Foltchaoin

The Classical elements of earth, water, fire, and air are deeply embedded in today's society. For most, thinking of these as the  elements is just natural. It's one of those concepts that are so widespread that nobody really questions it. Even pagans, of any path, don't tend to question why we think of these things as the  elements, they simply are. But did you know that other cultures didn't (or don't) all view the world this way? Celtic cultures did not view the world in this four-directional split. In Celtic cosmology, the world is split into the realms of land, sea, and sky. The dúile - the elements (in modern Irish "dúile" specifically means the elements of creation), make up the world and everything in it. The dúile can be thought of as making up the realms of land, sea, and sky or as originating from the realms (1). In Gaelic tradition there are no set number of dúile, but sometimes it's described as somewhere between 7 and 14 (1). Usually in mo...

  Flidais: What Do We Know? Flidais (pronounced flee-ash ) is an interesting and elusive Irish Goddess. She is not well-known, and this is not surprising, considering how little original material we have of her. This lack of material makes her harder to discover than, say, a hugely popular pagan figure like The Mórrígan. It also leaves a lot of room for misinformation to not only sneak in (as it so often does with anything within Celtic paganism), but to stick around. So, what DO we know about her? She is mentioned in some original sources and has her own mythological tale; the Táin Bó Flidais , which is part of the Ulster cycle. Let's start with her name. Flidais may mean "wet one"(8)   and her epithet, Foltchaoin, could mean "Lovely-hair"(4), "Fair-hair"(2), "Soft haired"(8), or "Fine or beautiful hair"(9). Essentially, she has high quality hair. The name Flidais, "wet one", likely points to her strong association with m...