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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 10:26:26 GMT -1
can you see why i dont think Briganti is pan british though?
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Post by potia on Jan 19, 2011 10:45:28 GMT -1
can you see why i dont think Briganti is pan british though? To be honest not really. I think you are choosing to follow your own feeling on this without listening to the information given by two of our most experienced scholars in these matters. Namely Megli and Deiniol. When either of them say there's a very good chance something was so I listen. I'm not saying they will always be correct but they know a hell of lot more on these matters than I do and I trust their judgment.
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Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2011 10:57:09 GMT -1
I hope this makes sense and im not duly rounded up, ritually stabbed and dumped in a nearby bog for this heresy. I have very little, if any, personal relationship that I can lay claim to with Rhiannon/Rigantona... it caused me a few problems when I joined this forum, but I refer you to the Core values document, particularly the section entitled "The Tylwyth and the Aelwyd"... we are still a small group, but in time maybe we will have a Teguloktos or a Aelwyd Brigantia.... until then I will honour Rigantona with my tribe and Brigantia if they will join me... my relationship to Rigantona is more distant than my more personal one with Brigantia, and it is meditated by my membership of the Tylwyth None of what you say need be a problem unless you choose it to be Though I do think your reference "and it had a similar name etc so therefore everyone must have thought the same" slightly insulting to those of our members whose academic standing and experience we often rely on to make connections based on a sound understanding of the etymological roots of language that most of us do not have sufficuent grounding in
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Post by nellie on Jan 19, 2011 11:17:00 GMT -1
Having read through the thread again (eek - what have I done!?) I think the basic question here is: then or now? I agree that I think it unlikely that Briganti was celebrated at Imbolc everywhere across Britain, but I don't think that was being suggested, and I agree that various tribes probably had other important deities at Imbolc. But the fact is that now those various tribes don't exist - we are no longer a fragmented peoples. Instead those of us that have decided to follow a Brythonic path descend from a whole load of different tribes and we come together here as a community seeking to find a common thread. For me at least being a member of caer feddwyd is about finding community as much as it is about learning from others who have been at this longer than me. Although Briganti hasn't been important to me in the past (and who knows maybe this will change) I can see that She is important to many people here, evidenced in the impassioned responces. It is a Byrthonic community, not an Eceni or Silure etc community which I think is what this comes down to. While each of our ancestors probably did slightly different things because they were essentially different peoples, today we are a united people (more or less!) After thinking and thinking and thinking about this this is the conclusion I have come to.
And for myself I have decided to see Rigantona as Briganti's companion that brings Her out of the otherworld/underworld in a similar way that Hekate does for Persephone. This may be ridiculous, but for me, at this stage where I understand so little about how everything fits together, it helps me to move forwards. As the mabinogion is as much about northern england as it is Wales it seems to me that the Brigantes would have known Rigantona as well as Briganti (though obviously Briganti was their main deity) and as such Rigantona must have had some place in their understanding of the gods and the world. As Rhiannon does have this descent (again I say this meaning a very general theme rather than the specifics of the story) and return to the world,and as She does go there seeking somebody (her son) this is how i'm justifying this piece of oddness to myself. I appreciate everybody else is going to say I'm talking rubbish,but it helps me while I get used to everything.
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Post by Lee on Jan 19, 2011 11:30:26 GMT -1
I went to bed last night feeling a little like a scolded child. you shouldnt we are nothing if not rigorous and everything said here is said with genuine care and concern, rather than wrapping up in wool. I have had a brief check on other sources and She appears on seven certain inscription in britain (mostly northern britain and scotland) plus of course river and place name associations elsewhere. there is all of the irish material and several inscription on the continent including a celtiberian coin. she wasnt just pan-british, but Pan-Celtic it seems. wealso have the south wales St bride - though that is probably derived from irish sources. the reason modern neo-pagans make much of Brigantia is because we do have a lot more info on her than others, it simply isnt the case for others, so there are few people singing hymns to Ambactonos or libating with mead for taranis. In our case, she is obviously an important deity to a lot of people from X number of years ago - Europe wide it seems and so, if we are working to reconstruct a relevant and workable pantheon it is obvious she should be included. We are taking all we can from the past and making it relevant and workable in the 21st C, those gods who have more surviving info will be the obvious ones to begin with, the others will take longer and more time. nope. they are from the all over the place. She wasnt as far as i recall a major part in brython until more recently, maybe a year or two ago. as far as being 'roven' to be pan-british; the people who i trust here to be able to make this call and my own looking inot it tell me she was. if that is not enough for you then that's no problem at all, we certainly down want to bully you into it at all, memrely make it clear that for many of us she is important. we are aware of this, Epona was continental. however, she has much in common - probably enough to be somewhat certain - with British goddess types so that we can reconstruct Rigantona as fulfilling in many ways a similar function. it is probably safe to say that to many of us, Rigantona is the local name for the same goddess-function-role-force as Epona was known as. I understand that you cant make the link. You have come into this fairly recently and we dont expect you swallow all we say hook line and sinker... that isnt what we are about. not sure what you mean about briganti- britannia; youve lost me. Lee
