Rhiannon - Divine Queen of the Celtic Britons; Uncovering the Lost Goddess

To think about Rhiannon is to undertake a journey. While she has a mythology around her, her origins are obscure. While she has many modern day devotees, she is never identified as a goddess in any of the primary source material. While she appears to have many ancient pagan attributes, her tales were written during the medieval period in a Christianised country that did not even exist politically when the island of Britain was pagan. There are no known ancient prayers or rituals in her honour. We have no known cult centres or devotional altars dedicated to Rhiannon. We have only a breadcrumb trail of clues to follow which are made up of synchronic resonances, embedded symbolism and a mythic heritage which begs to be traced back through the otherworldly veils of history. How then do we approach this revered lady? How can we best know her as a goddess? Neopagans generally have come to expect to interact with divinities either from within a newly created tradition that recasts them to work in a neoteric system like Wicca, for example, or else seeks to reconstruct the old ways with as much cultural authenticity as possible. The latter is possible because many ancient societies have left behind a rich corpus of written work detailing the stories, rituals and observances to honour their gods. Unfortunately, the Celts did not do the same, preferring to transmit their sacred stories through oral tradition rather than setting them down into writing. Regardless of the intention, the result of this practice is that unlike many other ancient cultures, the beliefs, religious practices and myths of the pagan Celts were not written down until relatively late, especially in areas that have been annexed by the Roman Empire such as Gaul and Britain. It is important to note that Druidism, the priestly caste which performed the ceremonies and sacrifices, served as judges and mediators, acted as augurs and healers and transmitted the law as bards and poets, was outlawed in Gaul in the 1st century CE and finally wiped out in Britain during the siege of the island of Anglesey by Roman troops in 61 CE. The primary keepers religious knowledge in these areas, therefore, were mostly eradicated, and so it is posited that what may have remained did so as folk memory and practice which were passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. As time progressed, Britain, like almost all of Europe, became Christianised and endured wave after wave of invasion, first from Germanic tribes after Rome withdrew and then from the Normans. Eventually, several nations arose on the island. Wales, made up of a network of kingdoms to the west of Offa's Dyke, most retained the culture of the Celtic Britons and resonated strongly with the other Bryphonic people of Cornwall and Brittany, which was more closely aligned culturally with the Irish and Manx, and England, which was primarily influenced by Germanic and Norman cultures rather than those of the Celts. When whatever myths and legends which had endured in oral tradition since Celtic pagan times finally began to be redacted in the Welsh medieval period, we can assume that the tales had evolved over time and, as written, we can see that they were greatly influenced by the laws and social mores of the contemporary medieval audience. The stories which comprised the four branches of the mythic cycle we know as Wymanogy were written down sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries, possibly by clerics or otherwise by lay scholars interested in preserving Welsh culture at a time when Wales had lost its independence to Anglo-Norman England. Ostensibly, because of this desire to archive and preserve these tales, it is unlikely that the redactors themselves made any substantive changes to the stories as they had received them, and indeed, these are the phrases included in the narratives which were typical of the mnemonic and onomastic devices known to have been used during oral recitation. If these tales have their roots in pagan Celtic tradition, therefore, any shifts of characterisation or symbolism are likely a natural result of evolution of the tales over time and not reflective of any kind of political or religious agenda. The characters we generally assume to be divinities are never identified as such in any existing tales. They are, however, often depicted as supernatural or larger-than-life figures. These stories feature a comfortability with magic and the otherworld which may seem unusual to us when we consider that Wales was a wholly Christian country at the time they were committed to writing. The four branches are filled with fairy queens, magicians, shape-changers, giants, visits to the otherworld, magical animals and even the creation of a woman out of flowers. Textual references are made to religious traditions performed in the custom of the time, which seem to refer to the pagan rites and rituals from the pre-Christian era. It is important to again stress that there are no known temples, altar inscriptions or votive offerings dedicated to Rhiannon. The archaeological record simply does not directly support the idea of her divinity, nor that of any character existent in Welsh lore. However, if we consider the ways in which cultures change and grow over time, especially as new influences and challenges arise, it is possible that a similar process occurs when it comes to the form and even name of a culture's gods. It is fairly well attested that in the process of becoming Christianised, the gods of a people often became local saints, not necessarily canonical as far as the Church of Rome was concerned, but honoured and appealed to as intercessors nonetheless. Oftentimes, these saints retained attributes or areas of influence from their godly past. