Danu
How could she not be? We see a small band of weary warriors and their families dredged up on northernmost island shores. It takes a goddess of compassion to want to nurture a broken people back to strength.
In spite of their incredible fighting skills, these were a pretty common people. And bedraggled to boot. I'm sure they were a sad sight for goddess eyes when the washed up. The Celtic goddess Danu exhibits discerning judgment when she chose to share herself and her gifts to these people. She knew talent when she saw it (even in its raw, unrevealed form).
How do I know this? Take a look at the craftsmanship of the Tuatha. Magnificent. So too is their prose, music and poetry. And, the magic (which is truly the highest of creative arts) of the Tuatha is legendary. Christian monks (from whom we get much of our textual understanding about the Celts) had a tendency to denounce divine powers in re-telling the Celtic sagas. However, even they could not deny the super-human, magical propensities of the Tuatha. There can be no doubt, a goddess who inspires a people to create such marvelous beauty and magic, must be the embodiment of the same.
Danu
She is a river, Listen to the voice: In her arms she carries all lives into the cradle of the Earth: Danu (DAH-noo) is most commonly known as the Mother of the Celtic Gods, however her presence is also felt in Hindu mythology. She is the Goddess of rivers, giving her name to dozens of rivers such as the Danube and the Don. Even a mountain on the face of Venus has been named after this great Goddess. In Irish, the name means “swift flowing.” The root “dan” means “knowledge” in Gaelic. In Welsh “dan-“ means “low ground” or “moist earth.” The name Danu seems cognate with the Sanskrit, “Dana” which means “waters of heaven.” In Hindu, Danu means “unknown.”
In Celtic Mythology, the Goddess Danu was the mother Goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann (The Tribes of Danu). The Hindu Goddess Danu appears in the Vedic story "The Churning of the Oceans," as the goddess of the primordial waters of creation In each culture, Danu is the principle of birth and beginnings, of generation and fertility. Danu is the prime mover, she who came before everything else. As an aspect of the Great-Mother, she encompasses both light and dark, both giving and receiving back. She is enfolding darkness and brilliant flashes of light. She is the coldness of the stones in a river, and warmth of the sun. She is every color, every smell, and every texture… at one time. She is distant and she is close. She is young and she is old. She shifts like the currents in a river.
Danu is a goddess both famous and obscure. Famous, because her name appears in so many place-names and texts. Obscure, because no image or narrative of her survives. This dictomy suits the Goddess, who is both the known and the unknown.
Her blood flows down across the Land.
Her whispering lips birth her names into the void:
Danu
Danand
Don
Deep as a well that vanishes into the darkness, echoing with secret desires
With sighs that bring both pleasure and pain,
Washing away death with life.
Embracing our bones,
Like shining pieces of stone.
Correspondences
Traditional power: know for bestowing luck and good wishes and finding treasure; often the patron or pirates or treasure hunters
Color: green, blue, silver, and black
Stones: any river stone
Chakra: 2nd—womb chakra
Ritual Energies: matriarchal strength, transformation, manifestation, compassion, spiritual guidance
Symbol: black cauldron filled with water
Animals: snake, fish
Origin & History of Danu
Mythologies: An Ancient Indo-European Mother Goddess
The Tuatha De Danann (The Tribes of Goddess Danu)
To the Celts, Danu is a river goddess. It is thought that the Celtic peoples originated in the Danube River region and from there expanded throughout Europe at the start of the 1st century bc, hence their title as the “Tuatha de Danann.”
Danu’s children, upon arrive in Ireland have to struggle against their enemies, the evil Fomorians, whose own “Mother Goddess” is Domnu. Significantly, Domnu not only means “the world” but “the depths” of the earth.
Irish epics contain many episodes of the struggle between the Children of Domnu, representing darkness and chaos, and the Children of Danu, representing light and order Moreover, the “Children of Domnu are never completely overcome or eradicated from the world. Symbolically they are the world. The conflict is between the waters of heaven and the base reality of world.” [Ellis]
The Churning of the Ocean (A Vedic Creation Myth)
An ancient Indian tradition asserts that creation proceeds from an infinite body of primordial water (Danu), and that the world (or the multitude of universes of later Hinduism) ultimately rises from and rests upon this limitless expanse of waters. In its unrefined state the watery world is chaotic, or at least formless and overwhelming. Creation, or ordered existence, only takes place when this watery mass is somehow agitated, processed, or refined in such a way that form and growth take place. Within the watery formlessness resides the potency or essence of life. When this potency is released by the primordial waters, creation can proceed (26).[Hindu Goddess]
1: The Rig-Veda translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith, 1889. Peter Myers, January 15, 2002 (OUT OF PRINT)
2: Ellis, Peter Berresford. The Druids, Constable & Company, Ltd., London. 1994
3: Kinsley, David R. Hindu Goddesses, University of California Press, Berkley. 1986.
4: Campbell, Joseph. Transformation of Myth Through Time, Harper & Row, NY. 1990
5: Ellis.
6: Kinsley.
7: Kinsley, pg. 57
8: http://artasia.www2.50megs.com/Indonesia/temple.htm
9: Kinsley, pg. 57
10: http://artasia.www2.50megs.com/Indonesia/temple.htm
http://www.orderwhitemoon.org/goddess/Danu.html
