Copyright © Sage Starwalker, 2002. All rights reserved. Digital art based on the Gundestrop Cauldron.

Who is She? Why do we know so little of Her? What are the challenges and the gifts of Her mysteries?

Very little is known of Don. She is the Welsh Great Mother, the divine ancestor of the people who prefer calling themselves and their homeland Cymru.

We know of Don because of the Mabinogion, a collection of traditional tales, quite obscure until published in 1849 by Lady Charlotte Guest, about the children of two royal families -- the children of Don and the children of Llyr. The oldest written text on which the Mabinogion is based is dated at about 1225 CE, which means all the stories had gone through Roman and Christian revisions by the time they were written down.

Graves (1961p314) maintains that the Mabinogion has been very carefully edited so as to give the Gods the credit for magic feats that were originally performed by the Goddess. (The White Goddess)

Pronounced with a long "o," Don (sounds like bone) connotes "Deep Sea" and "Abyss." Her name is still current in our language. When we "don we now our gay apparel," we are remembering her. Also, everytime we donate something, She is there. Traditionally, She is Queen of the Heavens and Goddess of Sea and Air. Almost everyone says She is essentially the Irish Danu, though in my meditations She is not so much the pregnant mother earth goddess as She is a star deity, a cosmic mother. Her familiar is the seagull, whose habitat is the gateway or convergence of the three primary elements of the Celtic world -- land, sky and sea.

It is believed by some scholars that Don has roots in the Goddess Danae of the Greeks, while Dana's origins are believed to be Peloponnesian. With her consort Beli, Don is the mother Goddess from whom the Britons believed themselves to be descended. Her children taught the arts to the Brythons. The Mabinogion lists among her famous divine offspring Arianrhod, Gwyddion, Amaethon, and Govannon. The Donwy River is named for her. (Celtic Gods and Goddesses)

In the literature (print and electronic), there are discrepancies confusing to those of us who approach Her. We find spelling variations of Her name, and possibly multiple names -- Don, Dôn, Donn, Domnu. We read that She's (just) the Welsh equivalent of an Irish goddess, Danu. Even more confusing than these -- some refer to Her as 'she,' some as 'he.'

What is the mystery in all these mysts of named/unnamed and wo/man deity?

Here are a few clues:

• Don (Slavic: Russian) The god of the river Don. Like the other river gods, a local deity of those tribes living near the river.
• Dôn (Celtic) Mother of the Welsh family of gods, which consists mainly of Gwydion, Gilvaethwy, Amatheon, Govannon and Arianrod. As a parallel to Danu, she could have developed from Dana.
• Loftur Altice Thorsteinsson, a recent site visitor, shared the following with me:
  • Tuatha de Danaan is in Icelandic thjoth Dana which means "nation of the Danes"; the word thjod originated in Sweden.
  • In Icelandic, Sweden is Svi-thjoth. The word thjoth (nation) originally referred to the country and only later to the people (Swedes) themselves.
  • The Germans in Icelandic are called thjoth-verjar, which means "defenders of the nation" (the same word as Teuto-burger, which was in use by the early Romans) and the Dutch are called thjoth-ish, establishing both as originally Scandinavians.
  • The name Gwyddion is a common personal name in Icelandic as Gvudjon / Gudjon, which is short for Gvuda-djon / Guda-djon , meaning "servant of the Gods.
• Dana [also Danu?] (Hindu) Water goddess, mother of a whole clan of deities. She is responsible for both streams and the waters of the sky. (liber paganum)
• Danu (Anu, Dana) Irish (Celtic) earth mother. Matriarch of the Tuatha de Danaan ('People of the Goddess Danu)', the gods of Ireland. The Dagda, one of the 'People of Danu', was sometimes referred to as her father. Her Welsh equivalent was the goddess Don. (Guide to the Gods 1.0)
  
• Donn Cuailgne (Celtic) The holy bull has taken on his bovine form after a whole series of metamorphoses. With his habit of impregnating fifty cows a day, it is a foregone conclusion that he is a fertility god. He is also known as a protector of warriors, and his roar is invigorating. His colour is black, though he is not a negative figure. (liber)
• Domna (Celtic) Goddess. Something to do with stones or burial sites, as far as I can make out {one source explicitly states holy stones and cairns, and also a holy day on June 5. Any confirmation?}. (ibid)
• Domnu. Irish goddess of the Fomors. (Guide to the Gods 1.0)
• Dione. Cult partner of Zeus of Dodoma (sic), ancient earth-goddess. Given variously as the daughter of Okeanos and Tethys, or of Ouranos and Gaea. (ibid)
• Dionysos (Dionysus, Dionysius, Roman Bacchus). Greek god of wine and intoxication. Son of Zeus and Semele (although Demeter is sometimes given as his mother). His consort was Ariadne. His cult is believed to have originated in either Thrace, Phrygia or perhaps Lydia. ... Dionysos' epithets included Bromios (thunderer), Lyaios (deliverer [from cares]), as well as Taurokeros (bull-horned) and Tauroprosopos (bull-faced) in reference to his incarnation as a bull at his feasts. (ibid)

So, you can see why I chose one of the plates of the Gundestrop Cauldron, discovered in a Danish bog, to serve as a basis for representing Don graphically. The Danish/Swedish connection to the Celts (more likely the pre-Celts) is strong, but more than anything this information points to the geographic distribution of culture that's been happening for millenia as human beings move across this planet.

