Maponus, Mabon

[potia]

Jul 19, 2010 16:39:12 GMT -1 deiniol said:

Well, you're aware of my contention that Maponos is another name for the sun-god I generally refer to as Grannos, so I can offer my dawn rituals for your consideration again.

Having a lousy memory I didn't remember about your linking Maponos with Grannos and I'll have another look at your dawn rite. While I often started my day fairly early due to small people I don't often see the dawn except in the winter months and mornings are not a good time for ritual practices devoted to gods for me. I was thinking of doing something on a weekly basis on a Sunday.

[Rion]

Well, there's always dusk, which is generally a calmer time (even when living with gnomes). Alternatively you could go for a weekly walk every Sunday to a high place and then do some form of devotional when the sun is highest in the sky?

Just a suggestion.

[potia]

Just found this on Apollo Maponos: www.maryjones.us/jce/maponos.html

It looks like good material to me but I'd welcome other opinions. In particular on the paragraph:

"Possible Significance: Comparative Mythology
If Matrona was ever considered Maponos' mother (we unfortunately have no myths about Maponos himself), and if we assume that Maponos and Mabon had similar mythologies, then Maponos' father was likely the god of lightning, as Mabon's father is apparently Mellt, the Welsh word for lightning. The reconstructed name would be *Meldos, though there are other possible names. If true, Maponos/Mabon represents an essential element of Indo-European cosmology--the god of fire in water (*Meldos and Matrona). This fire-in-water parentage is also seen in Maponos' Irish reflex, Oengus, son of the Dagda (called Aed, fire, in some texts) and the river goddess Boann, one of several fire-water couplings in Celtic (and Indo-European) mythology. "

Deniol, thanks for clearing things up for me on the solar links in the thread on Devotions at:
caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=brython&action=display&thread=1552

I think it's pretty clear that the strongest attribute of Maponos is his Youth. Personally I think that the music and healing links are likely to be more prominent in the UK than the solar one. I also feel that the link to pools is significant.

I will admit that learning more about Lochmaben has heavily influenced my thinking on that aspect. I can't help feeling that it is very significant that the town is surrounded by three lochs and that remains of at least one crannog have been found in the largest loch.

[Brochfael]

Potia's link mentions that the Name Maponos is written in the Coligny calendar for the 15th day of Rivos. Anyone got sufficient calendrical expertise to suggest roughly when this date might be in the Gregorian calendar?

[Lee]

i dont think it can be translated as such as it is lunar if i recall? that being the case it will change every year.

that said, if druidjournal.net/2009/02/11/the-coligny-calendar/ is to be taken as good source then the 15th day of Rivos would be the full moon in earlyish feb. not long after Imbolc

[deiniol]

Sept 23, 2010 10:40:20 GMT -1 Lee said:

i dont think it can be translated as such as it is lunar if i recall? that being the case it will change every year.

that said, if druidjournal.net/2009/02/11/the-coligny-calendar/ is to be taken as good source

My god, it's not. Please don't. The "translations" of the month names would be laughable were that kind of linguistic fantasizing not so depressingly common in neodruidry.

However, you are quite right that it wouldn't correspond to any particular day in the Gregorian calendar: the Coligny and Gregorian calendars simply don't work in the same way. If the calendar does indeed contain a reference to Maponos (which is far from clear), then the fifteenth day (the atenoux) of Riuros would correspond roughly to the fourth or fifth full moon after the autumnal equinox. Late January, ish.

[Adam]

Sept 23, 2010 12:22:49 GMT -1 deiniol said:

Sept 23, 2010 10:40:20 GMT -1 Lee said:

i dont think it can be translated as such as it is lunar if i recall? that being the case it will change every year.

that said, if druidjournal.net/2009/02/11/the-coligny-calendar/ is to be taken as good source

My god, it's not. Please don't. The "translations" of the month names would be laughable were that kind of linguistic fantasizing not so depressingly common in neodruidry.

That's kind of a shame... Jeff is a linguist (I can't vouch for his qualifications, but in one discussion where I drew on Chomsky, he certainly demonstrated better understanding of the concept of deep grammar than I did. Not hard ;D) and he and his partner seem to be good apples as far as the neodruidry thing goes, so might have expected better... how does it fall down?

[deiniol]

Sept 23, 2010 13:32:49 GMT -1 Adam said:

Sept 23, 2010 12:22:49 GMT -1 deiniol said:

My god, it's not. Please don't. The "translations" of the month names would be laughable were that kind of linguistic fantasizing not so depressingly common in neodruidry.

