaíne (Irish Sagas Online)
Story Archaeology: Dindshenchas 09, 10, and 11.
Candlelit Tales: Midir & Étaín (Ep 13), on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Oidheadh Chloinne Lir (The Fate of the Children of Lir)
A late composition (probably 14th–15th century) that became one of the most beloved Irish stories. Lir’s four children are turned into swans by their stepmother Aoife, jealous of their father’s love for them. They live as swans for nine hundred years, three hundred each on Lough Derravaragh, the Sea of Moyle, and the Atlantic at Erris. They keep their human voices and their memory throughout. When the Christian monk Mochaomhóg finds them and the spell finally breaks, the years catch up to them all at once and they die.
Translation: The Fate of the Children of Lir (CELT); also at Irish Sagas Online.
Candlelit Tales: The Children of Lir (Ep 222).
Aided Chlainne Tuireann (The Death of the Children of Tuireann)
Another late composition, often grouped folklorically with the Children of Lir and the Children of Uisneach (in the Ulster Cycle) as the “Three Sorrows of Storytelling,” though that grouping is post-medieval. The three sons of Tuireann (Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba) kill Lugh’s father Cian. Lugh demands an éric, a blood-fine, made up of seemingly impossible objects from the corners of the world: three magical apples from a guarded eastern garden, a healing pigskin from the King of Greece, a spear from the King of Persia, two horses and a chariot from Sicily, seven pigs from the King of the Pillars of Gold, a hound whelp from the King of Iruath, a cooking spit from the women of an undersea island, and three shouts from the hill of Miodhchaoin. The brothers complete every task but are mortally wounded earning the last. Lugh refuses to lend them the healing pigskin they themselves fetched. They die, and their father Tuireann dies of grief on their grave.
Translation: Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann (O'Duffy edition, Internet Archive), bilingual Irish/English.
Story Archaeology: Battle of Moytura 09: The Children of Tuirenn 1, Part 1 and Part 2; Battle of Moytura 10: The Children of Tuirenn 2, Part 1 and Part 2.
Candlelit Tales: The Sons of Tuireann (Ep 12) on SoundCloud.
Aislinge Óenguso (The Dream of Óengus)
The shortest of the major stories and a good entry point. Óengus dreams of a beautiful woman and falls so deeply in love with her that he sickens. His parents, Boand and the Dagda, search Ireland for her. They find her at a lake, where she lives among 150 swans bound together with silver chains. Every other Samhain she shifts between human and swan form. Óengus joins her in swan shape, and they fly together to Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange). The text matters for the Ulster Cycle too, since the woman, Caer Ibormeith, becomes a recurring Otherworld figure in the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Translation: Aislinge Óenguso (Irish Sagas Online)
Candlelit Tales: The Dream of Aonghus Óg (Ep 08), on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Boand and the making of the Boyne
Not a saga but a place-lore poem from the Metrical Dindshenchas, a body of medieval Irish verse explaining how every important place in Ireland got its name. Boand is married to the Tuatha Dé god Nechtan, who guards a well of inspiration whose waters can be approached only by him and his three cupbearers. Boand approaches the well anyway. The well rises against her, mutilates her, and chases her to the sea, becoming the river Boyne. Read alongside Tochmarc Étaíne and Aislinge Óenguso, the poem sketches the divine geography of the Brú na Bóinne complex.
Translation: Metrical Dindshenchas Vol III (CELT). Boand I and Boand II are the two relevant poems.
Story Archaeology: Brú na Bóinne and Cnogba in the Metrical Dindshenchas.
Candlelit Tales: The Goddess Boann (Ep 31) on YouTube; Boann & The Dagda (Ep 130) on YouTube and SoundCloud pairs the Irish story with a Greek myth from the Embers Collective.
Where to go next
A few things this overview leaves out. The Manannán material in Immram Brain and elsewhere sits between the Mythological Cycle and the immrama (voyage tale) tradition. The dindshenchas material runs far beyond Boand; many other places have origin poems featuring Tuatha Dé figures.
The Ulster Cycle is up next. Several Mythological Cycle figures (Lugh, the Morrígan, Manannán) reappear there, but the world has shifted. Humans are in charge now, and the gods have receded into the sídhe.
Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, R.A.S. Macalister edition (Irish Texts Society, 1939). ↩︎
Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton University Press, 2016). ↩︎ ↩︎
Tales of Times Forgotten articles on ancient polytheism, atheism, witchcraft, Christianity, & other historical topics everyone should read
Misconceptions about the Witch-Trials
Debunking the So-Called “Dark Ages”
Was Giordano Bruno Really a “Martyr for Science”?
