Danú and Dreamtime

From India to Eriú, across the Bridges of Moriarty and Morris

When Michael Morris said to me he had a friend in Kerry who lived under the Paps of Danu, who was a great thinker, I thought nothing of it. They would be on the phone for hours, talking about the gods, about Sanskrit, about the Sufi mysteries. Or about the condition of their hearts, or their insomnia, their indigestion.

“John would collapse,” Michael told me, “of an afternoon. It was all too much for him.”

Michael Morris’s 75th birthday. As you can see, he didn’t drink alcohol.

John did not have a busy job in a town or a city. He was a thinker, a seer, a sage. And you never get a break from that, I can imagine, if you are called to do it.

Tommy Tiernan had long chats with Moriarty in 2002. But that is only a snippet of his great mind. He speaks of the wildness in people, tamed to death. Of seeing an affair to the end of passion. Of marriage, of the desertion of the land by the gods, in counties like Meath.

People compare John to John O’Donoghue, but John Moriarty was far beyond that kind of popular Celtic spirituality. He was so famous and so vast in his mind that nobody has heard of him. In popular Irish culture, nobody has a clue who he is. Lilliput Press published all his tomes of wisdom. Dreamtime, Nostus, What the Curlew Said…

John Moriarty was born in Kerry on 2 February 1938, over a year after my mother was born) and died there on 1 June 2007 (20 days before my son was born.) I always felt connected to him, through Michael Morris. They were similar souls, and good friends. Michael expressed his awe of the divine through music, most especially in the music he arranged and composed in his album ‘Eriú’s Child.’ It is no longer available, as far as I know. Unless Observer knows.

Here is The Coolin (Fair Maiden) from Eriu's Child

Our tales are entwined. To me, the Song of Aimhergin (of the White Knees), the warrior poet of the Milesians (the Sons of Mil)  who came to conquer Ireland long ago, and sang a Song to the Tuatha De Danaan (the tribe of the Goddess Danú, banished from Heaven because of their knowledge of magic, they’d settled in Ireland, only to be defeated by these Sons of Mil.) Aimhergin’s song lifted the veil of mist cast around the coast by the Tuatha to keep them out..

Photo by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash

The Tuatha de Danaan retreated to the underground tumuli of Ériú, and became what is known as the Sídhe. The tall shining ones. Somebody told me once that the etymological root of my name is Sídhe, which comes from Siddha, in Sanskrit.

The Song of Amerghin

(The Milesian Druid-Poet who came to Eriú’s shores)

I am the wind across the sea

I am a dewdrop let fall by the sun.

I am the fire on every hill. 

I am the shield over every head. 

Who (but I) is both the tree and the lightening that strikes it? 

Who (but I) is the dark secret of the dolmen not yet hewn?

Who knows the period of the moon?

Who knows the path of the sun?  

I am the shield over every head. 

Who (but I) is both the tree and the lightening that strikes it? 

Who (but I) is the dark secret of the dolmen not yet hewn?

Who knows the period of the moon?

Who knows the path of the sun?  

Not a very European poem now is it, with its fine pantheism? It might be sung in the Bhagavad Gita, to my mind. The dark secret of the dolmen not hewn? The fire on every hill, the shield on every head, the periods of the moon, the path of the sun? How beyond anything a Christian could tolerate. How dare they say they are a dewdrop, the wind across the sea, all at once? 

That was why I felt connected to John Moriarty. He understood the vastness of myth and how it boulders through and across cultures, across time. No need for Hate Speech legislation, Mac An Tee. We are beyond that. We are not prisoners of our land, we are the custodians. Eriú will never bow to you!

I dreamed about Moriarty, twice. Once, I met him on an open road, carrying a walking stick. We were standing by old stones, in the summer sun. There were a few clouds billowing through a blue sky. I asked him, how could I find the Gods of Ireland. He said : “That way” pointing ahead. I’m not sure if I ever found the way, but it was enough to have met him by those stones.

