"Are you and Lyra having a fight or something?"
At the unexpected question, Hermione started to a halt in the middle of the Great Hall, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling with a sigh. "That's really not your business, Rachel."
She wasn't looking at the younger girl, but she could still feel Rachel's petulant little glare boring into her back. "It sort of is, if you two are going to be all weird around me." That sounded far too much like something Lyra might say, she'd clearly been a terrible influence on Rachel.
"I don't want to talk about it." Partially because it really wasn't the nosey girl's business, but mostly because she didn't really know what she'd say even if she wanted to. It was complicated.
On the one hand, she felt she was perfectly justified in haing a problem with her girlfriend, just, running off to have sex with some other girl, regularly, for months, and never saying anything about it. And the way she'd finally told her about it too, just casually dropping it on her head out of nowhere! She'd known Lyra was careless with the things she said sometimes, but honestly. But anyway, she had a right to know if her girlfriend was sleeping with someone else, and she didn't think her hurt and anger over the whole thing was at all out of place.
But, on the other hand, Lyra did sort of have a point: Hermione had told her she didn't want to know what she got up to in the forest. Granted, when she'd said that she'd been referring to the messy, bloody, very dangerous hunting of giant man-eating spiders — not only were the details just disgusting, but knowing what Lyra was getting up to out there just made her anxious, better to not think about it. She hadn't considered the possibility that Lyra might be doing anything else with Sylvia at all.
Which was sort of stupid, in retrospect, because she distinctly recalled thinking to herself back in spring, as part of her musings on Lyra's relationship with Harry, that if Lyra were snogging anyone she'd expect it to be Sylvia. She recalled wondering just what was going on between them when they were out in the forest with nobody else around — given how Sylvia had been, just, hanging all over Lyra the one time they'd met, completely naked, it was impossible to not wonder about it — but, for some reason, Sylvia had just sort of...slipped out of Hermione's awareness entirely. Which was stupid, because she really shouldn't have.
But, while it was obvious to Hermione that having sex with Sylvia was a separate topic from hunting spiders, one which should be addressed separately, she could at least acknowledge — now, with a little distance from their initial argument — that it probably wouldn't have occurred to Lyra that Hermione might think so. Hermione had said she didn't want to know what Lyra got up to in the forest with Sylvia, so Lyra hadn't told her.
From anyone else, Hermione might have taken that as just an excuse, clumsily evading blame, but in Lyra's case she didn't really think it was. As far as Lyra was concerned, she'd simply done what Hermione had asked her to — she could be very literal like that, sometimes. If nothing else, Lyra's very obvious surprise, confusion, and frustration in their initial argument proved she legitimately hadn't realised she'd been doing anything objectionable.
So, Lyra hadn't been trying to hurt her. In a way, though, that almost made it worse.
(Almost.)
On the other other hand, well, there was context that sort of made this more complicated than it might have been otherwise. Hermione wasn't even certain it was fair to hold Lyra entirely responsible for this...misunderstanding. She meant, it had become very clear in that conversation that she and Lyra had different ideas about how this sort of relationship was supposed to work. Part of this was cultural — Hermione had been aware that the institution of marriage worked differently in magical Britain from what she was used to, especially among the nobility, but she'd still been entirely blindsided by the revelation that every single married adult Lyra had ever known had had extra-marital affairs. And, when she thought about it, she should have realised...sexual fidelity, let's call it, wasn't nearly as big of a deal here as she was used to. Hell, just look at the Zabinis...
It looked like Harry was even getting used to the idea, if his blatantly obvious preoccupation with Gabbie was any indication, but it was still sort of weird to Hermione.
And, Lyra was Lyra, after all. She hadn't asked, but she was willing to bet jealousy was one of those emotions Eris had burned out of her — it was sort of hard to predict the expression of an emotion in another person if you were incapable of feeling it yourself. And, well, Lyra might have been able to predict jealousy...if she'd realised there'd been anything to be jealous of. They'd had a somewhat calmer conversation about it yesterday, and, since they weren't having sex, Lyra had assumed that sex wasn't included in the category of "dating", so obviously it wouldn't be infringing on her relationship with Hermione to have sex with other people. That...almost made sense, when she thought about it.
