Goddess Gobnait & Her Nine White Deer
Beehaloed by Lea Bradovich
Gobnait (Gub-nitch), once a living Saint and a pre-Christian goddess. A Sister-Saint of Brigid, the holy woman and goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. Both are venerated at Imbolc, the awakening time, both women lived in the 5th and 6th centuries. This was an era of monumental change in Ireland. Christianity had arrived on our shores threatening what we now call ‘Pagan’ spirituality, the native cult, the Old Ways. In these early days, there was a fluidity between the old and new cults as both Gobnait and Brigid in Goddess and human form attest to. Yet, over time with Christianity, patriarchy, the rule of the father, had the opportunity to deepen its presence and seep into every cultural crevice in Ireland, separating us from the Spiral, the original image of the Great Mother.
This is my retelling of Gobnait’s experience.
Gold plaque embossed with winged Bee Goddess from Camiros, Rhodes, 7th century BCE
Gobnait Speaks:
A child of The Piracy born from the loins of a sea-raiding father, I was without a mother lost in the swell of a man’s world. I was loved in ways, in the way one loves a possession. Something you own, perhaps even something you treasure. Until its shine dulls, and your fondness dulls with it.
As Woman, I never belonged to my father’s crew. I grafted like the men around me until my skeleton shook. To my shame, I raided with them. I plundered, I burned villages to ash, numbing my shrieking heart in trade for recognition. But the recognition never came. At least not in the ways it did for my pirate brothers.
I longed for a mother. For my physical mother who hung like a rhythmic ghost over the waves. For Máthair, ‘Mother of All’, who was just as ghostly. An apparition, a rubbing of fingers and thumb, I’d try to grasp her with my full hands for they told me she used to be everywhere. Once worshipped as the Spiral. In every tuath, every tribe. Máthair and her tomb womb of birth, life, death, and rebirth.
If she was so venerated. Where was she now? Why had she abandoned me? I resigned myself that she was but an old bone woman who haunted me from beneath the top waters. A make-believe story I wished had never fallen into my ears. For hope was like sepsis infecting my numbness. I could not risk the thaw.
Each new moon cycled into form, and I bled alone, away from the crew. With my blood, came imbas forosnai, the prophecy, the sight that illuminates. In my maiden bleeds, I would return on the waxing days and share my visions. Warning of a failed raid, of looming misfortune, of losing our own good men.
The imbas rattled some of The Piracy, not least those who remembered the Old Ways. But my father dismissed it as women’s nonsense, of the natural hysterics that I was born to express, and my mother before me, her mother before her. Raids failed, misfortune came, men died. And yet my voice never grew in power. Only their glares of disdain.
Then the white deer came.
In the chaos of a mainland raid, I fled The Piracy, sprinting until my legs were taken from under me, I tumbled into the druid of the forest, an old oak. My face dizzy in its roots, I looked up and saw the white deer, a fleeting shadow. I had no way of apprehending the later significance of this otherworldly beast. How could I, for I was still a child of The Piracy.
I dragged myself upright back into my feet and began the voyage west to Inis Oírr, the eastern island. My father would not seek me there for there was no raiding to be had. As I rowed into its limestone shores, I wondered if he cared that I had disappeared. Did it matter?
Early on Inis Oírr, I found myself ill with a guilt-ridden yearning for The Piracy. Captive to the grief for that which is known. As I grieved, a ripping wind keened in my ears and tore shreds of flesh off my bones, pulling skin away piece by piece into the bitter air. There was a pleasure in this pain. I felt a slow unearthing like the island was trying to pare me back to who I was before. To the someone I was in a time before I knew myself.
Flesh fell and fresh germination saw me curate a sanctuary on the island. Not many came but those who did flickered with light. On this wild isle, they had a soft lumination to them. A tender hand on the shoulder, a sharing of lore, a wink of the eye. I was not used to land-living folk or indeed to women at all. I started to feel a connection weave, a white thread forming.
At night, I dreamed of someone calling my name, Gobnait. The sea whispered through the wattle walls:
“Gobnait, Gobnait, Gobnait, A Stór,
Queen of Honey, Lady of Smithcraft,
Nine White Deer, Ninefold Priestesses,
A Daughter of the Spiral.”
It got louder and louder until the dream flowed out of the Otherworld into this physical realm. I dreamed while awake. A woman stood before me. They would later say it was an angel that appeared to me. And she was. An otherworldly woman from Tír na Ban, the Land of Women. Cloaked in a white mantle, her hair spilt down her breast in a raven glow. Eyes of pale amber, she had a foxglove blush on each snowy cheek. Her lips were Parthian red as she gently spoke my name, “Gobnait.”
Then offered me a silver branch of apple blossom, which bore apples while in bloom. I took a silver apple and broke its skin with my teeth. To my wonder, it wasn’t juice that flowed but a sweet honey elixir. The angel told me that despite my finding a sanctuary on Inis Oírr, this was not my home. I was to travel back to the mainland and whence I fell upon the plain where nine white deer grazed, this would be my place of resurrection.
I had no idea what she meant by “my place of resurrection”, but I knew in the pulse of a vein, I had to answer her Call. And so, I travelled. I saw three white deer, six white deer, but never nine. I spent time in many tuaths, in holy places, still as soon as I felt settled, the nine deer would whisper once more and I would be gone. I trusted, I had no choice, I was ravenous for home.
Black Madonna from The Secret Life of Bees by G. Stoughton
The nine whispers became nine wisps of silver mist that I chased across the land until I climbed down the hill into Baile Bhuirne, the ‘Town of the Beloved’. It was here I saw them. Nine white deer, each with a silver spiral on its hind. As I drew closer their necks guided their noble faces to meet my gaze.
“Máthair”, I gasped.
“Máthair”, I cried.
“Máthair”, I wept falling to my knees.
I could feel the spiral activate within me, spinning in my mind, my heart, my womb. A triple spiral. Spinning as Máthair, as birth, life, death; rebirth, life, death. I was reborn. There was no logic here, only a love-induced surrender and my knowing that I was a Daughter of the Spiral. I had always been a Daughter of the Spiral. I just had to find my way home.
As Máthair moved within me, the silver spirals on the deer hinds began to swirl. And before my soaking eyes, each of the nine deer shapeshifted into a woman wearing a white mantle. I recognised one of these women as the angel. They walked towards me, across the footplains of The Beloved and wrapped a violet cloak around my shaking frame. Surrounded by my Sisters I heard myself sob, “This is my place of resurrection.”
Me squinting with all the light around St Gobnait’s shrine in beautiful Ballyvourney
And it was, for I was home both within and without. I apprenticed myself to these women who would become my ninefold priestesses. I (re)learned the Old Ways of Máthair, of working with the Spiral to serve my tuath and my times. I rooted in the lineage that had always been waiting for me. Our community burst into the land and the people flourished. They called me Queen of Honey and Lady of Smithcraft. I with my healing bees and my moulding the nectar of earth, her ore for smithing.
As one of the elders, a file poet-seer once told me, “When you die Gobnait your soul will travel through time in the form of a bee.” If you are reading these words, perhaps it has come to pass.
I found my place of resurrection.
Will you find yours?
