Occult Confessions The Alchemical Actors

The Morrigan is a perplexing figure to make clear sense of for the reasons that all Celtic mythology is similarly perplexing: it was part of an oral tradition that was only recorded in the medieval period after the believers in the Morrigan had long since disappeared. Unlike the fairly extensive record of the Greco-Roman deities, the references to the Morrigan and her fellow Celtic gods are far more scant. The fact that Celtic deities were often triple-natured and that their aspects could take on or subsume different names further complicates the project of pinning down exactly who the Morrigan was to the members of her cult. But we're going to see how far we can go in identifying the lore association with the Morrigan and what we can properly say about the goddess.

The legends of Rhiannon come primarily from the Mabinogion, a cycle of fourth Welsh myths that tell, in part, the story of Pwyll Pen Annwn who married Rhiannon. The stories date to the twelfth century although their origins likely go much further back in Celtic history. Rhiannon is a Welsh witch or druid who uses her power to escape an unwanted courtship and marry the man she chooses. But a lie finds her subject to a terrible penance that has linked her with Epona, goddess of horses, ever since. We tell the story of Rhiannon and Pwyll and also her marriage to Manawydan, brother of Branwen, after Pwyll’s disappearance.

In the second part of our discussion, we turn from myth to historical documents and consider what the druids may have been like as a caste. What jobs did they perform in Celtic culture? How did their role inform what it meant to be a Celt? We also discuss modern neo-Druids and how their practices relate to the history.

In an episode recovered from the dustbin of our archive, we invite you to explore with us the strange lore of the Infertile Order and the Myth of the Cheese. Did Hiram Miraalaarn encounter planetary nymphs on his way to Venus? Are the birds to blame for our inability to pair music and lyrics in the Song of Lurm? Find out in today's very special episode.

Druids were a part of ancient celtic culture—a series of kingdoms or empires that stretched through Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Britain, and Gaul—the region of modern France as well as parts of Belgium and Italy. The Celts were distinct in each region but also shared important cultural structures and practices as well as language. Part of the challenge of recovering the druids from the fog of history is that much of their knowledge was kept strictly within an oral tradition. The Celts were by no means illiterate and had a longstanding relationship with written language but they believed, and the druids in particular believed, in memorization. Eventually Celtic tales, history, and practices were recorded by Celts but this was largely after Christianization. Historians then have to rely on the word of outsiders—mostly Romans—to make sense of who the Celts and Druids were in ancient times. But these writers often had a highly skewed view of the Celts since they were their enemies and they sought to conquer and subdue the Celts just as the Celt sought to conquer and subdue them. The Celts, after all, pillaged Rome in 387 BCE and directly threatened the Senate. All that having been said, we can get a pretty interesting if not detailed picture of the Druids by looking at these outsider accounts and the later accounts of Celtic writers. Julius Caesar has been one such source, having written on the Celtic people he encountered during his military exploits. Those accounts reveal a class of people responsible for the intellectual life of one of the most interesting cultures in the history of the Western world. They were poets, historians, judges, and magicians.

We sit down with Ed Crimi, owner of the Vampa Vampire Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania and talk about his collection of vampire kits collected from around the world. Crimi also tells us about the room in museum devoted to the Archangel Michael. For more about the museum, visit: https://www.vampamuseum.com.