Here is the full PDF of the Celtic Review, containing Donald Alexander Mackenzie's "Highland Goddess" writing.: archive.org/details/no28celticrev07edinuoft
My grandfather was born on the Orkney Ila who eventually emigrated to the US. He told us plenty of folklores around the Scottish lands, and many that were still believed on Orkney in his day. He had moved to Pennsylvania and when my family moved there I had a string of nightmares about the Cailleach after visiting the mountains for a class trip. My parents thought I was over active imagination but my Dah believed me. To this day, I leave gifts to the Cailleach through the winter months. I don't care how old I've gotten; the gods are to be respected.
There is only ONE God Who created all things and blesses us and saved us from our sins on the cross, God of the Holy Bible, GOD IS the Father the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit all at once always the ONE True Living Eternal Almighty God of all of creation and Savior of all of mankind.
As I count the Cailleach among my primary gods I honor and work with, I was concerned by how you started this video. However as the video played out, I was glad you showed how this spiritual path is complex and not simply love, light, and rainbows; black and white. The natural world exists in the gray and the seasons and cycles will occur regardless of our mere human desires. We are "a part of Nature", not "apart" from it. My own UPG(unverified personal gnosis) is the Cailleach makes the hard decisions of what beings(animals, plants, people, etc) must die for the betterment and survival of the whole. She sees them return to the earth from whence they came, until their time is to come forth anew. She holds prey and predator to that the same. She is one of the main deities I work with in my healing practice. Metaphorically speaking, sometimes the best thing to do is rip off the bandage and tend to the wound directly, with that process often being painful, so that the person can begin healing. I greatly appreciate the sources and knowledge you have presented, as I have not come across some of these before. You are real and authentic and show the world as it really is. Please continue doing so. I won't agree with everything you say, but I will be better for listening to it. Thanks.
A very meaningful comment. Thank you for sharing. Honestly, one of the biggest problems within paganism today is how much we fight each other. We will never all agree on everything, but what we can agree on is truly beautiful and needed in todays world. So cheers to you, and I hope we can all continue to learn from one another!
Thank you so much for your input about what you value about Jacob's channel, which mirrors me very well and you put it better than I would have. Very well said!
Lest we become complacent to the icy maw of the Cailleach, thine creature comforts are thine false commodities. She serves to remind us of the vigilance and sacrifice necessary to survive the aloof darkness of Her sovereign season.
There are many cailleach as it means witch in gaelic. In Breton they are called gwrac'h. That's why there are many stories about cailleach. One of them is said to keep the souls of non-born children at the bottom of a lake/loch. She can appear young and beautiful and then quickly turn into an old hag. Like with any witches, her spirit was feared and revered at the same time. And like with any witches, don't piss her off or you'll feel sorry for yourself. Best to keep on her good side or she will transform you into a fish and eat you alive. I love that last tale. Thank you for this video and helping spread the word about our ancestors and their traditions.
She reminds me what I always thought about the Mountain: it is a force of nature that should be feared and respected because it can kill you. You therefore have to respect its greatness when you go hiking
I love how your accent is slowly changing during your travels. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! The Scottish folklore videos are so needed in the community
How nice to stumble upon this story. It made me get up and proclaim, to no one but myself, "This town needs a Stryteller! I'm not him, well, maybe a little." Indeed, a tale more of woe than hello, is a worthy accompaniment to the rain outside...well done Storyteller, we'll done 🎉
It's from the Gaelic language and folk who have Gaelic will argue with someone from a different village or island about who speaks the language properly @@TheWisdomOfOdin
Hi Jacob, Thank you for another excellent informative video. I'm really happy that you're putting out content so regularly as well - I look forward to it! I appreciate you and may the Gods view you with favor 🙏
As I came across your channel at the appropriate time of year I'll take this opportunity to wish yourself & subscribers a Happy Winter Solstice, Christmas & Yule, with best wishes for a peaceful & harmonious 2025. ❤
The Cailleach is one of my favorites. The Slavs have a similar deity, Marzanna, whose effigy they burn at the spring solstice, at which time she is replaced by a spring goddess, whose name varies by region.
