I’m going to compare the Dagda to Greek gods because they’re the ones I know. [N.B. I do realize that classical vs northern gods are very non-1-to-1, and are gendered differently, for example—perhaps most obviously with regards to the sun & moon, right.]

I first decided to read the PP book on the Dagda, (after reading the one about the Morrigan, who I guess is his boss bitch/girl), because he’s called the “good god”, and that’s reminded me of my god Hermes, who’s also a good god, a fun god. Not that it’s good or bad, so to speak, since it’s good to know many gods, but it seems to me now like the Celtic Hermes/the little god, is more like Cernunnos, I think. Daggie is more like Zeus; he’s big; or at least kinda a cross between Hermes and Zeus, since he’s a king, or a chieftain, but also fun, but in a more muscular way, not so much in the trickster/comedian/mischief maker (I guess you could say) style. I do feel like Daggie is more of a chieftain of the gods, rather than a king like Zeus; it’s more decentralized, less hierarchical…. Less, I don’t know, lawyer-y. (Not that Zeus is EXACTLY like Ha-Shem/Allah/Jesus’ Dad, you know.) But the Dagda is respected because he’s strong and boss and capable, basically. He’s also kinda has the aspect of a provider/lover/economic nurturer. Sometimes he reminds me of an athlete, because he has that aspect of being physically boss but entertaining/prosperous/money-oriented/not war-for-war’s sake. But he’s respected/boss because he’s physically tough and people like that about him, you know. That’s how he sounds to me. He’s a god-chieftain.

…. Yeah, the Dagda is an athlete, and Hermes is a comedian.

I now feel like (although I’m not sure if he’s actually a comedian) the Celtic Hermes would be Manannan Mac Lir, you know—if Hermes lived on an island, then he would be a sea god, right…. He’s not so much the Dagda, although I feel like they’d get along. I also now feel like Cernunnos is more like the Celtic Dionysios, you know. Although the five of them could make like a band, right—they could be like The Beach Boys, only not hokey or whatever. (Maybe they could be, The Beech Boys, or something, right.)

So yeah.

…. And I know the Dagda has at least one tool which is not a “typical” “God” tool—his cauldron: but he has another tool which is I think a very excellent “God” tool, right—his staff. It’s like one of the wands of tarot! And it’s not listed really in the vanilla Wicca books, which is why you read widely, right. As for the whole dagger/sword/“wand” thing: well I knew if they found out I bought a dagger into the house, right—and kept it in my room! OMG! It would have been against rules, for sure. So I bought a wooden sword, but even then finding out that I had a “sword” in the house was weird for them and brought too much attention to myself for awhile, although it wasn’t considered forbidden. But it made me think actually using it in a park, right—stranger with a sword—would draw too much attention. As for wands: well, there’s the fake plastic fan/Harry Potter kind (buzzer sound), and then there’s bringing what externally would be a stick into the house, which would certainly be used against me, right…. But a staff, right: “Oh, you have a staff. You like to think you’re cool. Well, I don’t like anything, just in general. But, whatever.” = VICTORY!!

…. I guess that in the fairy times peasant guys would sometimes go around wearing a top but no bottom the way in our times people listen to—I mean, they don’t want to dance to the music, you’re almost not supposed to listen to it, really, or like it, but I guess if there were a store without dance music playing it would be like, I don’t know, that would be The End, right, because we’d be in public and dance music wouldn’t be playing. And the words, yeah. I mean, I do like some Top40 songs again, especially (although not only) the ones that are vaguely about politics/something different. I feel like I’d like the romantic songs if they weren’t the great great bulk of all the songs. Like, we want to transgress but we don’t want to be creative or stand out…. You know, and we want to follow the rules. We just kinda want to be lewd, but without shocking anyone, right. Just like in those days before: we want to be lewd and not wear a bottom, but we don’t want to shock people by like wearing a fancy robe and (fake?) gold rings and shit like we didn’t think that we were peasants anymore, right….

