Greetings friends on this edge before the CrossQuarter. I am soaking the cat-tail reeds & wheat stalks in prepartion for making Brigid’s Crosses at our Imbolc Festival at Zinniker Farm on 2 February 2024. But before we explore the vital essence of the Triple Goddess Brigid, another powerful visage has come knocking, waitng for us to open the door to her Wisdom.
The Cailleach (KAL-y-ach) is the Crone Goddess of Winter & transformation, said to control the weather & the winds. She strikes the ground with her staff, a Druidic white wand of power, made of birch, willow, bramble, or broom, causing the earth to be covered with a blanket of frost. She also determines the length & harshness of the season, which begins on October 31st, the Samhain festival, peaking just before the Cross-quarter of Imbolc, but often extending up till the Spring Equinox.
As a veiled Crone, with one eye & pale blue/grey skin, The Cailleach or twilight hag, has been feared & revered across Celtic cultures for over 3000 years. Depicted as a giant with a bow-legged stride, She leaps across mountains & plains with a power to shape & transform the landscape, rocks falling from Her gathered apron.
Her name means “Veiled One” & She is very old. No one knows for certain where She came from. When the Celts arrived in Ireland The Cailleach was already there. Legend has it that ‘Fintan the Wise one of a 100 lives’ accompanied Noah’s granddaughter, Cessair, to Ireland before the great Biblical flood. He thought himself the first to set foot on the island but found Cailleach living there, & could see she was far more ancient than himself. He is said to have asked of her, “Are you the one, the grandmother who ate the apple in the beginning?” but received no answer.
There is a tale of a wandering friar & his scribe, who came to the old Crone’s stone domicile. He inquired as to her great age, which he had heard stories of. She replied that she didn’t know, but that every year she killed an ox & made soup from the bones—& perhaps they could gauge her age by the number of ox bones tossed up in the attic. The young scribe climbed the ladder & threw the bones down one by one for the friar to count. The friar duly made a mark on his paper for each bone, & the great pile of bones grew until he had run out of paper. He called up to the young scribe, who replied that he had not even cleared one corner of the pile of bones. Such was the great age of the Cailleach.
She has been called ‘Old Wife’, ‘Old Woman’ & the ‘Blue Hag of Winter’. In Celtic myth the Hag represents the spirit of the land, holding sovereign power over the earth. For a Celtic king to retain power, he was required to “marry” the Goddess of the earth. As ‘divine hag,’ she represents the dark side of the Mother who brings death & rebirth.
Some scholars believe “Cailleach” was more like a title of initiation, for the name is associated with various figures thru out history & mythology – passed down thru oral tradition. In Irish mythology she is said to have had seven maidenhoods, before bearing children by many husbands, before becoming eternally aged, outliving all her husbands & children. She is the maternal ancestor of every Irish tribe.
The Cailleach is said to be responsible for raising mountains & creating the ancient burial cairns & barrow mounds. She is a Goddess of the Underworld, associated with the ancestors & the realms of death & rebirth. The Cailleach is connected to the bean sidhe (Banshee), the wild women of the Faeries, She oversees the faerie mounds & entrances to the realm of the Fey. You will also find Her near sacred standing stones, the “bones of the earth”.
Her companion, the Owl, is associated with death, the underworld, magic, & the ability to see spirits. She is said to be a shapeshifter, & can transform into a giant bird – “cailleach-oidhche”, “the night hag”, old Gaelic for “owl”.
On Imbolc, legend has it that the Cailleach runs out of her store of winter firewood & goes to gather more. If the day is fine & dry, it means that she will be able to gather more firewood & prolong the harsh winter months, but if it rains, she will have no fuel & so will have to give way to Spring. This tradition traveled across the Atlantic & fed into what is known as Groundhog Day.
And so it is that on Imbolc the Cailleach is said to cast her staff under a holly bush; her way of handing it over to Brigid. She then, swirls around 3x’s, & turns into a grey boulder, until the Wheel again turns to Samhain. The stone she transforms into is said to remain moist despite the warmth of the summer months because of the life force it contains. Countless standing stones are said to be sacred to her.
The Cailleach is associated with more locations across the Gaelic-speaking world than any other deity. Her ability to form the landscape means that many prominent mountain landmarks are attributed to her. According to legend, she either dropped or threw stones from her apron as she passed thru the land & these grew into rock formations or mountains.
In daily life The Cailleach inspires the local healer, called bean feasa ‘wise woman, fortune-teller, sorceress, charm-worker – Witch.’
To reclaim the Crone, is to become synonymous with wisdom & sovereign female agency, operating outside the oppressive hand of patriarchy. Many Gaelic oral narratives recount cures performed by the local bean feasa thru her gifts of prophecy & second-sight. Part herbalist, part oracle, the ‘wise woman’ is the representative of the Goddess who visits the spiritual world to gain insight. As healer she diagnoses & heals emotional traumas, both individual & communal. Like shamanic figures the world over, she treats illness by balancing the relationship between the human being & the spirits of the otherworlds. She restores well-being by bringing into harmony matter & Spirit.
As a Goddess of transformation & death, She oversees the culling of the old, & lets die all that is no longer needed. And also with the passing of the Winter months, the Cailleach finds & guards the seeds for the coming re-birth of Spring. She stands at the cusp of life & death, intimately connected to the wise women who preside as midwives over birthing, & who prepare the dead for burial.
As the “Veiled One” the Cailleach guides us through our inner realities & dreams. She teaches us to let go of (allow to die) all that no longer serves our higher purpose, & guides us thru the many deaths & rebirths of our life phases. She is the final face of the Triple Goddess who rules the wheel of reincarnation.
May we embrace the “Veiled One” knowing the transformative power of darkness, will lead us into the growing light of re-birth. ~hag
Podcast for Cailleach on ‘I Think Speech‘
31 January 2024 – “Speaking with the Stars”
a Solar Eclipse Convergence:‘Piercing the Veil to Resurrect the Grail’6 – 9 April 2024(Saturday evening thru Tuesday morning) At the stunning Saint Raphael Retreat Center in the heart of Totality - Dallas, TX.
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