He was educated at St Michael’s College, Listowel, and University College Dublin. He taught English literature at the University of Manitoba in Canada for six years, before he decided to flee the dryness of an academic life, to return to Ireland in 1971. His books include Dreamtime (1994); the trilogy Turtle Was Gone a Long Time: Crossing the Kedron (1996), Horsehead Nebula Neighing (1997) and Anaconda Canoe (1998); Nostos, An Autobiography (2001); Invoking Ireland (2005); Night Journey to Buddh Gaia (2006); Serious Sounds (2007); and One Evening in Eden (2007), a boxed CD collection of his talks, stories and poetry.

If you don’t have time to read all of his books, there is a visionary documentary about Moriarty, called Dreamtime Revisited, made by Donal OCeallachair, who I met in Cul Aodha, on the Cork-Kerry border, in 2009. There is a mis en scène of the goddess Macha, which is a powerful invocation of her, visually, with Moriarty’s words streaming across the screen. It is one of the most iconic documentaries to have been made in Ireland in the last 20 years.

Druids claimed the Tuatha Dé Dannan were their ancestors. These are the people of the goddess Danú, Anu or Anann. Anu was an ancient river goddess in Europe and in India Vedic myth refers to the Danavas race, sons of Dau. Danú is an ancient Scythian word meaning "river" and it is the etymology of the names of the River Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, Don and Donets. There is a Hindu promordial goddess called Danu (Sanskrit दनु, romanized Dānu) mentioned in the Rigveda to be the mother of the eponymous race of Danavas. The word Danu described the primeval waters that this deity perhaps embodied. In later Hinduis, she is described to be the daughter of the Prajapati Daksha and his spouse Panchajani, and the consort of the sage Kashyapa.

Dewi Danu is the water goddess of the Balinese Hinduism, who call their belief-system Agama Tirta, or belief-system of the water. She is one of two supreme deities in the Balinese tradition.

Into Tuatha De Danann dreaming. We emerged into Tuatha De Danann waking. And we were glad. We were living again in ancient Ireland. Danu, her breasts plenteous, was our Goddess. Dien Cecht was our physician. And the path to Connla’s well was open. No religion could hold her. No cult could claim her. 

THe Paps they are called. The Paps of Danu. From of old, Danu was called Mother of the Irish Gods. And that’s saying something. 

That’s saying she was mother of Lugh, the Sun God. 

That’s saying she was mother of Macha, the horse goddess. 

That’s saying she was mother of red mouthed Morrigu, the battle Goddess. 

• John Moriarty - from ‘Dreamtime’

The Paps of Danú. The Paps of Anú. The home of the Goddess Mother of the tribe of Danú. In the most fertile land in all of Eriú, where fat bellied cattle graze on the rich grasses, in the dampness of the land.

Standing breefoot and naked in the strembed between her brests, Dian Cecht, the medicine man of her people, presented me to Danú. He gave me three rosaries of rowan berries, two of her Hindu breasts, one of her Hindu yoni. - John Moriarty, Dreamtime

The second dream I had about Moriarty occurred after his death in 2007. I went to Moriarty’s house after he had passed away. There were mountains of books, spilling out the doors that spilled onto the meadows lying beneath the Paps. I could feel his vast-ness, and the invitation to knowledge through Dreaming, not through the corridors of dessicated universities. I had the honour, the next year, of visiting his house with his muse, Eileen.

Photo by Komarov Egor 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

Danú

I

Bile, God of the Underworld

 Arrived on the island of Eriú.  

Fed he was  by Danú, 

While ghosts groaned across the land-

Lost, homeless, wandering. 

Photo by Michael Mouritz on Unsplash

Until Bealtaine Bile chased their souls.

Turning into an oak on the western seas

With a stairway out of it for souls to leave. 

To honour Danú, to adore Danú.

II

We scattered with her away to India

Where they sang hymns to her in the Rig Veda. 

On her way back west she gave her name

To the Rivers Dniper, the Don and the Danube. 

Photo by Sergiu Gabriel on Unsplash

The Danube, Dniper and Don rivers flow out of Danú.

She leads us back from India, 

On a raging cloud

To Eriú. 

Danú brought the tribes together into one: 

The Tuatha De Danann. 

The tribe of light, 

The tribe of knowledge, 

The tribe of wisdom. 

III

Mother of a salmon god, was Danú. 

Mother of Lugh, 

Mother of Macha, 

Mother of Morrigú. 

All seeing, all wise in the Boyne, 

All wise but blind, 

Unseen in her many forms. 