Like, can you imagine—I know it’s been done, I guess, although people HATED it at the time, and got uber-paranoid about it—people doing a song about doing LSD or magic mushrooms with a shaman or with a doctor/social worker/Jungian psychologist team (people weren’t as good about that in the past, it’s true) and then writing a song with interesting lyrics about the nature of mind and consciousness, right—people would think that that would be like the triumph of the monkey men: whereas if you do this peasant song of like, you know, peasant shirt + penis outfit, right: “you should be in my bed, naked, by the time I count down from five to two! (naked! naked!)” ~disco ball falls down and kills someone~…. You know? It’s like…. Anyway. People are comfortable with peasants, you know. I mean, they hate them, but—the American slaves were positively Expected to be lecherous during any of their few few times off, right….

…. But yeah, the Dagda seems like a cool god—like a well-rounded tribal chief. One of the differences with Zeus is he isn’t always the king—“I don’t always lead the tribe. But when I do, (product placement)”, lol…. I know even less about North American native nations than I do about the old (pre-white) Celts, even, but he does kinda have more of a feel like that, you know: the Dagda could be king for a long time and then let Lugh be king (for a rather shorter period, because the Daggs is boss, right), and then maybe go back to being king after awhile: and in a similar way, although I don’t know as much about the Lenape or the Cherokee, it’s hard to imagine one of their chiefs having the attitude, you know, “I’ll be chief until you kill me and take my spear from my cold, dead hands”, like a Roman king (or whatever), right…. I know that guy Frazer (Golden Bough) had that idea that in the pagan times the king was like a sacrificial king and another bloke could kill him and eat him (or whatever) and be the king, and I would probably like to read that book eventually, but it does seem from what I read that he was a—you know, he was almost like a Threads poster today, all religions are the same and/or all religions are different, therefore, all religions are BS because they should be more unique/consistent, whatever the argument is, right~ except Frazer was much much more bookish/secret agenda/reticent to reveal motives and get exposed to criticism, like an old aristocrat rationalist elitist-rebel instead of the new idiot Threads version, right…. And yeah, some of that stuff could have happened, but given the whole Victorian/Edwardian nature of the scholarship, it probably all happened in the Mediterranean, right….

~But anyway, yeah: it is curious how alternative actually-specifically-Irish things can be, as opposed to the bulk-Irish “what I like about being Irish is that nobody dislikes us, there are lots of us, and nobody expects us to uphold any specific customs, basically” people, right…. The actual divergent-Irish tradition is in fact relatively poorly documented compared to many other groups (if not, say, compared to the Lenape: but certainly in between the Lenape and the Greeks and even arguably the Norse: Wagner happened a long time before the Ethnic Miracle happened, and Wagner encoded a lot more folklore into the popular consciousness than JFK, lol…. 😂), although it’s certainly pleasant to think that if I don’t have children I won’t be the Last Mick, the way that the Lenape or even the Jews must feel, occasionally, right….

…. And yeah: I know I don’t really ‘get’ it all yet, and although I’m not as into the ‘correct’ way as some people are—people have different dispositions, of course—I would like to understand more of it, eventually. Of course, one never comes to an end of understanding—that’s why they call it a mystery….