I find this version of winter as the dark season of dying odd. I'm in Australia. The season of death and dying is often summer time. That's when we have bushfire and drought. Winter is not as dark here or as cold as in the Northern Hemisphere. Sure, we can get flooding- and that may be in Winter, but in some parts of the country closer to the equator it is actually a summer hazard. No, here, a hot, sweltering Summer sun is the extreme harsh killer.
As someone who suffers from seasonal allergies I experience winter as the time of freedom of countless worries and all this talk about the return of life isn't exactly making me happy. It's one of my pet peeves with modern paganism and witchcraft and their insistence on direct physical connections with nature - for some of us that's just not working or can be even dangerous. Needless to say winter is my favourite season. Also: European summers get more and more wild and dangerous (heatwaves, floodings) so the over-romanticizde view of that season starts to feel outdated.
@thedabbinunicorn5432 they're called 'Songlines'. Often, these are inherited or given to indigenous Australians as they age. Some things can be shared even with non-indignous people. But many are sacred knowledge held in the oral tradition by the senior Aunties and Uncles in the many indigenous countries. We do have Pagan and Wiccan communities in Australia. I don't know much about them.
A sweet pop culture definition of this powerful archetype as you say a reminder to celebrate old traditions But it’s a very incomplete picture -She has so many expressions that have changed through time though she is spoken of widely in folklore she is also mentioned in the Irish historical sources as early as the 10th century. Her name doesn’t mean the Hag it means the veiled one a title given to women who held sacred knowledge. This is obviously a christen naming taken from older traditions but interpreted wrongly as someone who had taken the veil to become a nun, There are so many layers to this mother goddess creatrix energy that lives so strongly particularly in the Irish Psyche!! Winter Silsticd blessings to all ❤
I do love The Cailleach and other Winter goddesses such as Morgana/Mora. I don't see them in the Good/Evil axis. They just ARE. Winter is harsh therefore so are they.
Beautiful explanation❤ Sad that I keep missing you in Scotland. I am from lancashire/yorkshire in England, but now living on the south edge of the cairngorms in scotland. 😊
Very interesting information. I could feel a connection to the deep time through your description and I appreciate how you are honoring the ancestors. One ADHD moment...The way you describe the Cailleach around minute 2 reminds me of glacial movements during the end of the last ice age, the way they moved forward and retracted, leaving stones and boulders "dropping from their pockets". I imagine winters during that time had a deep impact on the beliefs and practices of ancient people. Blessings!
I got some great insight recently on teutonic figures like Odin & Frau Holle w/the wild hunt being the ones that collect all the souls of those who passed during the year to take to the afterlife in this season, which seems both logical and efficient
Thank you for a great video. I wonder if there are any positive aspects of this spirit especially surrounding the idea of the winter clearing out the old so that life can grow anew in the spring?
"If Imbolc day is sunny and bright, then winter will have another flight. If imbolc day is cold and grey, then winter is gone and summer is here to stay"
I wonder is at least one of the more local Cailleach was an actual person, a local wise woman, who was remembered in the local tradition and her legend continues. 😮
I'm surprised that you ran into a hardcore Love & Light pagan. There are a lot of those in the New Age groups but Pagans I know all realize that light and dark both exist in the physical world as do day and night, summer and winter, birth and death. They are both real and neither is good or bad. They both just are. If anything is good, it's the shifting balance of the light and dark. If anything is truly evil it is holding on, denying one or the other, or trying to make the world only one or the other. The darker gods and goddesses aren't evil or there for the purpose of casting evil spells but they just represent that darker, dying-back part of nature and of life. Excellent video.
It seems like such an ancient problem but after 5 babies froze to death in tents in Gaza it is a struggle people still live with. There are homeless people in rich countries dying of the cold. No goddess in those scenarios being honored, but the reality of winter is still so real this day and age.
Wonderful content, new subscriber:) Of all the spiritual traditions I've studied, paganism is the most open and accepting. Excited to tune into upcoming videos! By the way, many religions blame evil or wayward women (original sin for example), which is sexism. Older, wiser and powerful women are feared because we don't accept nonsense, and that's putting it mildly!
