
Danu.
“ | If that lock were to be opened, then Danu, the Earth mother, would surrender her magic to the air in a blast of power that would annihilate every human on the surface, and the People would be safe forever. | „ |
~ Lugh |
Danu is the Earth mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Description[]
Though primarily seen as an ancestral figure, some Victorian sources also associate her with the land. She is essentially a "Mother of the gods". Danu had later appeared in the form of Black Maria, having been forced to merge with an interpretation of the Virgin Mary.
Danu was clearly a very powerful and fundamental earth goddess, from which all power, wisdom and fecundity of the land poured forth. She was a wisdom goddess of Inspiration and intellect (In this case she is very similar to the goddess Brigit, who is thought to be the same goddess with a different title). She was also a teacher, as she passed many of her skills on to the Tuatha Dé Danaan. She also had aspects of the warrior goddess. In Danu we find traces of the triple goddess, so commonly associated with Irish goddesses.
The Tuatha Dé Danaan were associated with craftsmanship, music, poetry and magic, as was Danu herself.
Overview[]
She is associated in one story with Bile, the god of light and healing. Bile was represented as a sacred oak tree that was fed and nurtured by Danu. This union resulted in the birth of Daghdha. The strength and stability of this male figure needed the nurturing nature of the land in order to flourish.
She is most associated with the Tuatha Dé Danaan, the people of the goddess Danu. These were a group of people, descended from Nemed, who had been exiled from Ireland, and scattered. It is thought that Danu offered them her patronage, under which they succeeded in rebanding, learning new and magical skills, and returning to Ireland in a magical mist. The mist is thought to be the loving embrace of Danu herself. She is seen as having influenced them, nurturing these broken people back to strength, and imparting magic and esoteric wisdom to them. The Tuatha Dé Danaan are the clearest representatives in Irish myth of the powers of light and knowledge. In this story we can identify aspects of the nurturing mother goddess, the teacher imparting wisdom, as well as the warrior goddess who does not give up.
Myths and Legends[]
Danu has no myths or legends associated with her in any surviving medieval Irish texts, but she has possible parallels with the Welsh literary figure Dôn, whom most modern scholars regarded as a mythological mother goddess in the medieval tales of the Mabinogion. However, Dôn's gender is never specified in the tales and was regarded as a man by some medieval Welsh antiquarians.
The closest figure in Irish texts to a "Danu" would then be Danand, daughter of Delbáeth. In the Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, it is noted the Tuatha Dé Danann get their name from the three sons of Danand: Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. These three are known as the "Gods of Dannan."However, Cormac's Glossary, a text that predates the Lebor Gabala Erenn, names the goddess Anu as the mother of the gods. Danu and Anu are often described as being the same figure by various sources.