…. And yeah, it’s funny, I like the Goddess: she’s almost what I like best about paganism—I want her to brag on herself and be sexy and kill people, right. (Although in a way that makes me feel safe! Hahaha! 🫨). But I guess the deities I connect to most are mostly gods—although I see them as kinda feminine, or at least boyish and playful, which is almost the same thing. I mean, mostly I like Hermes…. Although Crowley calls the god of childhood Horus, and that’s kinda how I see Hermes, right…. I don’t know, I guess I’m just indecisive, you know. (Do NOT make fun of me, lol. “(people start to make fun of me)” No! Stop it! You’ll make me angry! 🪼 ⚡️ ⚡️…. Ok.) I mean, the goddess is just kinda abstract without like a girlfriend, you know. I don’t know. I mean, there’s also like, friends and artists family and shit…. Just girlfriends are the MOST amusing, right. I guess when I get a girlfriend, it’ll like, solidify my ideas about her. Although I guess knowing the goddess could also lead me towards a…. I mean, the thing is, I want like a job that (a) is intrinsically a good job, in terms of pay and work done/“creativity” (I don’t mean like writing or acting, you know), and skills, and (b) where the different workers there actually share some kind of culture—it could be normal or semi-normal, although too normal and people would share absolutely nothing, right—or some other place with a shared culture, right. I don’t know. It’s not good to rush, or not to integrate it into your whole life. Some love affairs last for many lifetimes—with little breaks for childhoods and the odd weekend apart, lol…. I need there to be a pop song where the couple is like, splitting up to go to work, right—but I don’t know if I even want that. I suppose it could happen. But you have to integrate your whole life; it seems like the love affair you’re committed to having never end becomes like something weird, right…. Maybe if you’re real old and sad looking, you could just be an elder in a community, right; it wouldn’t matter if you’re part of a couple…. But yeah, I’m not sad looking yet; I’ll keep working on my life, and maybe in some months or a year or something, I’ll meet someone. That’s what my Chinese fortune cookies implied. 👌 🎱 lol…. I remember when I was dealing with anxiety but doing pretty good with it, I went to some small metaphysical store in Ocean Grove with my mom, and if you buy something you get like the tiny symbolic random thing from the converted candy dome dispenser, whatever you call those things: and I got like a little toy flower thing or something, and I’m like, Wow, that’s fun; I must not need anything…. An amusing interpretation, looking back, now that I see relationships as actually…. I mean, one mountaintop leads to another, right. Not that I climb mountains, lol. Look it up in a book, what I’m trying to say; I have no personal experiences. 😆

🪸

Ok.

So yeah…. I was definitely trying to like, communicate, right…. But yeah—but yeah, the Dagda, the fun, playful guy, although more muscular than Hermes; versatile, different; curious, right.

So yeah.

Pagan Portals – The Dagda: Meeting the Good God of Ireland, Morgan Daimler (2018).

It’s strange to feel so excited to read a book that has actually been waiting in my bedside cabinet for nearly two years. But that’s how it is. And now that I have now finally read The Dagda, I can’t stop raving about it. It is a jewel on my bookshelf.

Pagan Portals – The Dagda is far from the first book I’ve read by Morgan Daimler, nor will it be the last. They have become one of my favourite authors for a few simple reasons: their research is meticulous, they draw together the important myths, gleaned from early and modern texts – they even taught themself how to read old Irish because they wanted more than the translations they had on hand were offering. Daimler has a wonderful way of looking at things from a new angle, and this book continues in that tradition.

I was looking forward to this book in particular because I was drawn to The Dagda, personally. He drew me initially by his own personality and his actions in the tales, particularly of his building single-handed a fort for Bres, and carving out twelve plains in a one day. But more important was his being father to the sisters Brigit. Because Brigit is so important to me, I wanted to cultivate an acquaintance, at least, with someone who helped shape these sisters as they grew.1

The Pagan Portals series is devoted to short books – up to around a hundred pages long – that are meant to introduce the key elements of a deity or topic. In this case the book is nearly eighty pages, and they have divided the material up well. In chapter one, “Who is The Dagda?” they begin by giving his names and the epithets that describe him, and address how a sense of his nature can be drawn from them. This necessarily takes us into the myths themselves, so although they don’t tell them exhaustively, they reveal enough that we can understand why he might be called Eochaid Ollathair, and that “The Dagda” means “The Good God.” But what does that mean? Does it mean he’s a nice guy? Well, no. It means he is good at all things. So just the definition of this one name, and he has many, tells us something important about him. This initial chapter grounds us not only in his names, but in how he’s been described physically in the tales, and gives a glimpse of his relationships with others. (This is a complicated kettle of fish as he has many lovers, many children, and his children, like himself, have run into real difficulties because of some of those lovers).

One thing that Morgan always does which I greatly appreciate, is they provide useful end notes to each chapter, and provide a good bibliography. I can see where they’re getting their information from; I don’t have to just trust them. I can then decide whether I agree with their take on things, and that is important to me, especially in something so essential as the nature of the deities.

