The first ritual that I performed this year was for Beltane. Most of the rituals I had previously performed were centered around Norse deities, but after a long hiatus I decided to do a Celtic focus for this one. It was a solitary rite to honor Boand, Goddess of the River Boyne. As She was responsible for spreading the blessings of the Well of Segais throughout the land I thought She would be an appropriate deity to honor for a fertility-centered holiday like Beltane. The structure of the ritual seemed fine: Brigit as inspiration and Epona as gatekeeper, with offerings to the appropriate spirits in all the right places (and my favorite touch: a long blue ribbon winding through the things on my altar to represent the river – looked really nice against the green cloth). However in spite of being technically correct I don't feel it came off spectacularly well, merely okay. I think it was a combination of factors that dampened my energy levels a little: I had to put it off for almost a week after Beltane, it's been busy and I haven't been practicing meditation these past few days, I'm premenstrual, and I didn't memorize the ritual script like I planned (bad student) and so had to read from the text at key points. Probably would have been better to just wing it! On the plus side, I did feel the gates open quite distinctly – and I have something to build on for next time.

 It's hard for me to talk about this because the very concept of a modern American girl falling in love with a very old and shadowy Welsh goddess sounds immensely shallow even to my ears. What can I do? There it is. It can't be helped that Celtic is trendy  and Americans have a dreadful track record for making Ireland and Wales the focus of all our pastoral ancestral fantasies. It would have been more convenient for me if the Norse deities had continued to be a guiding force; at least that direction seems more unusual (maybe I'm wrong about that!) and I can pronounce everything properly there.

The outlines of the tale from the Mabinogion can be found on Wiki, or http://www.answers.com/topic/rhiannon?cat=entertainment. It's weird stuff, as Celtic myth usually is (and again, why couldn't it have been like the sagas that I understand well enough?) There's nothing straightforward here, but scholarly consensus (as far as the scholars take us) is that the Rhiannon in the myth is certainly an otherworld figure (white animals are a dead giveaway) and because of the manner in which she chooses whom she will marry (and the etymology of her name) she is almost certainly a Welsh example of the sovereign Goddess of the land. Not exactly a figure strictly of love, sex, or death, she is not the power behind the throne so much as the very power under the throne: without her blessing and consent to uphold the King, he loses his right to rule. She is the land itself and the fertility of the land, and as such is not really 'a goddess of...' so much as 'the Goddess'.

I was frankly disappointed when the reader at FPG came up with a definite yes from Rhiannon. I didn't want a goddess with a (to me) garbled mythos full of names and places that I have no idea how to pronounce, and disturbing stories the meaning of which is not immediately apparent, and may never be. I have no special affinity for horses. I have always enjoyed Celtic imagery but the overall totally alien quality of it (and its unrelenting popularity!) meant that I did not go looking there for inspiration - at least, not until about two weeks ago when I decided to do Celtic for the Beltane ritual. Now the Norse gods are giving me polite but firm farewells and Rhiannon is....to say that she's coming on strong would be a tremendous understatement. I went home from the festival feeling sort of nonplussed and introspective, and like I maybe didn't have the right answer after all but was willing to give it a go. I said some prayers that night and the past 48 hours have been progressively more and more of a trip. Her *name* will not leave my mind; it's a constant litany. The feeling of her is wise, and proud, and compassionate, and immense. The source material is pretty thin on the ground but the utter immanence of her is unmistakable. I don't know why there's this affinity. It's not as if it were Athena and I could go, 'oh, it's 'cause I'm clever likes.' The only (admittedly pretty weak) possibility I can point to is that I do love the land (the actual physical land) of Wales, for whatever reason that I can't quite explain, and have done since I was small. Maybe that's not so weak after all, since it's a land goddess we're talking about (I'm talking about). Possibly it will become clearer later, or possibly it's just a matter of having been at the right place at the right time, whenever and wherever that was.

Maybe now it makes a little more sense  - though the point is that it's not actually something that 'makes sense'; it's something that I actually physically *feel* as surely as yarn on needles.

And the tarot reader at FPG - what was her name? Rhiannon.

That was better, finally! I got a bit of advice from

verginiamus