http://www.dunbrython.org.uk The Brythonic Pagan Religions Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:42:14 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.dunbrython.org.uk/2009/10/the-making-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-2 jacobite Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:42:14 +0000 http://www.dunbrython.org.uk/?p=44#comment-2 This is a very interesting exercise and I admire your commitment to authenticity in your attempt to reconstruct pre-Christian Brythonic beliefs. The absence of any sort of creation narrative is a glaring omission from what survives of Brythonic mythology, unless of course the Brythons had no creation myth because they believed in the circularity of time, but this would be unusual for an Indo-European people. Iolo Morganwg attempted a reconstruction along similar lines in the 18th century and George William Russell tried it for Irish mythology in 'The Candle of Vision' in the early 20th C. Robert Graves also tried to reconstruct Brythonic mythology in his 'Crane Bag' and Margaret Murray's attempts to do the same in the 1930s are legendary. I have tried to write my own reconstruction and I found myself relying on Irish and other Indo-European sources. The primacy of Llŷr/Lir as a sea god is evident from both Welsh and Irish mythology, although it seems Manawyddan is the god of the sea as we know it; Llŷr is more the god of the primordial sea or Chaos, as Hesiod names it. In Hymns 190 of the Rigveda, the earliest written record we have of any Indo-European mythology, the three first parents are sea, night and earth and there are echoes of this in Hesiod too. I would not be surprised if the Brythonic creation myth was not dissimilar. This is a very interesting exercise and I admire your commitment to authenticity in your attempt to reconstruct pre-Christian Brythonic beliefs. The absence of any sort of creation narrative is a glaring omission from what survives of Brythonic mythology, unless of course the Brythons had no creation myth because they believed in the circularity of time, but this would be unusual for an Indo-European people. Iolo Morganwg attempted a reconstruction along similar lines in the 18th century and George William Russell tried it for Irish mythology in ‘The Candle of Vision’ in the early 20th C. Robert Graves also tried to reconstruct Brythonic mythology in his ‘Crane Bag’ and Margaret Murray’s attempts to do the same in the 1930s are legendary. I have tried to write my own reconstruction and I found myself relying on Irish and other Indo-European sources. The primacy of Llŷr/Lir as a sea god is evident from both Welsh and Irish mythology, although it seems Manawyddan is the god of the sea as we know it; Llŷr is more the god of the primordial sea or Chaos, as Hesiod names it. In Hymns 190 of the Rigveda, the earliest written record we have of any Indo-European mythology, the three first parents are sea, night and earth and there are echoes of this in Hesiod too. I would not be surprised if the Brythonic creation myth was not dissimilar.

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