This misunderstanding came down to Hermione and Lyra having different ideas about what their relationship meant, exactly, and neither of them qualifying these things with each other ahead of time, because their own understanding had been obvious to each of them, so it hadn't seemed necessary. Which, Hermione probably should have anticipated that — Lyra never understood perfectly ordinary social things without having them explained to her first, there was no reason to expect this would be any different.
Not to say it was Hermione's fault either, it was just...complicated.
And, well, it was maybe important to note that Lyra had only brought up the fact that she was sleeping with Sylvia in the first place to explicitly contrast her relationship with Sylvia as less meaningful than her relationship with Hermione. Which was odd on so many levels...
Complicated was a good word for it. The whole thing was complicated.
"What are you even doing up here?"
Hermione jumped, whirled around to find Rachel behind her, moodily glaring up at her with her hands in her pockets. "Are you still following me?"
"I've been trying to ask if you and Lyra are breaking up or something, but you've been ignoring me."
...Oh. Oops. "Sorry, I'm just... Ah, no, we're not breaking up." Lyra had asked her the same thing, yesterday, because she hadn't been certain either. Hermione had just asked for space for a few days, maybe a week, to process all this.
After all, this was hardly the worst thing Lyra had ever done. Hermione was certain she'd get over it, just as she had everything else. They definitely needed to have a serious talk about this sort of thing one of these days, but it wasn't the end of the world.
"Why do you care so much anyway?"
Rachel let out a little huff, practically rolling her eyes. "I don't, really, but if you and Lyra split up it's going to make things with all your friends really weird and awkward — and there's the politics of it too, with your mum and all, no idea how that would work out. I'd just like some warning is all."
"Oh." Okay, she guessed that did sort of make sense. Rachel did talk to a few people in her year, but Hermione had noticed she spent most of her time outside of class with various fourth-years. She'd even joined Harry's little unofficial dueling club and everything. (Apparently she'd already started beating Justin sometimes, Gin thought the whole thing was hilarious.) Any drama around Hermione and Lyra probably would affect her, in one way or another.
Though, the concerns about the politics of it probably weren't justified. If Hermione and Lyra broke up, the Grangers would still be vassals of the Blacks, one relationship had no bearing on the other, so Mum would probably stay on as the Blacks' proxy in the Wizengamot. She could see how Mum representing a Noble and Most Ancient House might be a big deal for a muggleborn Slytherin, and how the Grangers and the Blacks falling out might give the racists in Slytherin the idea that Lyra might be less willing to back Rachel, but it wasn't actually a problem.
Hermione considered reassuring her about that, but she would bet Rachel didn't want to hear platitudes from her. Right, back to her original question, then. She was up here, in the corridor all the apprentices' offices were in, because, "I just wanted to talk to Éanna about something."
Rachel frowned at her. "I thought Snape taught your years' classes."
"He does." He did labs in rotation with Mr Lloyd, but mostly. "It isn't about class. Actually, you might want to sit in, I was going to ask him about the mages' religion."
It'd occurred to her, at some point between her Introduction and the Samhain Revel, that Lyra was a very biased source when it came to high magic stuff. She might have an inside line, giving her more direct knowledge of these things than most any ordinary person could boast, but she still saw things from the perspective of Eris (Chaos) first, and the Dark second. That was, obviously, a lopsided point of view. Not to mention, while she acknowledged herself that it was imperfect, she still spoke of these things with the language of the Powers paradigm, which Hermione understood was an exclusively European framework. And not even a universal one either, apparently the whole Powers thing was most common where older traditions had been more effectively suppressed — in places like Britain, where high magic had effectively been made Anathema, formal ritualists using the Powers framework were all that had survived.
With a few particular exceptions. It wasn't common knowledge, apparently, but according to Lyra the Gaels had managed to preserve certain old practices, outside the view of the (mostly British) Aurors. It wasn't a secret that many Gaelic mages were still religious, but it was a secret that the priesthoods of their various cults were mostly white and black mages. (Which wasn't unusual, before high magic had been illegalised everyone had understood that was what "priest" was supposed to mean.) In fact, Lyra was reasonably confident Fionn Ingham, one of the Gaelic nationalists protecting the delegation from muggle Ireland, was a white mage dedicated to Brigid — Hermione assumed the goddess must be related to one of the patron saints of Ireland who just so happened to have the same name, that couldn't be a coincidence. Though, Lyra couldn't say exactly what kind of goddess Brigid was, really.