That's kind of a shame... Jeff is a linguist (I can't vouch for his qualifications, but in one discussion where I drew on Chomsky, he certainly demonstrated better understanding of the concept of deep grammar than I did. Not hard ;D) and he and his partner seem to be good apples as far as the neodruidry thing goes, so might have expected better... how does it fall down?

By being utterly and completely wrong. Not "wrong" in the sense of "not agreeing with the academic consensus": most "translations" of the Coligny calendar are wrong in this way, being based on scholarship some eighty years out of date. They're more "wrong" in the sense of "so far removed from any kind of scholarly methodology to be in the same kind of crackpot territory as those who believe that Irish is directly descended from the language of Atlantis."

Essentially, what seems to have happened is that someone has taken an Irish dictionary and attempted to use that to translate the Gaulish text. Aside from being like using a Harley Davidson manual to repair your Ford Cortina, that kind of thing just really annoys me for its laziness. There are dictionaries of Gaulish out there, which present reasonable translations, address any controversy surrounding the interpretation and most importantly grounding the discussion in solid scholarship, not fantasies. And the best thing is, these books are not hard to find. There are plenty of references listed in the goddamn Wikipedia article alone: in this day and age, there really is no excuse for sloppy scholarship.

I don't know if it's the blog's authors who came up with this, as they seem to have bought heavily into the whole "Celtic Zodiac" thing based on the Gundestrup cauldron. The "translations" might well come from that book: I honestly can't imagine a serious linguist attempting to do something like this (that said, however, there are linguists and linguists.)

[Heron]

Sept 23, 2010 8:21:46 GMT -1 potia said:

Just found this on Apollo Maponos: www.maryjones.us/jce/maponos.html

It looks like good material to me but I'd welcome other opinions. In particular on the paragraph:

"Possible Significance: Comparative Mythology
If Matrona was ever considered Maponos' mother (we unfortunately have no myths about Maponos himself), and if we assume that Maponos and Mabon had similar mythologies, then Maponos' father was likely the god of lightning, as Mabon's father is apparently Mellt, the Welsh word for lightning. The reconstructed name would be *Meldos, though there are other possible names. If true, Maponos/Mabon represents an essential element of Indo-European cosmology--the god of fire in water (*Meldos and Matrona). This fire-in-water parentage is also seen in Maponos' Irish reflex, Oengus, son of the Dagda (called Aed, fire, in some texts) and the river goddess Boann, one of several fire-water couplings in Celtic (and Indo-European) mythology. "

Deniol, thanks for clearing things up for me on the solar links in the thread on Devotions at:
caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=brython&action=display&thread=1552

I think it's pretty clear that the strongest attribute of Maponos is his Youth. Personally I think that the music and healing links are likely to be more prominent in the UK than the solar one. I also feel that the link to pools is significant.

I will admit that learning more about Lochmaben has heavily influenced my thinking on that aspect. I can't help feeling that it is very significant that the town is surrounded by three lochs and that remains of at least one crannog have been found in the largest loch.

Well 'Mabon son of Modron' is a derived form of 'Maponos son of Matrona'. But I'm not sure about Mellt for the father. Rachel Bromwich & Simon Evans discuss this in a note and give *Vironos (>Gwron) as a possible father's name.

[dumnorix]

Old post I know, but I have a strong connection with this god.

I can't see Uironos > Urien. It has to be *Urogenos, earlier *Uirogenos - "Son of Man". Which is very interesting. From the Irish side, Aengus's father-figure is Daghda - *Dagodeuos, or "Good God". Taking the two together, it all looks suspiciously Christian. It looks to me like at some point the Christian god was grafted onto the Pagan Pantheon. I would assume that Good God/Son of Man must have replaced some other deity - *Meldos seems to be the suggestion, but for simplicity's sake, I'd go with Taranus.

From here, I would want to identify Maponos and Matrona with other Gods - I like to think that those -on- names are more epithets for Gods with other names too (eg Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Mars Ultor, Sulis Minerva). I have a (baseless) theory that links Lugus with Maponos.

EDIT: well not entirely baseless in retrospect. It hinges really on Caesar's interpretatio Romana: he said that Mercury was widely worshipped among the Gauls, and he is usually identified with Lugus. But one of Mercury's characteristics (iirc :/) was youth. Furthermore he was the son of Jupiter - *Meldos/*Taranus again? - and Maia Maiestas, "Great Majesty", which sounds pretty Matrona-ish to me. Then there is the association with music and the arts - in many ways I think that Mercury/Hermes and Apollo are reflections of the same deity, but my Roman and Greek mythology is far too rusty to argue coherently.

[potia]

There's been further discussions about Maponos both online and face to face on and off since this thread began. My latest thoughts are here: pedwarceffyl.blogspot.com/2011/08/maponos-being-of-places-and-times.html