,

 

She leads us to battle with the Fir Bolg, 

The men of bags from Greece, 

She leads us to Victory. 

And back again, as Anu,

Giver of wealth in Cattle,

Giver of sovereigns- Nuada, who lost his hand

In battle of Maigh Tuaradh.

Dian Cecht made a silver one,

Made him King again. 

Danú was mother of Dian Cecht. 

Mother of Mananan of the Great Seas, 

Mother of Macha of the horses

Who cursed Ulster for its cruelty

Who tore back to the hidden lands 

Under the cairns 

Where Aengus lived, before he found Caer

Before they entwined as two swans forever. 

Soft, round, giving Danú. 

Unseen but in the land, on the land, under the land. 

Eriú.

Unheard. 

Mother of all. 

© Siofra O’Donovan, 2023

Danú’s consort is Bile, the Irish god of the Underworld. He is either the first male ancestor of both gods and mortals and therefore a kind of Lord of the Dead, or that, because of his name (which means “tree”), he represents the World Tree that is the axis of the universe and of any ritually consecrated area. In the case of Danú, one particular element should hold our attention - her relation to a specific feature of the Irish landscape, the Dhá Chíoch Anann, two hills in Luachair in West Munster whose shape suggests the breasts of a vast supine woman whose body is the Land itself. (An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism Vol. 1, No. 4, Bealtaine 1998. 1998 Alexei Kondratiev © Copyright Notice- May be reposted as long as the above attribution and copyright notice are retained)

The Goddess Danú

Victorian and Edwardian writers were the first, perhaps, to collate the chaotic material from mediaeval Irish and Welsh manuscripts into a form that was more accessible to the non-scholarly public. Evans Wentz, for example, wrote extenstively about them. For the dialogue between he and A.E.Moore, read this marvel- Evans Wentz with AE in Sligo, 1908

It is in these books that the Tuatha Dé Danann are first presented unambiguously as "the Peoples of the Goddess Danu", with Danu and Bíle as the most ancient ancestors of Eriu.

"... The most ancient divinity of whom we have any knowledge is Danu herself, the goddess from whom the whole hierarchy of gods received its name of Tuatha Dé Danann ... She was the universal mother.... Her husband is never mentioned by name, but one may assume him, from British analogies, to have been Bilé [sic], known to Gaelic tradition as a god of Hades, a kind of Celtic Dis Pater from whom sprang the first men. Danu herself probably represented the earth and its fruitfulness, and one might compare her with the Greek Demeter. All the other gods are, at least by title, her children." -Charles Squire

Danu’s symbols are many- holy stones, horses – particularly mares, seagulls, fish, amber, gold, queen or empress, rivers, sea, flowing water, air, wind, earth, moon, keys and crowns.Danu is the first Great Mother of Ireland, and as I see it, the custodian of the land through the many Invasions we have had. She is the Divine Creator aspect of the Goddess who birthed all things, all the gods, into being.  She is an Earth Goddess, associated with fertility, growth, plenty, abundance, agriculture, cultivation and it is she who nurtures the land. Rivers, flowing water and the sea are also Danu’s creations, as we have seen, withe the rivers Danube and Dnieper flowing from her, issuing forth a divine flow.  

Photo by Babette Landmesser on Unsplash

As a Cosmic Goddess, Danu is the essence of Universal Wisdom and Divine Knowledge, holding  secrets of Divine Alchemy and Divine Magic, reminding us of our deepest belonging.

Danu is an ancient and eternal essence of the Goddess, the enduring Divine Feminine among us all, steady in her love,  an infinite Mother Goddess of the Divine Universal Source. 

In gratitude to Michael Morris and to John Moriarty, the greatest minds of Eriú.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis

There are ways to enact Eriú and Danú in these troubled times. Thomas Sheridan

suggests that “We need to implement something akin to the Ulster Covenant.However something along the lines of taking an oath to defend the Goddess Eiru (Eire) and get as many Irish people (along with the Diaspora) as possible to sign it. This document then becomes sacred and bounds us directly to the mother goddess of this land. Not just for Pagans, but for anyone who loves Eire and desires to protect her.

A Symbolic Motherhood. Sons and Daughters of Mother Eiru.