Deities, Symbolism, & A Cautious Direction
This is a post that I’ve been intending to write for the last few days but I have had some difficulty in deciding how to start it. I’ve had the idea of what I’ve wanted to say, but figuring out how to approach it has been difficult.
Figuring out who m’lady is is taking awhile, my own stubborness and lazieness being no small matter in this delay.
On the one hand I have always wished that I had a name for her, but on the other I suppose some small part of me has been reluctant to put a name on her. What other reason could there be for my hestitation to search after the clues that I have had?
When I have searched the symbolism that I do know, the results have been fairly frustrating.
Most frustrating of all is that the majority of sites seem to be unable to settle on associations, or even on names. Some part of this problem is directly related to the plethora of “all size fits one” Pagan sites. They seem to over-shadow the sources that use historic or otherwise educated sources. So what you end up with, more or less, is a page that says, “She’s a happy giggly goddess who likes plants and shiny things - YAY!”.
This situation isn’t helped by my own confusing associations.
For example, I have always associated m’lady with both the moon as well as with nature, yet there hasn’t been any reason to think that she’s a huntress ala Artemis. M’lady’s also of Celtic [1] origin, which precludes Greek or other deities. There’s also life that is associated with her as was represented in the forest that I had a quick ‘visit’ to. Though that post was romanticized a bit to get the point across, it does get the point across.
All of the above is yet further compounded by the fact that I’m very skeptical of the information that I do find online. I’m not going to read something that only partially matches what I know and then think, “aha, that’s it!”. It has to match what I have experienced and felt, if not perfectly then very, very closely. This is rarely ever the case with information that I’ve found online thanks to the copy-and-paste of the “all goddesses are one goddess” stuff.
Atop that, I find the “call on her for …” type of material to be offensive. Regardless of which deity the poster may be talking about, it strikes me as down right offensive to think of a deity as nothing more than someone who’s there to meet your needs. So I find those pages to be particularly difficult to scan through for any shread of useful information.
The more that I read, the more critical of the information I become. The litmus test that I hold the information to is so critical that I will only accept confirmation direclty from Her. Luckily I got a break awhile back when she perhaps took pitty on me and seems to have done exactly that.
This in turn has shown me that I’m too critical of all of the information that I come across. I still struggle with this critical approach even as I try to tell my mind to relax a bit.
The only deity that I have found that matches both “Queen of Sidhe” and “Dana” is Aine (pronounced AWN-yuh).
Why not jump directly to Dana? Surely she matches this too! If that were the case, however, then why would I receive the title “Queen of Sidhe” directly along side the name Dana? If we’re talking about Danu herself here then all she would need to do is to use her name without the title. “Dana” is such an obvious reference to Danu that it needs no further supporting information.
I came across the name Aine when I began searching for a goddess who would fit both the name Danu as well as the title of Queen of Sidhe. Both were presented for a reason, after all. I found that there is no single “queen of the sidhe”, so the title points to a queen of the sidhe. Which may very well be why the title was presented as it was, Queen of Sidhe, and not as “Queen of The Sidhe”.
Aine herself came up in connection with Danu as, apparently, her name is sometimes confused with Anu / Danu. Aine is also very frequently referred to as either a queen amongst the sidhe or as a princess (of sorts?). I have also found information attributing Aine to both the moon as well as to nature.
Thus, as loose as the connections are at this point, we do have connections to all of the presented information. Aine seems to be connected to the name Dana, to the title “queen of sidhe”, to nature and as well as to the moon.
What I need in order to cement the connections is to find historical data connecting Aine to the moon as well as to nature. An educated connection between the name Aine and Dana would also be of great reassurance.
For now, however, I am leaning in the direction of m’lady being Aine. There seems to be more pointing to her than to the goddess Danu. That said, I have not ruled her out as being Danu herself.
May the two have tea together and share a giggle over this silly mortal’s stumbling. 
~Steph
1: Celtic origin: I realize that this referrs to a huge swath of land and several different peoples. Also, by definition, it may not “be possible” for a deity to be from any particular group of people; rather, it’s most likely simply how they choose to appear (or something else of the sort)
Topics: Spirituality |
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