Because the Gaels didn't use the whole Powers thing Lyra had grown up with, so their gods didn't map onto it very well. So, Irish mages, the ones who'd been raised in their native religion, would have an entirely different perspective of high magic.
Éanna wasn't a white mage himself, but he was religious — he happened to worship Brigid, actually. So, it might be interesting to ask him about it, Hermione had thought.
(That wasn't rude, was it, to go interrogating someone about their religion? She didn't think so, as long as she was nice about it...)
Rachel gave her a sort of doubtful look. "Er, no offence, but I've always thought normal religion was kind of boring. Is magic religion really all that different?"
"The religion part probably isn't that different. But, last I checked, Christian Mass didn't include invoking God in ritual to do magic that would be impossible otherwise." At least, it didn't anymore, anyway — according to one of the books she'd gotten from the Bookstore, ritual magic had once been a part of practically every religion, including Christianity. Hermione herself suspected most of the "miracles" attributed to early saints had actually been the products of ritual magic. The practice had been gradually phased out over the centuries, though. (The book Hermione had read suggested the prohibition against the use of ritual magic had been part of the effort to centralise Church power, which had fascinating implications, when she thought about it.)
Her eyes going wide, Rachel muttered, "Oh. Right. Okay, I guess I can tag along, if you don't mind."
Éanna was, unsurprisingly, at his desk in his office. It was a weekend, so he hadn't any classes, and Hermione hardly ever saw him anywhere else. Honestly, Hermione suspected Gin was reminding him to eat, he missed meals with some regularity. (He hadn't been at lunch just now, in fact.) The half of his office Lyra had taken over was unoccupied, which also wasn't a surprise — she'd left the castle to meet Mum, something about adapting the tracking spell she'd cast on Gabbie as an extra security measure.
Hermione wasn't certain how she felt about Lyra casting blood runes on her mother but, well, Mum was making a nuisance of herself to people who considered her less than human, and also happened to have magic powers, so. At least Lyra had tested it on Gabbie first.
(She would rather her mother not get murdered by magic racists, thanks.)
Glancing up from what appeared to be a student essay, Éanna frowned at them. Well, not at them, really, more in their general direction — Éanna never seemed to make direct eye contact, his gaze usually focused on the wall to the side or above the person he was speaking to...or just not anywhere near them at all. It was sort of odd, but Éanna couldn't really help being autistic, could he. "Maïa, Miss Rachel. What is it?"
Rachel rolled her eyes. "We're not in class, you can drop the Miss."
"I'd rather not," Éanna muttered, his eyes flicking far to his left and staying there. "If I don't do it all the time, I'll forget to do it ever, and Brits can be weird about formality, so I shouldn't do that."
"Well, then it should be Miss Campbell, shouldn't it?"
Éanna blinked. "...I hate English." For all that he showed it, Éanna might not have even noticed Rachel giggling at him, but he did wait for her to finish before speaking again, so he must have. "Is there a reason you two are here? I mean, I don't think there was, there was a thing— I'm not missing anything important, am I?"
"No, you're not missing anything," Hermione said, duplicating the single chair across his desk before sitting in it. "Well, unless you think lunch is important."
"Right. Food." Éanna paused a moment, staring blankly at his desk. "That should be fine. I mean, I was at breakfast..." It sounded like a question, so Hermione nodded. "...and I should be hungry by dinner, so it will be easy to remember to, to do that one. So. Wait, you're not here to remind me to eat?"
Rachel giggled again. "You need to get an alarm clock, Mister Éanna."
"Yeah, my father had that thought too. It only lasted for a day, and the first time it went off, it was..." Éanna shivered. "That was an interesting one. Anyway, back to why you're here..."
It took Hermione a second to realise Éanna must have destroyed his alarm clock the first time he heard it go off. Made sense, she guessed — autistic people did sometimes react badly to loud or grating noises...and then add in accidental magic... "Right, well, this might be somewhat weird, and if I say something offensive just go ahead and tell me off. I'm not going to do it on purpose, but, you know."
Éanna seemed faintly amused. "Maïa, when have I ever been offended about anything?"