I see a relation between (although we are speaking of a very different culture here) the Titans and these early Deities of the Celts. I live in Vermont so Winter is no stranger to our lives and we all know her harshness full well! That being said Winter brings rest as well as death to the land and the ones who inhabit it. In this rest there is wisdom which is deeply personal. I appreciate your research and perspectives. Have you spoken with Scottish witches about her, with wise women? Female Deities are so stereotyped and over simplified as you must know. The myth of old women bringing a curse to the village and therefore being unwelcome has led to so much violence against elder witches and healers. I am very curious about her cave surrounded by her children and the rituals around it lost to time.
I did notice you didn't mention Wales, Cornwall, Brittany or the Isle of Man as sources of Celtic mythology in general. 🤔 ? A well researched & presented topic on the Cailleach nonetheless.Thank you. Clearly she is appeased rather than praised, much as Sobek the crocodile god 🐊, or Sekhmet the lion goddess 🦁 were appeased in ancient Egypt. I understand that local Aborigine tribes in the Northern Territories of Australia appeased their crocodile deity equally, in order to avert personal tragedy.
The Love and light people are fooling themselves and I get that that’s how they feel but regardless of your faith we go through trials to get to a conclusion
Hey Jacob, I Hate to tell you this but "Cailleach" is pronounced (PHONETICALLY) as "CHALL-YA" with the "CH" LONG as if you're trying to say HHHHHALLL-YA, NOT "K-LEE-ACK"! Just thought you'd like to know. Cheers
Im old school pagan these fluffy bunnies my ways only wsy is annoying hods very light gods vrry dark she represents dying time just the spring goddess teprsents the beong born growth time.
To be honest, I'm abit disappointed. When I saw the title I was genuinely interested, and while I still am, (I've been trying to learn about myths and legends everywhere) I was a bit underwhelmed. You spent almost half your video about how the Cailleach might be more malevolent as if such is an exception. To me it seems that all pre-Abrahamic believes have entities/spirits/deities which embody malevolence or simply things we'd like to stave off for now. I don't see the Cailleach would be a noteable exception. I find it a missed chance you didn't (seem to) try and learn from women on this specific topic. Given we're talking about a female embodiment and I can't be the only one wondering about the correlation with the Scottish gaelic word for girl: "caileag". With this being so well rooted in oral traditions wouldn't it have been better to try and contact (women) storytellers in the regions you named? Please note the above is meant in the best way possible. I truly believe we could all do with learning about each other's histories, myths, and legends. Therefore i like to thank you for bringing up this topic.
Easier said than done talking with people who still carry the oral traditions. Hopefully one day! Robert Alexander Mackenzie was the best lead I had for this video. Sorry that wasent enough for you 🙏
Cailleach is a gaelic word for 'old woman' and comes from a word meaning 'veil'. The term was adopted for a more or less invented 20th century Neo-Pagan goddess by non-Gaelic speakers. Inventing National Goddesses based on local folk tale characters was pretty standard practice from the Brother's Grim onwards. Cultural evolutionary theory posed that all religions started in an 'animist' stage based on 19th century German readings of the Rig Veda. Robert Mackenzie isn't out to lunch with there being animist elements in the Hag stories he was collecting but he is very much using this cultural evolutionary model to create an romanticsed proto-cultural highlander. The idea of there being a single entity called 'The Cailleach' came from later interpretations of his collections not his sources. Folklore is not static. The now dead sources Robert Mackenzie used who had no idea how their stories would be interpreted by Neo-Pagans aren't necessarily more authentic than still living Neo-Pagans and adapted traditions to their own time as well.
Here is the full PDF of the Celtic Review, containing Donald Alexander Mackenzie's "Highland Goddess" writing.:
archive.org/details/no28celticrev07edinuoft
Thank you! Resources are always a great gift! 🤍
And here I thought I was the only person to ever quote D. Mackenzie!! 😅😊 I love the way he writes
Kayak/Ki - ack is how we would pronounce it in Ireland. She's such a wonderful, strong being. To have a relationship with her is very special.
thank you for this! I love knowing pronunciations but struggle with this language.
