The Nine Maidens
Stuart McHardy
After his last battle at Camlaan legend tells us that King Arthur was
taken to the Isle of Avalon by Morgan and her sisters. Here it was
told, he did not die but was ready to rise again when Britain needed
him, being cared for by Morgan and her eight sisters. The great hero
figure of the P-Celtic speaking tribes, Arthur, who has inspired so
much great literature is here linked with a recurring theme that is
found throughout the ancient Celtic world and beyond in Europe. This
is the story of the Nine Maidens differing versions of which occur in
Scotland, Ireland, Wale , Brittany, Norway, Iceland, Romania and most
intriguingly are represented in a cave painting in Catalonia. What
these groups of nine maidens were can be reconstructed from a wide
range of sources - Celtic mythology, Roman history and the folk
legends of much of north-western Europe. They seem to have been
nothing other than priestess groups, worshipping the mother goddess
and serving the societies in which they flourished as
weather-controllers, seers and diviners. Like the witches who
followed them in Europe they also are associated with shape-shifting
and as late as the 17th centuries Scottish witches still called on
them in some of their spells. Like the Nine Muses of Greek Mythology
the stories of whom seem to have come from the same source, they were
often associated with hill-tops and islands, places always considered
especially sacred in the ancient world.
This book is the story of the search for the Nine Maidens. Starting
with the local folk story associated with a Pictish stone north of
Dundee, on the banks of Scotland's river Tay the search lead across
Tayside and far beyond - deep into the ancient mysteries of Celtic and
Scandinavian mythology and ultimately to the cave painting of Cogul
in Catalonia which is possibly as old as 15,000 BC. The continued
existence of these groups is attested by Roman historians, Christian
monks and the remnants of the pagan tradition that have survived,
gnerally unbnoticed throughout North-Western Europe and far beyond. It
is a search that has had profound personal effects on both myself , my
family and friends and has led me into lectiuring on a range of
related subjects which find a ready audience in our fast-changing
world. As greed-driven exploitation of every aspect of life on our
once beautiful planet continues unabated at the hands of men whose
arrogance is only worsened by their ignorance, many people look to the
past to try and find a way of thinking and behaving in the modern
world that will lead to a greater respect for all life and will help
ensure the survival of humanity. If the disclosure of this search for
the Nine Maidens can help in any way towards that end the past twenty
eight years research will not have been wasted.
The oldest Godhead humanity worshipped was the Mother Goddess - a
direct representation of the ever fertile, always reborn planet which
sustains us all. As the cycle of life unfolds and the seasons turn we
would do well to remember that we are an aspect of the life of Mother
Earth and she is as beyond our comprehension as we are individually
beneath her awareness. But as pollution and desecration are spread by
the merchants of greed we upset the balance that our planet has
developed over millions of years -
if the balance goes we might too, but the planet will survive. She
does not need us but we need her, now more than ever.