Who is the Celtic Great Mother Goddess? Was there once a Great Mother Goddess who united the people of the British Isles, that folks from London to Dublin honoured and worshipped?
Well, yes and no. Within the British Isles there were many different Mother Goddesses who were loved by the people – some so ancient almost nothing is known of them.
So who were these ancient goddesses?
Letās dive in and discover who is the Celtic Mother Goddess (or goddesses) of the British Isles.
The Oldest: DĆ“n
So little is known about DĆ“n. She (or maybe, he? Or neither?) is the mother of some of the oldest gods and goddesses in the welsh pantheon and is considered a Celtic ancestress. Her name seems to come from a root word for earth, so perhaps she is a primal deep earth mother somewhat like the ancient titans in Greek Myth.
DĆ“n is linked with the constellation Cassiopeia in the skies, and her children also have constellations named in their honour. We know that the ancient druids studied the stars and had myths to match the constellations – perhaps DĆ“n was important to them?
DĆ“n also has a river named after her: the River DĆ“n, up north in Yorkshire. (Remember, what we think of as Welsh gods and goddesses today would likely have been worshipped and respected by the whole of Britain – itās just with successive invasions, the OG culture got squished into Wales, and Wales still has some the deepest memories of what came before the Romans and Christians in Britain.
This is literally the limit of everything we know about DĆ“n. Sheās lost to time.
The Irish: Danu
Danu is known as the ancestress of the Irish gods. She is literally only mentioned in ancient texts as the mother of a people – the Tuatha de Danaan. The Children of Danu. Thatās it. We know nothing.
Maybe she comes from the ancient Celtic culture that spread all across Europe – the same goddess that the Danube is named for. Perhaps she comes from a root word associated with water,or from a proto-Indian goddess named Danu. But who knows? Itās a delicious mystery.
Today she is known as an ancient water goddess of the rivers and the Celtic sea and as the primeval mother of the Irish pantheon.
Honestly, sheās a big fat question mark for us.. but she often gets mixed up with our next Irish goddess.
The Mother of Ireland: Anu.
Anu is the great earth mother of Ireland. Her name means Plenty and she’s recorded in Irish literature as the one who nursed the gods – and she has some mountains named after her, the Paps of Anu (paps meaning breasts!)
Againā¦ thatās kind of it from the old texts. Sheās sometimes known as Ana.
Sheās often considered an aspect of the Morrighan, the Irish triple goddess who is well known for battle and war but who actually rules sovereignty, magic, fertility, the earthā¦ a whole bunch of things. The Morrighan holds the epic life-death-rebirth essence of the great mother goddess rather than the soft and nurturing side of the mother archetype.
Anu is a powerful Earth Mother goddess who is the land herself. Some folks consider Anu, Danu and DĆ“n to be the same being – and in Arthurian myth, Arthurās original sister was named Ana, perhaps after the goddess of the land. What do you think?
The Witchy: Ceridwen
Ceridwen is a great mother goddess, a witch, a sorceress and a keeper of transformation and initiation. She has a rep for being a crone goddess or a hag, but I donāt quite get why since she is so blatantly a mother goddess.
Everything we know about Ceridwen comes from one story in the Mabinogion. Ceridwen gives birth to two babies; one is totally fine and healthy but the other is outrageously ugly. Mama Ceridwen knows that it’s going to be real rough being the ugly kid so she tries to brew him a potion to make him wise and wonderful so at least he will have that going for him.
However her assistant – a kid from the village tasked to stir the cauldron when she’s off chasing her toddlers – accidentally takes the potion for himself and tries escape Ceridwenās rage by shapeshifting and running awayā¦ but eventually Ceridwen catches him when heās pretending to be a grain of wheat. She turns into a chicken and eats him! His seed-form enters her belly and she becomes pregnant rebirthing his new form. When heās born she canāt kill a newborn baby so she sends him off down the riverā¦ and he becomes the great sage and poet Taliesin.
In this story Cerridwen is simply a top mother looking out for her kids trying to give them the best chance at life even when they have been dealt a tough hand. The whole point of her potion was to look after her little boy.
It is thought that her story is originally a star myth telling the initiation process of the ancient druids. Cool, right?
The Assimilated: Modron
Madron is a goddess mentioned often in the Mabinogion: her name means DIVINE MOTHER in old Welsh, and her famous son Mabon means YOUTH.
