Some questions about Kerridwen

[Kaouenn]

Greetings !

I need some informations about these goddess. In France, i don't find many things about her and nothing rather precise on the web

I have read on a website that she is a "dragon rider" (here for example : http://www.druidspath.com/board2/index. ... topic=1986) ; have you some details to give me ? Where can i find the legend who speak about it ?

Another question : it is said that Kerridwen had six plants to brew in her cauldron. Do we know the name of these plants ?

Can we find a complete book on the lore of Kerridwen ?

Thanks and good night !

[lee]

that list is a bit...... off. some of them are wild interpretations and fall into the habit anybody in the mabinogion as a god when some of them clearly werent. many of them could be removed completely e.g Nissien and Efnissien, llyr etc as additons who would not have been known of let alone regarded as gods 2000 years ago.

kerridwen as dragon rider? rubbish, no literary suggestions of this, she only appears in one legend from the 16th or 17th century so she isnt a Celtic goddess at all, more of a figure from local legend and folklore.

[Corwen]

Do you mean Ceridwen?

[mwyalchen]

The information available can be summed up fairly quickly:

First, the Medieval material: The story of Taliesin, with its variants; and various medieval Welsh poems which refer to her cryptically. For Taliesin, Patrick Ford's translation of the Mabinogion is readily available secondhand and has a translation the main original text; his book on Taliesin (if you can find it - it's like hen's teeth) has more variants. Charlotte Guest's translation is available on the net and gives the essentials, though some details are different. The poetry is mainly in the Black Book of Carmarthen, of which there's a poor translation (Skene) on sacredtexts.com. But for a good summary, I'd go to Jan Fries, "Cauldron of the Gods - a manual of Celtic magic" (one of my favourite "Celtic" books) which presents a good range of the material and asks you to make up your own mind what it means.

Second, Robert Graves, who decided to take Ceridwen as the crone aspect of his triple goddess, equated her to Hecate (who was never previously a crone...), made various other links, e.g. the sow connection, on what seems to me to be tenuous evidence, and set off the modern fascination with her.

Lastly, there's material produced subsequently by her modern worshippers - for example, your dragon-rider stuff. Judge for yourself!

I find Ceridwen a very intriguing figure. Clearly she was important to medieval Welsh poets, who associated her with inspiration, and can be interpreted as referring to her as a goddess, even though they themselves were Christian. But if you're after a historical view of her, the evidence is tenuous; in the end I think you will have to work out for yourself who she is to you.

[Kaouenn]

I'm so late to say you thank you Sorry, I was overbusy and one of my cats is died, so I was very sad.
Well, i'm glad to receive this information ; i see better the situation

[mwyalchen]

Something to add here.

Edward Davies' "The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids", published 1809, apparently suggested that the Druids were duotheists, with Hu as god and Ceridwen as goddess. My source is Ronald Hutton's latest, where he writes of Davies' claims: "His (Hu's) consort was the goddess of the earth, the Great Mother of all creation, who was actually a degenerate memory of Noah's Ark." (sic; my italics!) (Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe, p178)

Which, while not ancient, does mean that the idea of Ceridwen as a goddess was around in Druid circles nearly 140 years before Graves.

And, come to that, that duotheism was being discussed well before either Dion Fortune or Gerald Gardner decided to try it out!

[Welsh Mythology]

Diolch yn fawr, Mwyalchen. I think that's an excellent summary.

It would be very easy to assume that the medieval Ceridwen does represent the last remains of an earlier Goddess figure. The reverence with which many of the Welsh bards held her is clearly heard in the poetry of the time. She was no simple figure of folklore.