My grandfather was born on the Orkney Ila who eventually emigrated to the US. He told us plenty of folklores around the Scottish lands, and many that were still believed on Orkney in his day. He had moved to Pennsylvania and when my family moved there I had a string of nightmares about the Cailleach after visiting the mountains for a class trip. My parents thought I was over active imagination but my Dah believed me. To this day, I leave gifts to the Cailleach through the winter months. I don't care how old I've gotten; the gods are to be respected.
There is only ONE God Who created all things and blesses us and saved us from our sins on the cross, God of the Holy Bible, GOD IS the Father the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit all at once always the ONE True Living Eternal Almighty God of all of creation and Savior of all of mankind.
As I count the Cailleach among my primary gods I honor and work with, I was concerned by how you started this video. However as the video played out, I was glad you showed how this spiritual path is complex and not simply love, light, and rainbows; black and white. The natural world exists in the gray and the seasons and cycles will occur regardless of our mere human desires. We are "a part of Nature", not "apart" from it. My own UPG(unverified personal gnosis) is the Cailleach makes the hard decisions of what beings(animals, plants, people, etc) must die for the betterment and survival of the whole. She sees them return to the earth from whence they came, until their time is to come forth anew. She holds prey and predator to that the same. She is one of the main deities I work with in my healing practice. Metaphorically speaking, sometimes the best thing to do is rip off the bandage and tend to the wound directly, with that process often being painful, so that the person can begin healing. I greatly appreciate the sources and knowledge you have presented, as I have not come across some of these before. You are real and authentic and show the world as it really is. Please continue doing so. I won't agree with everything you say, but I will be better for listening to it. Thanks.
A very meaningful comment. Thank you for sharing. Honestly, one of the biggest problems within paganism today is how much we fight each other. We will never all agree on everything, but what we can agree on is truly beautiful and needed in todays world. So cheers to you, and I hope we can all continue to learn from one another!
@@TheWisdomOfOdin Let's pray more people become open and willing to listen.
Thank you so much for your input about what you value about Jacob's channel, which mirrors me very well and you put it better than I would have. Very well said!
Lest we become complacent to the icy maw of the Cailleach, thine creature comforts are thine false commodities. She serves to remind us of the vigilance and sacrifice necessary to survive the aloof darkness of Her sovereign season.
So sagely put. Thank you for this insight 🙏🏻
Cailleach is definitely winter personified. When I feel that winter wind blow, I always say hi to Caillie and ask how she's doing?
There are many cailleach as it means witch in gaelic. In Breton they are called gwrac'h. That's why there are many stories about cailleach. One of them is said to keep the souls of non-born children at the bottom of a lake/loch. She can appear young and beautiful and then quickly turn into an old hag. Like with any witches, her spirit was feared and revered at the same time. And like with any witches, don't piss her off or you'll feel sorry for yourself. Best to keep on her good side or she will transform you into a fish and eat you alive. I love that last tale. Thank you for this video and helping spread the word about our ancestors and their traditions.
She reminds me what I always thought about the Mountain: it is a force of nature that should be feared and respected because it can kill you. You therefore have to respect its greatness when you go hiking
I love how your accent is slowly changing during your travels. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! The Scottish folklore videos are so needed in the community
Hopefully more will come in the future :)
I am so happy that I found your video this morning. I never heard the Cailleach story before & I just love it!
How nice to stumble upon this story. It made me get up and proclaim, to no one but myself, "This town needs a Stryteller! I'm not him, well, maybe a little."
Indeed, a tale more of woe than hello, is a worthy accompaniment to the rain outside...well done Storyteller, we'll done 🎉
Caaahhhhli-achhh! Soft aaaaaa mate.
