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The Untethered Soul
“The Great Mother Goddess Macha vanished from the stage of Irish history following her downfall at the hands of the king and his warriors. The disappearance of Macha symbolized the elimination of the possibility of any woman-centered social system, philosophy, or religion. The Male Word, rather than Female Womb, would take responsibility for ensuring the continuation of the social order, albeit that this Word was reinforced and sustained by a discourse on, and the threat of, death rather than life…
The Triple Goddess would be replaced by the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity created by means of will and obedience no longer dependent upon the fertility of womanhood to fulfill its designs. As Christianity took hold in Ireland, it would make alliances and compromises with the warriors and provide alternative occupations for the old male religious leadership. But women and the energies they represented were a fundamental threat to the new religious consciousness…
Remember in the Macha story we heard her final cry, ‘A mother bore each one of you.’ To a matricentered society this would have been the ultimate plea…this plea recalled people to their responsibilities toward their creator and their common origins through the Great Mother.”
~ Mary Condren, “The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland”
— Emily Balivet…