Don is my Matron Deity. I was attracted to her because of the obscure genealogical indications of my Welsh ancestry, and because She represents Mystery on so many levels. She also represents, for me, a cautionary tale about a social behavior, shunning.

My maternal grandmother, Lala Hancock, was shunned by her family of origin. I never knew her sisters, though I found a picture of the three of them after my mother died (cancer, 1989). I never knew my Hancock and Walker (her mother's maiden name) cousins. Lala married my maternal grandfather, "Pop," about eight months before their first child was born. So...she was shunned by her strict Scots-Methodist father, a respected merchant and longtime Texan, descendant of a brother of John Hancock, the famous signer of the Declaration of Independence.

My grandmother was stern, severe, tightly boundaried and not the comforting, loving and lovable grandma time usually gives most of us. She didn't like having her picture taken, and the family lore is that there exists only one photo of her with a smile on her face. A few pictures of her, and one of the two of us, will be showing up here soon.

I had thought that shunning was an outmoded social phenomenon until I was shunned in Madison, Wisconsin, where I had moved to work with Jade at the RCGI Motherhouse as a Cella apprentice. Jade offered to have me sublet the apartment that was used for the offices of RCGI, because she and Lynnie wanted to move the offices to a newly available space, and they had just renewed their annual lease on the apartment. I got to Madison in time for a Cella weekend held in the space that would become my living space after RCGI moved out. I had thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to live in the space that had been the home of my mother church for several years. I was wrong...and I was right.

My experience with the resident landlady turned out to be the single worst experience I ever had as a tenant. The culmination of a series of bizarre, dysfunctional and unacceptable pieces of neglect and/or mismanagement on her part was the three days she left my roommate (and Cella sister) and me without heat in our apartment...in February in one of the coldest winters on record in the state of Wisconsin. This was passive-aggressive to a mortal degree.

When I wrote a letter to my landlady, protesting forecefully the neglect, calling for a halt to the bizarreness and asking for some immediate changes, I carbon copied my letter of protest to her offsite real estate partner, a feminist attorney in Madison, hoping she could somehow intervene in a situation that was becoming unmanageable.

The offsite partner had been appreciative, responsive and decidedly sane in our prior exchanges. Together, we saved their real estate partnership a substantial financial loss when I discovered water dripping in my kitchen and alerted her when I couldn't track down the onsite manager/landlady. (Pipes had frozen in the apartment above me, empty for the weekend, and would have burst and flooded the building.)

In any case, when she received her copy of the letter of protest, something changed. A Mennonite, she decided to shun me. Looking back, I see that I could have protested less forcefully and more gracefully. Certainly I would have done that had I not been more than slightly rattled after living seriously chilled my first winter in Wisconsin, exposed to the hazards of living with inside temperatures of freezing, and the meteorologists predicting an overnight drop in temperature of about 20 degrees (meaning I'd be living without heat in a world where the outdoor thermostats read in the low teens).

I am still being shunned, nearly a decade later. Her act, and its effect rippling through the community(s), has had tremendous effects on me -- socially, emotionally, psychically, physically, socially, politically and spiritually.

Shunning destroys lives and communities. I lost connection with the Welsh and Scots side of my family when my great-grandparents shunned their daughter. When the British Isles were converted to Christianity and the old ways and old gods shunned, I lost the spiritual practices and beliefs of my pagan foremothers. When my Mennonite landlady shunned me, I lost the community I thought I had moved here to join.

Fortunately, I have been able to make wonderful community(s) for myself, despite the shunning, or perhaps thanks to its powerful alignment of energies surrounding me. I am doing collaborative, creative, nurturing, healing work -- and play -- with peers and buddies sister-priestesses and family(s). I am creating delicious, organic lemonade from the lemons I sucked on in my early days in Madison. It's a tribal life. We're just not ready for community, alas. In any case, I am recovering and rediscovering, re-membering, my roots in Celtic spirituality, in the family of Don, the Great Mother of the waters of my DNA tribe.

In honor of my maternal grandmother and of all women everywhere, shunned in so many ways, for so many reasons, by so many people, I dedicated myself to Don. May we unlearn the things that separate us from each other, from our heritage, and from our traditions.