This is the 4th different pronunciation commented 😂
It's from the Gaelic language and folk who have Gaelic will argue with someone from a different village or island about who speaks the language properly @@TheWisdomOfOdin
Ohhhhhh well I'm Pict Scottish Aberdeenshire so that's our dialect pronunciation. Welsh and Scottish will be aaaahhhhhhh..... @@TheWisdomOfOdin
Im glaswegian and thats exactly how I pronounce her name 😊
My family does a similar ritual when we take the patio chairs inside for winter 😂
I love Cailleach. She is amazing. She is the Crone for me.
Hi Jacob, Thank you for another excellent informative video. I'm really happy that you're putting out content so regularly as well - I look forward to it! I appreciate you and may the Gods view you with favor 🙏
Might take a wee winter break, but I have plenty of videos still to come! Thanks for keeping up :)
As I came across your channel at the appropriate time of year I'll take this opportunity to wish yourself & subscribers a Happy Winter Solstice, Christmas & Yule, with best wishes for a peaceful & harmonious 2025. ❤
The Cailleach is one of my favorites. The Slavs have a similar deity, Marzanna, whose effigy they burn at the spring solstice, at which time she is replaced by a spring goddess, whose name varies by region.
Thanks so much for the consistent content!
I love watching your videos Jacob. Thank you ❤🍀 🙏 🍀 ❤
I find this version of winter as the dark season of dying odd. I'm in Australia. The season of death and dying is often summer time. That's when we have bushfire and drought. Winter is not as dark here or as cold as in the Northern Hemisphere. Sure, we can get flooding- and that may be in Winter, but in some parts of the country closer to the equator it is actually a summer hazard. No, here, a hot, sweltering Summer sun is the extreme harsh killer.
As someone who suffers from seasonal allergies I experience winter as the time of freedom of countless worries and all this talk about the return of life isn't exactly making me happy. It's one of my pet peeves with modern paganism and witchcraft and their insistence on direct physical connections with nature - for some of us that's just not working or can be even dangerous. Needless to say winter is my favourite season. Also: European summers get more and more wild and dangerous (heatwaves, floodings) so the over-romanticizde view of that season starts to feel outdated.
Australia doesn't have ancient folklore bar the Aboriginal native people's they might tell you theirs
@thedabbinunicorn5432 they're called 'Songlines'. Often, these are inherited or given to indigenous Australians as they age. Some things can be shared even with non-indignous people. But many are sacred knowledge held in the oral tradition by the senior Aunties and Uncles in the many indigenous countries.
We do have Pagan and Wiccan communities in Australia. I don't know much about them.
Australia doesn’t have Celtic gods and goddesses.
@@katsmith3369 As someone born and raised in Texas, I understand the sentiment well haha
We make our living room a winter wonderland with lights and Christmas tree 🎄
This is so cool. Thank you so much. I love learning about all of this.
A sweet pop culture definition of this powerful archetype as you say a reminder to celebrate old traditions
But it’s a very incomplete picture -She has so many expressions that have changed through time though she is spoken of widely in folklore she is also mentioned in the Irish historical sources as early as the 10th century. Her name doesn’t mean the Hag it means the veiled one a title given to women who held sacred knowledge. This is obviously a christen naming taken from older traditions but interpreted wrongly as someone who had taken the veil to become a nun,
There are so many layers to this mother goddess creatrix energy that lives so strongly particularly in the Irish Psyche!!
Winter Silsticd blessings to all ❤
I do love The Cailleach and other Winter goddesses such as Morgana/Mora. I don't see them in the Good/Evil axis. They just ARE. Winter is harsh therefore so are they.
Dude you look so different then your early videos. What a trip. Nice video! Thanks again brotha
I’m loving your channel!
Beautiful explanation❤
Sad that I keep missing you in Scotland. I am from lancashire/yorkshire in England, but now living on the south edge of the cairngorms in scotland. 😊
Very interesting information. I could feel a connection to the deep time through your description and I appreciate how you are honoring the ancestors. One ADHD moment...The way you describe the Cailleach around minute 2 reminds me of glacial movements during the end of the last ice age, the way they moved forward and retracted, leaving stones and boulders "dropping from their pockets". I imagine winters during that time had a deep impact on the beliefs and practices of ancient people. Blessings!