Well, yes, that was one of the reasons she'd thought it better to ask Éanna about this stuff than any other Irish pureblood in the castle. "Okay, then. You see, there's been a rumour going around that..." Hermione trailed off as she realised she didn't know how people talked about these things. "Ah, I'm sorry, but you worship Brigid, right?"
With a slight wince, Éanna corrected, hardly above a whisper, "Bríd." Then, louder, "I don't understand, what are you sorry for?"
"Oh, um, I just didn't know what word it's appropriate to use."
"If you mean worship, yes, that is fine. You shouldn't just blurt out Her name like that, though. Even if you did pronounce it wrong."
Sue her for trying then — Hermione had assumed just calling her Bridget would have been wrong, Brigid had been her next best guess. (And it was what Lyra called her, so.) "I'm sorry, I didn't know. Why not?"
Éanna looked a little uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and tapping at his desk, but he just shrugged her apology off. It was a weird shrug, starting in one shoulder and rolling across his back, but she was pretty sure that's what it was supposed to be, some of his gestures were just kind of weird. "You shouldn't speak the name of any god. If you do, they'll hear you. It doesn't mean they'll do anything bad, the Mother in particular isn't likely to, but if they aren't watching you, you can't annoy them."
"Um, I'm pretty sure that's wrong."
Brow dipping into an annoyed frown, Éanna said, "What?"
Rachel shrugged. "I don't know, Lyra made me borrow a book about high magic stuff..."
Of course she did. Of course Lyra was lending out illegal books to her pet first-year. Why was she surprised, that was exactly the sort of thing Lyra would do...
"...and that was talking about how Aspects or whatever are pulled toward things that interest them. I think, saying their name doesn't matter. Why should it, names are a human thing, and it's not like gods have ears anyway. They're going to know what's going on if something they think is interesting is going on, whether anyone says their name or not, and saying their name isn't going to make them pay attention to something that has nothing to do with them." Under Hermione and Éanna's gaze (his somewhat misdirected), Rachel stiffened in her chair a bit. Somewhat defensively, she added, "At least, that's what it sounded like to me, anyway."
"If you're talking about someone, doesn't that have something to do with them?"
"Well, sure, but they're going to hear that whether you say their name or not."
"I guess," Éanna said, very clearly humouring her, "but just blurting out a god's name is kind of rude, don't you think?"
Rachel considered that for a second, before shrugging. "All right." She was obviously humouring Éanna just as much as he was her, but at least they'd ended up more or less on the same page.
Though, Hermione was pretty sure Rachel was more right than she was wrong...but Éanna was also right, just not for the reason he probably thought he was. If she understood how these things worked correctly, it was thinking about an Aspect of Magic which could (theoretically, in the correct circumstances) attract their attention — the thought didn't need to be spoken aloud, and whether a proper name or an epithet was used seemed completely irrelevant. (Besides, an epithet was basically just another kind of name, Hermione didn't see why there should be a difference.) She decided to just note it as a cultural thing and move on. "So, the Mother, then. I don't know anything about this, what do the Mother's worshippers believe, exactly?"
Éanna frowned. "What?"
"I mean... Well, you call her the Mother, are we talking like a mother goddess sort of thing here? Like, mother to the rest of the gods, or mother to humanity..."
Hermione trailed off as Éanna just looked increasingly confused. "What are you talking about?"
...Okay. "Probably getting ahead of myself. We can just go all the way back to the beginning — there must be a creation myth, right?"
"Creation myth?"
"I mean, a story about where the world came from."
"Oh." Éanna stared above Hermione's left shoulder for a moment, slowly blinking. "What does that have to do with anything? I thought you were muggleborn, muggles have the answer to that already."
"No, I mean, people who worship the Mother, where do they think the world came from."
"I don't understand."
Rachel laughed. Hermione wasn't certain which of them she was laughing at, but she had the creeping suspicion it was both of them. Resisting the urge to rub her own forehead, Hermione said, "I'm not certain I understand, either."
"I think you're making a little inductive fallacy, Miss Granger."
All three of them jumped, whirling around to face the left side of the room — Rachel jumped badly enough she nearly fell out of her chair, managed to get up to her feet instead, the duplicated chair tipping over sideways. Leaning against one of the bookshelves, his arms loosely crossed low under his chest, was a young man, too old to be Hogwarts age but probably not much older. He had thick black hair, tousled as though he'd just been out in the wind, soft face split with a smile. He was clothed in dueling garb, brownish leather and cloth in green and white.