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the transition of the Irish goddess Bridget to the beloved Saint Bridget. Both shared a cult site in Kildare. Both were associated with the forge, healing and creativity, and both had an eternal flame burning in their honour, a devotion that was extinguished during the Reformation and rekindled in Kildare once more in 1993, if we accept that this has happened during the transition from paganism to Christianity. Certainly then, there have to have been other times when the gods evolved and changed forms. In Western European traditions, we speak of a reconstructed Indo-European mother culture, which is believed to have been the origin point for certain language groups and their attendant cultures. The Celtic language family is a branch of this Proto-Indo-European language tree, and it is possible to trace the approximate times and places where new languages, and, ostensibly, their associated cultural forms, broke off from the main branch. As the Celtic peoples and their ideas began to spread across Europe, from what is believed to be their origin point in the Upper Danube Valley in the 13th century BCE, their tribal nature saw distinct cultural groups develop depending on where they settled. These differentiations likely arose from a combination of integrating with the peoples who already inhabited these lands. The adoption of Celtic cultural ideas by other peoples, and as a result of the challenges presented by the lands themselves. Although Celtic territories once spanned as far east as Turkey, as far west as the Iberian Peninsula, and as far north as the British Isles and Ireland as their greatest extent, the two major subgroups branching off the common Celtic language was Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic. These groups formed their own branches, and according to one linguistic model, from Continental Celtic arose Celtiberian, Ghoulish, Galatian, Leptonic, and Norric, all of which are extinct. Insular Celtic branched off into two major groups, Brythonic, which came from Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, and Goidelic, out of which evolved Irish, Manx, and Scots Gaelic, each of which had their own stages of development. The modern iterations of these languages survive at various levels of success, despite long-term attempts by the English to suppress and extinguish them. While this may seem like a strange sidetrack to a conversation about Rhiannon, it is a critical piece for First, it underscores the reality that the Celts were not a monolithic culture. They were Celtic peoples whose languages had evolved so distinctly that although they were not related linguistically, the speakers would not have been able to understand each other. Second, it is important to realise that not only were the Celtic peoples separated from each other in space, but also in time. Their cultures existed in various stages during the Pagan period for at least 1000 years, and their different historical experiences had a great impact on the further development of their cultures. For example, the Roman conquest of Gaul and Britain changed the trajectories of these people and their religious forms in a way that we do not see in Ireland, a critical distinction when attempting to study the mythos of any of these cultures. Lastly, it is important to realise that Wymabinogi and contemporary tales were written down in Middle Welsh, a language which did not exist until the 12th century, and that the nation known as Wales didn't even come into being until the 6th century CE, which was approximately the same time that all of Britain had been Christianised. So, while it is true that Rhiannon is not identified as a Wymabinogi, nor have we found any artifactual proof of her worship or any observation of her cultus by contemporary ancient writers. Perhaps the conclusion that this is because she, and other legendary Welsh figures, are not divinities is incorrect. Perhaps we have found no shrines, images or inscriptions dedicated to Rhiannon because there simply could not have been any as the consequence of the pre-Roman Celtic preference to worship in sacred groves and not to write sacred things down. Indeed, the very language of Rhiannon's name had not developed until long after the pagan Celtic period in Britain had ended. Perhaps then, in order to explore the truth of Rhiannon's potentially divine nature, we must follow a more subtle route, one which requires a deep reading of her mythos, an examination of linguistic evidence, the identification of medieval elements in her tale to discern the provenance of what remains, and a comparative study of similar goddesses both from adjacent and precursor cultures. If you would like to learn more about Rhiannon's story, then I recommend you start with our book, Rhiannon, Divine Queen of the Celtic Britons, by Jenna Tallandrew, who also provided the words for this video. If you enjoyed this video then please give it a like and subscribe to the channel for weekly videos, and as always, have a nice day.