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Post by Lee on Jan 19, 2011 11:35:40 GMT -1
Having read through the thread again (eek - what have I done!?) I think the basic question here is: then or now? I agree that I think it unlikely that Briganti was celebrated at Imbolc everywhere across Britain, but I don't think that was being suggested, and I agree that various tribes probably had other important deities at Imbolc. But the fact is that now those various tribes don't exist - we are no longer a fragmented peoples. Instead those of us that have decided to follow a Brythonic path descend from a whole load of different tribes and we come together here as a community seeking to find a common thread. For me at least being a member of caer feddwyd is about finding community as much as it is about learning from others who have been at this longer than me. Although Briganti hasn't been important to me in the past (and who knows maybe this will change) I can see that She is important to many people here, evidenced in the impassioned responces. It is a Byrthonic community, not an Eceni or Silure etc community which I think is what this comes down to. While each of our ancestors probably did slightly different things because they were essentially different peoples, today we are a united people (more or less!) After thinking and thinking and thinking about this this is the conclusion I have come to. superbly put i think this is a wonderfully healthy attitude; an awareness that maybe what you are doing isnt authentic or historical but that right now it is a stepping stone and the hope that something develops from it in the future. Lee
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Post by Rion on Jan 19, 2011 11:51:45 GMT -1
And for myself I have decided to see Rigantona as Briganti's companion that brings Her out of the otherworld/underworld in a similar way that Hekate does for Persephone. This may be ridiculous, but for me, at this stage where I understand so little about how everything fits together, it helps me to move forwards. As the mabinogion is as much about northern england as it is Wales it seems to me that the Brigantes would have known Rigantona as well as Briganti (though obviously Briganti was their main deity) and as such Rigantona must have had some place in their understanding of the gods and the world. As Rhiannon does have this descent (again I say this meaning a very general theme rather than the specifics of the story) and return to the world,and as She does go there seeking somebody (her son) this is how i'm justifying this piece of oddness to myself. I appreciate everybody else is going to say I'm talking rubbish, but it helps me while I get used to everything. Spot on.
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 11:58:39 GMT -1
Ok, for the record, please let me say i dont doubt for a second the importance of Brigantia. Neither do i want to cause friction with any of the established members of dun brython. Im not for one moment suggesting that you suddenly drop any of your formulated ideas. I have the utmost respect for everyone on this forum especially megli and deinol. I dont mean to undermine them or anyone else. Its not about Rigatona because its made me re-evaluate what i thought i knew. There is much derision of neo paganism for choosing deities 'off the shelf' yet in effect without proof youre doing exactly that with Brigantia. If Brigantia is pan celtic why then is there no mention of her in southern england? You mention iberia and the irish connection but history and the study of genes shows there to have been an iberian influx up the western coast of britain and scotland. I just want a little more proof that Brigantia was recognised nationally
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Post by Lee on Jan 19, 2011 12:09:42 GMT -1
OK, it's a cause of much pain and stress to some people, Celtnet:
Finally we come to the Continental aspect of the goddess, where there is most paucity of evidence. In western France there are inscriptions to Brigindo and at Auxey in the Côte d'Or there is an inscription to the goddess Brigindona. Both deities seem etymologically related ti Brigantia/Brighid and may well represent the same goddess. We also have the Brigantii tribe of Central Raetia whose capital, Brigantium Raetiae, situated on the eastern shores of Brigantinus Lacus in Central Raetia is mow known as Bregentz on Lake Constance in the Austrian Tyrol. Again the Brigantii, like their insular equivalents the Brigantiae would seem to be 'the people of the goddess Brigantia'. Interestingly this was also a location where a defixione (curse tablet) invoking Ogmios and also naming Dis Pater this indicates that Gaulish Brigantia, Ogmos and Dis Pater bore a similar relationship to one another as their Irish cognates: Brighid, In Dagda and Ogma (see entry on Ogmios for a full discussion), adding support to the proposition that Brighid is the cognate of Gaulish/Brythonic Brigantia.
that's France and Austria, along with Celtiberia. Northern England, southern Scotland and Ireland. Southern England is merely a gap in the jigsaw. this kind of evidence in palaeontology is sufficient to infer that a known species was in that geographical region. the same could be said for gods.