Hermione recognised the uniform of Saoirse Ghaelach's militia instantly. It'd be hard not to, a few of them had been hanging around the castle for a week now.
"God dammit!" Rachel hissed. "Does nobody in this bloody place ever use the door?"
The man's smile twitched. "Yes, well, sorry about that. I would have walked, but I wasn't certain where I was going." That made no sense at all... "Miss Granger, if you wanted to ask someone about an Tuath Dé, you went to the wrong person. No offence meant to you of course, Éanna Ó Caoimhe."
Éanna had recovered the quickest of all of them, though he twitched slightly at the use of his full name. "Ah, don't worry about it, a Fháidh."
"Mind if I take over here?" the man said, levering himself off the bookshelf with a shoulder.
"Not even a little bit."
A wand appearing in his hand, the man conjured a plain wooden chair just next to Éanna's desk, sort of across from Hermione and Rachel (who'd righted her chair and sat down again, still churlishly glaring at the stranger) but at an angle he could still see all three of them. As he sat, swishing his cloak out of the way, Hermione asked, "Excuse me, who are you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners today?" He aped a florid bow, which looked even more silly than it would have if he weren't already sitting down. "Fionn Ingham, fáidh don Mháthair — that's usually translated priest of the Mother, in the English."
...Oh.
Well, she guessed a Gaelic white mage was exactly the person she should be asking about how they see Magic, wasn't he?
"Um." Hermione hesitated for a moment, considering how exactly to say what she needed to say. "I'm sorry, but is that really a...wise thing to just tell random people? Being a white mage is Anathema in this country, you know."
"Technically, it's not Anathema at Hogwarts for now — most I.C.W. nations do attempt to monitor people with a more intimate relationship with Magic, yes, but it's not Anathema. And if they decide they want to arrest me for being a white mage after the Tournament is over, well," Ingham said, eyes dancing, "they can certainly try, I guess."
Hermione had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
"And besides, I'm not just telling any random people. Éanna here belongs to an tuath Caoimhe — the previous, hmm, you would say high priestess, I think, she was a Caoimhe. They are a rather important family back home, you know. And of course you two are close to a priestess of a trickster god of some kind, and you, Miss Granger, are only here interrogating poor Éanna about the Mother because you have every intention of studying high magic — so you shouldn't go throwing stones."
She couldn't help herself, Hermione had to say, "Eris isn't a trickster god," but even as she said it... It wasn't a terrible description, was it? She certainly did like messing things up, and judging by Lyra's behaviour she seemed to prefer to target people who were a little too full of themselves — which wasn't a surprise, the ancient Greeks had had a whole thing about hubris.
"Eris?" Ingham's smile vanished, eyes widening a little. "Huh. Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it? I suppose we'll just have to hope Dumbledore doesn't fuck up as badly as Paris did."
Yes, Hermione had wondered the same thing ever since she'd found out what Lyra had done with the Tournament, sending out those letters months ago. She should probably be having a crisis of conscience right now over whether she should be doing anything to stop Lyra from starting trouble, but she suspected the damage was already done. After all, Eris's role in the story had been finished the moment she'd chucked an apple at someone's head — everything that had followed had been the result of people's stupid decisions, without any outside coercion. Eris (Lyra) only set up the dominoes, someone else was supposed to knock them over. "How do you know Dumbledore's the one holding the Apple?"
Ingham shrugged. "Who else?"
...Good point.
"Anyway, back to what I was saying a moment ago. The misunderstanding you two were having is a consequence of holding to a different definition of the category of religion. You have assumptions, Miss Granger, about what exactly a religion looks like, which colours your approach to learning about those of us who still acknowledge an Tuath Dé."
Going all the way back, then. Hermione wrenched herself away from worrying if it was really okay some random stranger — who also happened to be a white mage, apparently — knew what Lyra was, and how much of a mess this damn Tournament was probably going to turn out to be, back around to the original purpose of this conversation. "Right. So, you're saying there isn't a Gaelic creation myth."