The second chapter is “The Dagda in Mythology.” Here they explore where The Dagda figures most prominently in the different texts. As they work through these, his personality and what he may represent to the devotee become more and more clearly defined, leading to an overall sense of what we know of him. This chapter also has an interesting reassessment of the Samhain sex tryst between The Dagda and The Morrigan.

Chapter three, “The Dagda’s Possessions and Associations,” continues to draw together pieces of information that are far flung from each other in the myths. Normally, you may read one tale today and another one never, and a third two years from now, meaning the different elements don’t necessarily ever come together in your mind. But when Daimler collects together his possessions – his cauldron, from which no one goes away unsatisfied; the staff which can kill with one end and heal with the other, and which he obtained in a less than honourable way when searching for a means to revive his dead son; the harp, which comes to him when he calls out to it and kills whoever is in its path; as well as the various places, times, plants, and animals with which he has had a special relationship, and then explains their significance and their derivation, they present an infinitely more coherent whole than when cobbled together over time, with its attendant failures of memory.

Daimler prevents all this from being a purely intellectual exercise and ensures it is one of the spirit by writing at the end of each chapter about The Dagda in their life. This can be a very simple and practical few words or it can be quite profound. For instance, their personal search for his symbolic cauldron gives insight into devotional practice, itself. Having the chance to read these more intimate words helps me connect more meaningfully to him, myself. These short personal sections illuminate further both our perceptions of the deity and the evolution of religion in our lives, always with humility and insight.

Chapter four, “Good God of All Skills,” is a beautiful chapter which shows the known range of the god who is capable of so much more – of all things. It goes in more depth into his nature – as a god who is both a giver of life and death, as one of fire and the earth, who is associated with weather and crops. As a warrior poet, musician, and king. His connection to farmers and workers, his role as a grieving parent. These are the kinds of associations we might read in a list and then forget immediately or work to connect them to our own lives, to add meaning to them, to give them flesh. But in this short book Daimler manages to bring out The Dagda in a more robust way than I have read before. Their summary of their relationship to him as a child and then as an adult, and how many of his stories make him relatable through the range of their own life experience, is touching. It reminds me of my experience with Brigid, which, taking goddess and Saint together, has proven to be similarly comprehensive in covering the range of my life. And so my own appreciation of and affection for The Dagda grows as I read.

“The Dagda in the Modern World,” chapter five. I have to say that I very much enjoyed this chapter. Daimler covers a lot in it with clarity and depth, both scholarly and personally. They begin by addressing how he is seen today in modern mythologies, fiction, and video games, which influence our perception of him just as the old texts do. As I was with their similar chapter on Brigit in Pagan Portals – Brigid, I’m grateful to them for tracing where our different ideas come from and comparing them to what we know from the texts. They do this without rancour and accept that there is validity in different approaches to him, but they value clarity on sources, as do I. Daimler points out modern changes to the deities, which are often received as traditional, in a clear and well supported way that insults no one. You may disagree with them, but you know where they’re coming from and that you’re not the subject of an attack. That counts for a lot in these fractious times.

They go on, equally gently, to ask why our representations of him and the other deities nearly always include archaic dress, pointing out that in the original tales, the depictions were of contemporary clothes. They then discuss possible reasons for our choosing to stick with the original dress and why it may also be helpful to envision him dressed as a modern man. I found it useful to reflect on this section, and the ways I do and don’t have visual pictures of the deities, and how that affects my relationship to them. Daimler winds this chapter up with some good suggestions for altar pieces, a few prayers and invocations, and more thoughts on The Dagda in their life.

For the Brigidines among us, Morgan does refer to Brigit in the book on a few occasions, helping to clarify both her and her father. For instance, on page sixty-nine,

“Like his daughter Brighid, he is a deity of compromise and community building rather than burning to the ground. When his son is killed by Lugh he’s seeks a way to revivify his child, not destroy Lugh.”

In their conclusion, they say, “… The Dagda, in many ways, is exactly the deity that the world most needs right now.” I suggest you read this short, powerful book to see clearly just why.

[1] Eel and Otter’s anthology, Harp Club & Cauldron, is also very helpful in this venture, as is Scealai Beag’s Facebook group of devotees and interested others, “The Dagda's Hearth.” ( )