Mythology and Correspondences




and the Clans of Anieth

Most of us knew the work of Robert Graves when he tried to untangle the mythology of the Celtic tree alphabet in his book, The White Goddess. There have been other authors who were intrigued by this little bit of lore left from the druids, and some of Graves's work is far-fetched. Yet, the flights of letters hold consistent in the work of many authors. This is a way of looking at the letters that Graves tried to match up with the months of the year. The first thing I noted when Peter Shields described the tree maze on his property was that the trees in the maze numbered twenty and they formed spirals of twenty avenues in the order of the alphabet. I later learned that the maze in Anieth at An Doras was the same order and the same trees.

The Clans number less than twenty for the dryads or tree-shapers and less than twenty for the animal shapers. Some of the clans are extinct. Others are split into two camps of different races, and many are split into extended family camps based on political alliances. The major clans number five and they have many client clans. This is explained in the next article in detail. It is more important to note that the correspondences of the trees, stars and animals match what we have learned from the past of our own world.

I went into the depths of the clans and their alliances in the first article, but here you can see that there is a certain structure to the world of Anieth that is mythological in origin. The Wolf and Holly Clans alternate their mating with the queens of the Veldonaccii family. A Wolf Queen will mate with a Holly Cuilinn and a Holly Queen will mate with the current Wolf King chosen from the clan warriors. Each of the Nine Nations has a tree and an animal patron from the Clans of the Wood. There are some slight alterations among the Clans supporting the Nations, such as the Pine Clan and the Cat Clan patronizing the Fire Nation, not the Pine and Otter Clans. There is also a mythological story behind these slight shifts in this mythological structure. (See politics for nice articles on the cycles.)

There is also a tendency among the Clans for one kind of people to dominate relationships among the humans, which has no mythological origin, but is completely political. There is also a tendency among the Clans to specialize in certain social skills and trade skills, such as the Hazel taking charge of most of the calendar and magical ordering of all of the Clans and the Elder taking on most of the healing among all the clans. We have studied the way that some Trees or Animals are accepted across Clan boundaries and others are very insular, but found no mythological or natural ties, merely economic or political. Politics among the Clans are very complex and difficult for outsiders to understand.

I will leave you in the short article with another picture of the maze and the corresponding letters and trees.