Awesome explanation.
ah, the custom of making corn dollies with the last harvest and throwing them into the Beltane fires makes more sense now
Originally biddies as Bealtinne is IRISH gaelic
4:17 "I'm not dead yet!!"
(And if you get the reference you're cooler than you know 😁)
Hello brother. Looking great! Merry Christmas to you and everyone here. ❤❣
I got some great insight recently on teutonic figures like Odin & Frau Holle w/the wild hunt being the ones that collect all the souls of those who passed during the year to take to the afterlife in this season, which seems both logical and efficient
Thank you for a great video. I wonder if there are any positive aspects of this spirit especially surrounding the idea of the winter clearing out the old so that life can grow anew in the spring?
Happy yule,just got the book you sent and can't wait to read it, great video... SKÓAL
Enjoy!
Already dove in and it's great so far,thank you again
Loved this thank you
"KAL-yakh"
@ gu dearbha.
Accent@@Glesga_lassie
She reminds me a lot about the german Rübezahl.
You might want to check out the work of Dr Sharon Blackie, she has written a lot on the Cailliach and the folklore, legends and landscapes involved.
I was about to say the same thing. I love her work
"If Imbolc day is sunny and bright, then winter will have another flight. If imbolc day is cold and grey, then winter is gone and summer is here to stay"
Note that stories of the Cailleach representing winter are only found in Scotland. This is not the case in Ireland.
I think her name is pronounced differently, but a very interesting video.
I wonder is at least one of the more local Cailleach was an actual person, a local wise woman, who was remembered in the local tradition and her legend continues. 😮
I'm surprised that you ran into a hardcore Love & Light pagan. There are a lot of those in the New Age groups but Pagans I know all realize that light and dark both exist in the physical world as do day and night, summer and winter, birth and death. They are both real and neither is good or bad. They both just are. If anything is good, it's the shifting balance of the light and dark. If anything is truly evil it is holding on, denying one or the other, or trying to make the world only one or the other. The darker gods and goddesses aren't evil or there for the purpose of casting evil spells but they just represent that darker, dying-back part of nature and of life. Excellent video.
Glastonbury has many love and light people. Light is wonderful and so is love. But it can only work in balance with the reality of life and nature.
She represents nature when, everything died and hunting began, and everyone was inside and thry passed diseases.
In Ireland I often hear it pronounced " Kah-leeg"
It seems like such an ancient problem but after 5 babies froze to death in tents in Gaza it is a struggle people still live with. There are homeless people in rich countries dying of the cold. No goddess in those scenarios being honored, but the reality of winter is still so real this day and age.
The Witch Head NEBULA of Orion.
I have been trying to point it out to people for months. Kai-yek or yak is the pronunciation
❤
Wonderful content, new subscriber:) Of all the spiritual traditions I've studied, paganism is the most open and accepting. Excited to tune into upcoming videos! By the way, many religions blame evil or wayward women (original sin for example), which is sexism. Older, wiser and powerful women are feared because we don't accept nonsense, and that's putting it mildly!
“Paganism” is a very broad umbrella term. There are definitely pagan traditions that are not open and accepting, as well.
@ which ones have you found to be closed and unaccepting?
Good stuff Toddson. Can you find us some lore tying the Fir Bolg to the jotun?
They're not strictly related being from different cultures but the Fomorrian are analogous, not the Fir Blog.
I see a relation between (although we are speaking of a very different culture here) the Titans and these early Deities of the Celts. I live in Vermont so Winter is no stranger to our lives and we all know her harshness full well! That being said Winter brings rest as well as death to the land and the ones who inhabit it. In this rest there is wisdom which is deeply personal. I appreciate your research and perspectives. Have you spoken with Scottish witches about her, with wise women? Female Deities are so stereotyped and over simplified as you must know. The myth of old women bringing a curse to the village and therefore being unwelcome has led to so much violence against elder witches and healers. I am very curious about her cave surrounded by her children and the rituals around it lost to time.
She’s a interesting goddess
Also, more correctly pronounced "Coy-luck" in the traditional tongue.
An Cailleach is pre celtic Irish&Scottish deity, the clue is in the name
Can she be compared to Baba Yaga?