Sheās either an OG Welsh goddess or the Welsh version of a Celtic Mother Goddess worshipped across Gaul, which was in modern day France, Belgium Luxembourg, across Switzerland and parts of Germany. When the Romans arrived in Britain she was easily identified by them as this Gaulish goddess, known as The Matronae (the Mothers).
Archaeologists have found lots of mass-produced lilā terracotta images of a Mother holding a baby or babies across Europe representing this Matronae, so she must have been a popular goddess indeed. She was also sometimes depicted in a triad, three mamas together with their babies.
Within the British Isles Modron is usually to be an ancestress or early incarnation of Morgan le Fay, and she is sometimes linked to the goddess Rhiannon because both of their core stories centre around their baby boy being stolenā¦ and is even linked to the Irish sovereignty goddess the Morrighan, as they both lurk in rivers washing and wailing.
The Arthurian: Igraine
Igraine is the mother of King Arthur. Though the Arthurian tales have been super christianised, in their pure form Igraine (also known as Ygerna) would have had a powerful position as the keeper and matriarch of the lineage.
We are not into this kind of thing today, but to many ancient societies the purity of the bloodline and protecting the lineage was super important and you would literally breed royal familiesā¦ a bit like how folks breed doggos to get the desired fluffy-and-friendlu attributes, or bringing a fancy stallion in the pen with a your lady horse to hopefully get a genetically fabulous foal.
Today this practice seems monstrous and elitist to us, but the ancients took it seriously.
We have some evidence that pre-Celtic Britain was matrilineal, and in Celtic myth (including the King Arthur stories) itās always really important who the Mother is – in fact it was often more important who your mother was than who your father was. The womb was the keeper of the lineage, not the willy. (Think about the Lord of the Rings, with King Theoden and his Sister-Son Eomer and his Sister-Daughter Eowyn – the kingās sister held the womb of lineage in Rohan, and JRR Tolkien modelled a lot of his myth on ancient Celtic and European practices.)
Igraine is really interesting as she shows us that the huge cultural differences between us modern folks and the ancient people of the British isles – they had different values and thus needed different things in their goddesses.
Goddesses who are Mothers
What makes a Mother Goddess? Because many goddesses have children – Morgan, Morrighan, Rhiannon, Arianhrod.
My personal belief is that a Mother Goddess has a particular link to the earth or to the sea – sheās got a kind of primordial twang in her energy.
But many goddesses hold the archetype of Mother within them being eaten and absorbed by their role of Mother. I really like that about Celtic goddesses – they can be a mama, a seductress, a blacksmith and a warlord all at the same time. They get to be themselves, just with kids.
The Celtic View of Mother.
We have quite a soft sanctified view of mothers in our culture today – mothers are meant to be nurturing, gentle, safe, and to find their whole fulfilment in motherhood. Our modern mother archetype is the Virgin Mary – a woman who is known only for being a mother and not having sex.
This was not the case for the ancients.
Many ancient mother goddesses are described as both birthers and destroyers, and being a mother was rarely the only thing they had going for them. (It’s like… they were whole and complete people?!)
Ancient Goddesses were much more wholistic than we think of them nowadays and were rarely pidgeonholed into the being just-a-battle-goddess or just-a-witchcraft-goddess mindset we are untangling today.
Something I find fascinating is that two mother-archetypes in the ancient isles – Modron and Morrighan – are both found in the role of the wailing and grieving washer-woman at the river. Motherhood was harsh and filled with grief and loss for the ancients, and for the royal or lineaged celts it would have been customary to have your children fostered (eg. raised) by another important family you wanted to build connections with. Thatās more loss for mothers to hold in their bodies.
Celtic women were also expected to fight for and defend what they loved – to take up arms when someone came a-cattle rustling, or when invading forces came to take over their lands. Think of the epic queen Boudicaea, the warrior woman who took up arms after the roman soldiers violated and murdered her daughters.
We all know that birth itself is a moment of life and death, fierce and feral and requiring as much courage as a warrior on the battlefield.
And Celtic mother goddesses were not sexless! Granted, we donāt know a lot about a lot of the, but we know Rhiannon chose her own partners, remarried after her human husband died, and we know that the fearless Morrighan had sex with the Dagda with one foot on either side of a river, giant-style.
Over to You!
What do you think about my list of Celtic Mother Goddesses! Have I missed one? Who is your favourite? Let me know in the comments below!
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