Fionn shook his head, spreading his hands. "And this is not a modern innovation, so far as we can tell — it isn't that we stopped teaching an old origin myth when we learned it must be false. To our best guess, there simply never was one.
"One of the major differences between our traditions and the religions you're probably more familiar with is a matter of scale. Most major religions consider themselves the sole holders of some universal truth. The Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í—"
Hermione felt an eyebrow twitch with surprise — she hadn't expected a pureblood mage to know Bahá'í existed. It post-dated the Statute, after all. Even most British muggles had never heard of it before...
"—Indic religions — Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs — Iranian traditions like Mazdayasna, various polytheistic faiths over history, even fuzzier things like Daoism, they all tend to make some large-scale, universalist claims. We know how the world came to be, and we know how it will end, we know how things material and spiritual truly function, we know the ultimate purpose of life, we know what happens after death. We hold true knowledge, and everybody else is wrong — in some cases, depending on the eschatology of the religion in question, everybody else is not only wrong, but doomed to damnation or oblivion for their ignorance.
"For whatever reason, this sort of mindset never really developed among the Gaels and Brits of these islands. Which is not unique, truly — there are a number of religions throughout the world who do not make these sorts of claims. It appears that developing writing, and more particularly a complex legalistic bureaucracy, lends itself to the kind of religion you're more familiar with. Such absolutist claims about the world and life and death and morality are much less common where certain trappings of organised civilisation developed later on in history."
Well, Hermione was sort of vaguely aware of that. She just knew very little about those... She wanted to say less advanced religions, but that sounded rather ethnocentric, didn't it? Point was, the religions she was most familiar with were Judeo-Christian, which were rather legalistic in their rhetoric about a lot of things — a legacy of the religious judicial system in ancient Persian Israel, she assumed — and ancient Greco-Roman polytheism, which had a...sort of similar administration around it. (Relatively speaking, of course.) Civilisations that didn't have an equivalent to that kind of state...religion...thing, she was far less familiar with.
So she guessed that did make sense. It just hadn't occurred to her the mages' traditions were so different...though it probably should have. But, something about that bothered her. "There are myths, though. I mean, I don't know much about them off the top of my head, but I know the pre-Christian Irish people didn't, just, think they were always here."
Fionn smiled. "Well, of course there are stories about how the people of Éire and Britain came to be the way they are, but that is not the same thing. Our ancestors have always known they were not originally native to this land, that the ancient Gaels came here at some point in the past and mixed with people who were already here. Interestingly, muggle archaeology backs this up — Celtic-speakers didn't come to these islands until relatively late, twenty-five hundred years or so ago. The stories tell of successive invasions of both Éire and Britain by different peoples with different technology speaking different languages, which we suspect is a sort of mythologised cultural memory of actual pre-historical events.
"But," Fionn said, raising a single finger and smirking a little, "in these stories it is never said where exactly it is human beings come from in the first place. There is no god among an Tuath Dé who is credited with creating the world, or with creating the human race. They guide and teach us, yes, but we already existed before they came along. What we know of the nature of magic in the modern day suggests we created them, however unintentionally, and not the other way around."
"Okay." That was a little...odd. And also directly subverted the psychological explanation of religion Hermione had been led to expect — what was the point of myth, if not to explain away old mysteries of the natural world? That the Irish didn't have any of those kinds of myths, and at the least believed they never had, was just kind of strange. "So, how does it work exactly, then?"
"Hmm, that's very broad, isn't it." Fionn hummed, looked up to the ceiling for a second, his fingers tapping at his knee. "Well, general terms, then. The average Gael will, usually, observe three gods of their choice, who each fulfill a certain purpose in their lives. These are colourfully referred to as one's earth, sun, and moon — this is just poetry, and doesn't really mean anything, but it's a useful device to look at it all through.
"The 'earth' god is a role that might seem very familiar to you. The best comparison to the usual tropes would be an agricultural deity — concerned with the health of the land, and the weather, and the harvest, that sort of thing — though it is somewhat more complicated than that. You see, as a god of the land, that land belongs to them, and you need their permission to use it. There is a certain logic to this, when you remember the Gaels were not originally from here — presumably, it's something held over from the migration. Traditionally, whatever local leader there might be was considered married to whoever the local god was. And this was very literal — after being selected as the chief or the king or whatever the term was at the time, there would be what was very much like an ordinary wedding ceremony. The union was even expected to be consummated."
