I’ve been thinking about climate change: there have been several articles recently about the areas of Wales that will be lost to rising seas over coming decades. This is going to cause major social and economic upheaval. It’s going to demand that our society direct huge amounts of resources to defending ourselves from the sea – which means that those resources won’t be available for other social programmes that many people depend on. Large numbers of people may be forced to leave their homes and communities for ever. This is inevitably going to be traumatic. This is where we will need our bards. In Wales, the figure of Gwyddno Garanhir tells us that this has happened before, and we survived. If we did it before, we can do it again. Gwyddno connects the tales of Taliesin and of Gwyn ap Nudd: the tales of poetic inspiration, and of deadly challenges.
Category: Stonehenge
History is a jigsaw puzzle. To gain a view of the past, we need to put together pieces gleaned from archaeology and from surviving records. Increasingly, it seems clear that we can also learn from myths, passed down through generations via the oral tradition to the point when they were recorded in writing.
There has been a flurry of articles recently about a paper published by Professor Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues from a number of British Universities: The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales:
Categories
The Children of Dôn
The people of the ancient world spent a lot of time watching the stars. Just as we do today, they gazed upwards to the void: the endless emptiness of space, and they wondered at it.
They saw the changes of the moon, and identified the regularity and timings of her cycles.
Categories
Amaethon Andromeda Arianrhod Barddas Blodeuwedd Caer Gwydion Caer Sidhi Cassiopeia Cities of the Tuatha Dé Danaan Corona Borealis Dôn Druidry Falias Finias Four-cornered Fortress Fourth Branch Gilfaethwy Glass Fortress Gofannon Gorias Gwydion Iolo Morganwg Jinn Milky Way Murias Plant Dôn Preiddeu Annwfn Sidhe Mounds Spiral Castle Stonehenge The Mabinogion Tuatha Dé Danann Tylwyth Teg
Dôn is not an earth goddess
The Plant Dôn: the Children of Dôn, are introduced in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. Who is Dôn, though? I have heard prominent people in contemporary Druidry describe Dôn as an earth goddess; I believe that they are mistaken, and that she is something quite different.
Barddas 