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Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2011 12:59:03 GMT -1
OK, it's a cause of much pain and stress to some people, Celtnet: (prepares to hand out the blood pressure tablets)
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Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2011 13:05:41 GMT -1
There is much derision of neo paganism for choosing deities 'off the shelf' yet in effect without proof youre doing exactly that with Brigantia. I don't recall it ever having been summarised and placed in one place (any one correct me? or if it hasn't, should we?), but Brython has a methodology that becomes clear if you follow the threads and q&a that we undergo when discussing this sort of thing... it includes the sort of linguistic correlation that we benefit from in terms of megli and deinol's input, appeal to historical records/archeological evidence and, as you can see from Lee's post, inference... there is also appeal to shared gnosis though that tends to come at a later stage... shit man, this lot are worse than a bunch of Cardinals choosing a pope :-) The evidence is sifted and challenged (and in that regard your challenges are appreciated, very much in the spirit of what we aim to do) and ultimately a decision come too
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 13:45:00 GMT -1
My argument, despite inscriptions on the continent to the contrary, is that there is no mention of her in southern britain (roughly a line drawn across the country separating the hilly uplands with the southern downlands. All the places Lee mentions where incriptions have been found are near to or actually in mountainous regions. If Brigantia was pan celtic let alone pan british surely she would have cropped up south of the divide? She hasnt and doesnt. She remains very much a northern goddess sovereign of the brigantes. That the irish connect bridget to imbolc is all well and good but youre not recreating an irish tradition youre creating a brythonic one. I appreciate theres no hard info to go on but put yourself into the mindset of a pre roman briton... who would you associate with? The goddess who represents your locality or a goddess from the north. My earlier inclusion of Brittania was as a comparison. A few days ago in a post Eirian asked if we all associate with Brittania and we all pretty much said no because the various areas of britain are all distinctly separate. This is the way i feel about brigantia. To me she's separate and disctinctly northern. Megli and deinol are quite rightly deemed experts to people on this forum. I respect that, although i am the new kid on the block i didnt just fall into paganism yesterday, i have read extensively for the past ten years and while im not formally qualified in any of this in the way they are i still believe i have a valid point unless anyone can point me to the fact that Brigantia was as recognised out of her tribal area as within
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Post by megli on Jan 19, 2011 14:02:34 GMT -1
Where do you think the Brent (straight from *Briganti, and thus in the normal Celtic way identified with the goddess, like Sabrina, Deva, Verbeia, Matrona, Sequana, Bovinda) is....?
Middlesex. To the best of my knowledge that's in the south, unless the Coalition has moved things around a bit since I last looked.
That river-name is solid evidence for the importance and worship of the goddess Briganti by Brythonic Celtic speakers in the London basin. There are plenty of goddesses we deal with who are ONLY attested from rivernames---Briganti has both inscriptions and two river names, widely spaced, and neither in the north. A goddess has to be (I imagine) well-rooted in a place and culture for people to identify her with a major local landscape feature like a river.
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Post by nellie on Jan 19, 2011 14:09:51 GMT -1
Could the 'gap' in southern england be accounted for by romanisation? In as much as Lugus never appears anywhere because He is always called by the roman Mercury but was obviously very important, could the same not be true for Briganti? Caesar says Minerva was one of the chief deities of the celts, and Minerva is generally linked to Bridget. In southern areas where roman influence was at its greatest, could Briganti's absence not be explained by Minerva's presence? Just a thought.
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 14:21:10 GMT -1
megli im not up for a full blown argument about this, this is only my opinion after all... i think nellies opinion above is valid, i just dont 'get' that different tribes had different names for their goddesses of their landscape, if brigantia was pan british why isnt everyone called the brigantes?
The River Brent is a very small tributary of the thames, its only 23km long, not a very good tribute to the goddess really is it? If she was so important then why not call the thames or the severn the brent or the brigant or something similar.
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 14:39:55 GMT -1
quick squint at wikipedia....
Brent is Old English, place name and surname. The place name can be from Celtic words meaning "holy one" (if it refers to the River Brent), or "high place," literally, "from a steep hill" (if it refers to the villages in Somerset and Devon, England) (Mills 1991). The surname often indicates that one's ancestors lived in a place called Brent.
Doesnt mention Brigantia though
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 14:41:23 GMT -1
Wikipedia entry for Bristol...
The town of Brycgstow (Old English, "the place at the bridge")[15] appears to have been founded in c.1000 and by c.1020 was an important enough trading center to possess its own mint, producing silver pennies bearing the town's name.[16] By 1067 the town was clearly a well fortified burh that proved capable of resisting an invasion force sent from Ireland by Harold's sons.[17] Under Norman rule the town acquired one of the strongest castles in southern England.[18]
Still no mention of Brigantia
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 14:49:16 GMT -1
Im going straight to hell for this one but are you sure the Brigantia reference doesnt just mean on high, up high, holy one, exalted one? Thats would make sense to places like the river brent which is a streak compared to the thames or Brent Knoll just outside bristol which is like a pimple on the landscape. The austrian references to brigantia could mean high up as in the alps.... I was told recently keep it simple, maybe youre just making things too complicated with explanations of how different gods mean different things. I think (imo, no-one elses) that the britons simply worshipped their local land as a goddess, recognised the changing of the land as the seasons changed mourned her when she departed for the winter and celebrated her return in the spring and thanked her for her bounty at harvest time, they revered things such as their local mountains, forests, rivers etc... and used their ancestors as the connection and right to be on that land. Really thats about it. I think the only thing that was recognised on a nationwide scale was probably the sun and the moon....
I'll get my coat....
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 15:01:46 GMT -1
I have three rivers in my local area beginning br... the britt, the bride and the brue...... britt is taken as meaning trout from the celtic/ old welsh perhaps? the bride is taken as meaning gushing or boiling... brue is from the welsh/ celtic briw which means vigourous...still no mention of brigantia
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