On Taking Liberties with an Ancient Myth

And other acts of Bealtaine magic with Mari Kennedy

First, Beannachtaí na Béaltine oraibh go léir. May the blessings of Bealtaine be upon you all.

It has become traditional to celebrate Bealtaine, the celebration of fertility that marks the beginning of the bright season of harvest, on May 1. The original pre-Celtic people with whom this holiday originates, however, had no sense of calendrical time. Instead, this festival would have simply fallen between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. 

And, this year, that’s May 5.

Tonight, the sun aligns with Cairn S at Loughcrew in County Meath, just as it has for the last 5500 years.

May your sunset be blessed with a touch of ancient magic tonight, wherever you are in the world.

The Hallowed Tradition of “Taking Liberties with an Ancient Myth”

“As I have been accused of taking liberties with an ancient myth, I would say in defence that all myths have many meanings, perhaps as many as the minds of those who know them: and it is in the nature of things that where there is a variation of meaning there is also a variation of form.”

Eva Gore-Booth, the early twentieth century Irish playwright, poet, suffragist, and labor activist offers this apologia at the start of her play, The Death of Fionavar, From the Triumph of Maeve.

Eva (I wrote so many papers on her as an undergraduate, she and I are quite close and definitely on a first name basis) then goes on to outline her reimagining of Maeve’s story. It’s a tale we think we know so well from the greatest of Irish epics, The Táin. 

Maeve’s daughter Fionavar dies on the battlefield in the midst of her mother’s war. In this version, the young woman’s death coincides with the crucifixion. As a result, Eva imagines Maeve’s transformation from warrior queen to become someone who resembles an early Christian monastic (only she shall join the fairies of Tir na nÓg rather than the nuns).  Maeve “begins to lose her interest in fighting and her ambitions” because “her ideas of the values of things slowly change.”

This perspective seems at once understandable and radical, seeing as Eva was writing this in 1916 against the backdrop of the Ireland’s Easter Rising. Eva’s beloved sister Countess Constance Markievicz would be sentenced to death for taking part in the rebellion (though her sentence was commuted on account of being a woman). 

To be a pacifist in this moment of revolutionary fervor was a remarkable thing. And, it’s still rather unusual seeing as Maeve has only become a more powerful icon for badass warrior woman sovereignty in the century since Eva recast the Queen of Connaught in a new, peace-filled light.

This Week, a Story of Sovereignty

The latest KnotWork story isn’t about Maeve (though you can find her in The Power of Pillow Talk, S3 Ep5)  but it is definitely about sovereignty and finding the many meanings in a myth.

Mari Kennedy is the last guest storyteller of the season, and offers us her version of the tale of Niall of the Nine Hostages.

I adore Mari’s sensitive telling of the story, inspired by the work of the wonderful folks at Bard Mythologies and Tom Peete Cross’s 1936 book, Ancient Irish Tales. Mari introduces us to Niall, the young man who is willing to kiss the Hag at the Well. Even if you haven’t heard of Niall, you’ve likely heard tell of that shapeshifting crone who becomes the radiant sovereignty goddess. She bestows the kingship on a man worthy of rulership. With that, the Uí Néill dynasty was born and Niall’s (male) descendants would hold the high king’s throne at Tara for hundreds of years.

In the conversation that follows (so damn rich, and so expansive!) I briefly mention how my own version of this story comes from a different angle. You can find Ireland’s Forgotten Goddess Witch Queen, in S1 Ep2.

I was inspired by Gearóid Ó Crualoich’s Book of the Cailleach, which invites us to take another look at the traditional “baddie” of the story - Niall’s father’s jealous wife, Queen Mongfind.

As you’ll hear in Mari’s story, Niall’s mother Caireann was enslaved, and she suffered terribly at the hands of the queen. I meet this difficult truth in the telling of my own story, which I tell from Mongfind’s perspective. (You can listen to both episodes for more about Ó Crualoich’s analysis and why the story of kissing the hag we love so well might be some well-crafted PR from an emergent political power.)

The way you retell a myth depends on your understanding of the characters’ motivation or your interpretation of history. And, of course, since we take our myth as medicine, the retelling depends on what you see – or seek to see – in our contemporary motivations and how we’re called to respond to our own difficult times.

And so, we honor Eva Gore-Booth’s belief that myths can take many forms and meanings. It’s magical the way that two women who have so much in common craft such divergent versions of this old, old story. We were called to uncover different gifts and different shadows in the tale and this, in turn, will open others to their own interpretations.

Our KnowWork Storytelling Guest, Mari Kennedy

Mari Kennedy is a global gatherer of Celtic women, a yoga, breathwork and embodiment teacher, and a Sovereign Woman's coach and mentor. Six years ago she founded The Celtic Wheel, a global online journey of ritual, myth and practice for women who want to do the sacred work of the feminine. 

Her work weaves ancient esoteric indigenous wisdom with evolutionary modern science in service to the new, more beautiful world she believes is emerging. Her passion across all her work is in uniting the opposites and playing the polarities of being human. 

Right now, Mari is exploring the question: "how do we heal the split between the masculine and feminine forces within us so we can evolve out of the Patriarchal order of living?"

And that comes through so strongly both in her story and in our conversation that follows.

Our Conversation

Together, we explore the marriage of the king to the goddess, banis ríghe, which is at the core of the indigenous Irish tradition’s concept of Sovereignty. The marriage of the feminine and masculine in the individual works on the individual as well as the collective cultural level.

We consider the relationship between the three women in this story, Mongfind, Caireann, and Flaithius (Sovereignty) and what it shows us about modern women’s relationships and the feminine shadow. We spend the most time on the powerful, primal wildness of the Hag. We’ve made birth/death/rebirth into a catch phrase, but what does it mean to really be IN the death rather than just try to rush it on the way to rebirth? 

And, I am most grateful for Mari’s wisdom that sovereignty is “word wants to be evolved.”

Because it has been associated with such toxic individualism in recent years, my own relationship with “sovereignty” has shifted over time. Recently, I find myself coming back to what was once my favorite word, ready to create a new relationship to the idea that was the heart of my work for so long. That book of mine is called The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic, after all! (There’s a kind of rebirth happening when it comes to my own story of Sovereignty. Stay tuned for an exciting announcement related to The Sovereignty Knot early this summer!)