I did notice you didn't mention Wales, Cornwall, Brittany or the Isle of Man as sources of Celtic mythology in general. 🤔 ? A well researched & presented topic on the Cailleach nonetheless.Thank you. Clearly she is appeased rather than praised, much as Sobek the crocodile god 🐊, or Sekhmet the lion goddess 🦁 were appeased in ancient Egypt. I understand that local Aborigine tribes in the Northern Territories of Australia appeased their crocodile deity equally, in order to avert personal tragedy.
I turned it off as soon as I heard you pronounce it Kay-Lee-ack
Sorry to disappoint you
The Love and light people are fooling themselves and I get that that’s how they feel but regardless of your faith we go through trials to get to a conclusion
Reminds me of la befana
I don't see that. La Befana is a benevolent figure who gives gifts to children much like a Fairy Godmother as I understand it?
@paisleybabee also a hag and represents wheel of year . She can give a stick or coal to bad kids
So is she a Fomorian then?
Mave is another goddess and ireland
Sounds like the banshee or is she different
Did you say....Scathach? :)
Me dah told me about. Mav e
You have a voice made for radio... sounds like the opening to an NPR broadcast.
❤ I eat turkey ❄️🦃🇺🇸🐄❄️🛻
Lol
Hey Jacob, I Hate to tell you this but "Cailleach" is pronounced (PHONETICALLY) as "CHALL-YA" with the "CH" LONG as if you're trying to say HHHHHALLL-YA, NOT "K-LEE-ACK"!
Just thought you'd like to know.
Cheers
🤷♂️
Mom? 😮
Religeon??? There wasn't any notion of what religeon is in the mindset, that was a few millennia away.
Maybe the problem is that she never got any positive worship, maybe she’s lonely
Couldn't you take a moment to learn how to pronounce 'cailleach' before you try to teach other people about her?
There are at least 4 different pronunciations offered in these comments. Which one would you like?😉
Im old school pagan these fluffy bunnies my ways only wsy is annoying hods very light gods vrry dark she represents dying time just the spring goddess teprsents the beong born growth time.
To be honest, I'm abit disappointed. When I saw the title I was genuinely interested, and while I still am, (I've been trying to learn about myths and legends everywhere) I was a bit underwhelmed.
You spent almost half your video about how the Cailleach might be more malevolent as if such is an exception. To me it seems that all pre-Abrahamic believes have entities/spirits/deities which embody malevolence or simply things we'd like to stave off for now. I don't see the Cailleach would be a noteable exception.
I find it a missed chance you didn't (seem to) try and learn from women on this specific topic. Given we're talking about a female embodiment and I can't be the only one wondering about the correlation with the Scottish gaelic word for girl: "caileag".
With this being so well rooted in oral traditions wouldn't it have been better to try and contact (women) storytellers in the regions you named?
Please note the above is meant in the best way possible. I truly believe we could all do with learning about each other's histories, myths, and legends.
Therefore i like to thank you for bringing up this topic.
Easier said than done talking with people who still carry the oral traditions. Hopefully one day!
Robert Alexander Mackenzie was the best lead I had for this video. Sorry that wasent enough for you 🙏
Cailleach is a gaelic word for 'old woman' and comes from a word meaning 'veil'. The term was adopted for a more or less invented 20th century Neo-Pagan goddess by non-Gaelic speakers.
Inventing National Goddesses based on local folk tale characters was pretty standard practice from the Brother's Grim onwards. Cultural evolutionary theory posed that all religions started in an 'animist' stage based on 19th century German readings of the Rig Veda.
Robert Mackenzie isn't out to lunch with there being animist elements in the Hag stories he was collecting but he is very much using this cultural evolutionary model to create an romanticsed proto-cultural highlander. The idea of there being a single entity called 'The Cailleach' came from later interpretations of his collections not his sources.
Folklore is not static. The now dead sources Robert Mackenzie used who had no idea how their stories would be interpreted by Neo-Pagans aren't necessarily more authentic than still living Neo-Pagans and adapted traditions to their own time as well.