Who Was The First God?
Did Ancient “Pagans” Really Worship Nature?
Was the “Green Man” Really an Ancient Pagan Deity?
Misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria
Modern Stereotypes About Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Greek Misogyny
Why Did The Patriarchal Greeks And Romans Worship Such Powerful Goddesses?
Did the Ancient Greeks Really Believe in Their Myths?
Did the Ancient Greeks Ever Climb Mount Olympos?
What Evidence Is There for Atheism in Ancient Greece?
No, the Romans Did Not Just “Steal” All the Greek Deities
What Was the Conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity Really Like?
Things That Did Not Cause the Fall of the Roman Empire
No, Transgender People Are Not a Sign of Cultural Collapse
Christian Adaptation of Pagan Iconography
Greek Writers Quoted in the New Testament
No, the Christian Cross Is Not Based on the Egyptian Ankh
Just How Pagan Is Christmas Really?
No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired by Odin
The Long, Strange, Fascinating History of Santa Claus
The Origins of the Christmas Tree
The Not-So-Pagan Origins of Easter
No, Easter Is Not Named After Ishtar
No, Groundhog Day Is Not of Ancient Pagan Origin
Here’s How We Know the Canonical Gospels Were Originally Anonymous
Lucifer Is Not a Name for Satan!
Was Jesus Copied Off the Egyptian God Horus?
Was Jesus a Communist?
What Does the Genesis Creation Story Mean?
Is Everyone Really Born an Atheist?
No, There Isn’t a Conspiracy to “Hide the Truth” about Ancient History
Who Are The Illuminati Really?
The Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis Is Racist and Harmful
The Truth about Atlantis
What Do Conservatives Really Mean When They Talk about “Western Civilization”?
The "Hero's Journey" is Nonsense
Jordan Peterson Does Not Understand Mythology
Jordan Peterson Does Not Understand Ancient Languages
No, Public Universities Aren’t Dominated by Evil Atheist Professors Seeking to Destroy Students’ Faith
✦✦The King of the North✦✦
Idk who told ya Rei doesn't hang around the port 🐋
Im a d s o l u t e weak for m friends designed outfits pls
Sure I got the permission!!
Commissioned artwork of year one at sea by honeyfluent by pixelphantom05.
Pirate reze x Mermaid Denji
Sorry for not posting for a while guys😭I've been busy making something for my bf😣
Here’s a drawing I did a few months ago for my Kurt fans :)
Pirates Au🌊
🚬🗡️🌄
I saw a pirate-themed lantern with Logan and Kurt somewhere... I got inspired🙏
Here is also a sketch and the final work + details👇
first actual drawing of the new year of course is one piece related... funny yonko...
Aar🏴☠️
(suggestions and questions are welcome, close ups under cut)
Yay I got this done and didn't just ignore it course I got a little lazy with the clothes but what I wanted to do is finished so I am happy
I got Idea of everyones role on the ship mostly like Soldier is the Captain (I have reasons for this), Medic is the doctor/ surgeon which seemed obvious, I think Heavy would be the Quartermaster similar to the first mate where they are second in command kinda, Scout is a cabin boy sorry guys look at him.
For Engie my sweet I would think he'd either be a boatswain or carpenter I cant see why not both as both jobs entail fixing up the ship from what I've read. but boatswain is higher on the chain. Also Demo would be a master gunner I imagine they dealt with the cannons and gun powder etc etc, but honestly I'm unsure, might fit Sniper better but he isn't a leader type in my head.
The rest it's up in the air, spy could be a navigator I suppose, they were pretty valuable and from sources the most formally educated which would make sense since I picture he came from wealth of some kind.
I'll make a post with more BLU TEAM stuff in this au in the future dw
All of the Sanji in Wonderland Au fanarts together :D
Would you guys want chibi Versions of the Sanji in Wonderland characters? (๑ˇεˇ๑)
Yes. Please <33
No. Ew. Gross.
SUPER excited to share the swashbuckling poster I designed for Anthro Weekend Utah, a furry con out in Layton UT, where I'll be a Guest of Honor this coming weekend!
I haven't been to a proper furry convention since high school so I'm hyped—might still be a little delirious from SDCC. but HEY we'll figure it out 😎
It was super fun taking the existing mascots and 1) figuring out how to draw them in my style, as well as 2) designing each of their little air pirate/sea pirate outfits. 🖤☠️🏝️
Pirate concept au stuff, idk why I don't see more of it considering it's got a title system going on too plus yknow pirates