"Wait, wait," Rachel blurted out, an odd, twisted look on her face. "Are you saying this earth god person would actually show up, and your king or whatever would..."
It wasn't actually that far-fetched, Hermione thought. Sacred marriages were a phenomenon that had existed in several ancient civilisations — there's the ancient Greek concept of hieros gamos, the relationship between the king and the high priestess of Inanna in certain Mesopotamian city-states, the idea of sacred prostitution is probably related somehow. In fact, Hermione recalled there was a common theory (fuzzy from a lack of primary sources) that the pre-Christian Celts had had the exact practice Fionn was describing right now. Of course, Hermione had assumed that was all just myth, obviously, but now that she had more familiarity with high magic... Well, it wasn't at all out of the question that an Aspect could have manifested somehow to...consummate the union.
However bloody weird the thought of ancient kings having sex with literal gods was.
Fionn smiled, warm and amused — by the glare Rachel returned it with, she probably assumed she was being mocked somehow. "Eh, we're not certain. It's possible Áine — the most common of this sort of god, though not the only one — would appear in one form or another, directly. Older myths do suggest as much. Though, we suspect the practice changed with time — eventually, as property and family became more important, also marriage alliances with other clans or tribes, it was no longer very practical for a leader to separate from their spouse for the duration of their tenure, which had been expected originally. The practice did continue, but we believe they found a loophole: in some of our earliest written records, the spouses of rulers are often referred to as priests of the local god. It appears, rather than be divorced, their spouse instead entered into service to Áine. Perhaps, instead of manifesting directly, from this point Áine simply possessed their spouse for the ceremony."
Rachel was making a face again, her eyes narrowed and lip curling, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "No offence, Fionn, but magical Irishmen are bloody weird."
"It's not that weird, actually." All three of them turned to look at her (Éanna only in her general direction), Hermione shrugged. "It's an agricultural metaphor. Planting a seed, if you catch my meaning."
"Ew," Rachel muttered, scowling.
Luckily, Fionn didn't seem to be offended, still just warmly smiling. "You're not wrong, Miss Granger. There were two major ceremonies involving Áine. One was, of course, this sort of marriage with the local leader. It was a confirmation, in a way — there were ways Áine had of expressing Her disapproval, which would often result in the leader being immediately replaced. But there was another one corresponding with the beginning of planting season. These days it is normally celebrated on or immediately after Lá Fhéile na Mháthar, or 'Imbolc'," with an odd sense of sarcasm on the name, "though historically it would have varied depending on the local geography and the weather. This ceremony is similar in some ways to the other, though in a rather different context than a wedding."
"A fertility ritual," Hermione suggested.
Fionn shrugged. "Something like that, yes. The intention is, again, asking permission to use the land, and also to ensure there would be good weather and healthy crops. Áine could, again, express Her disapproval, which in this case usually resulted in very bad luck for farmers, never ends well."
"Is."
His head tilting slightly, Fionn turned back to Rachel. "I'm sorry?"
"When talking about the bit with kings and whatnot, you used past tense, but sometimes you use present tense. People still..." Rachel trailed off, clearly not certain how to refer to a religious sex ritual. "It still happens?"
"Well, not in the way it once did, certainly. You wanted to know how Gaels in the modern day see these things, Miss Granger," Fionn said, nodding to her. "People do still worship Áine, yes — and it is almost always Áine now, traditions centred on other local gods have mostly died off — though it doesn't look quite the same as the others. In communities that do any farming of any kind, they do still practise a variation of the old ritual, though it is normally...less extreme. High magic is illegal now, after all, and this ritual with Áine is very public, and in its original form very obvious. Though it is still a public sex ritual, of course, the high magic parts of it are just toned down a bit."
Rachel huffed, practically squirming in her seat. She'd get used to the idea that some mages did this sort of thing eventually. Hell, she didn't think anybody had told her about Walpurgis yet, and that was much worse — at least this thing with Áine had a rational purpose to it.
"There are also things at the harvest, though these mostly involve blessings of seed corn, sprinkling milk mixed with ash over the fields, and many drunken toasts to Áine's generosity, much more innocuous. Aside from that, people rarely think about Áine much at all. You will find altars to Áine at the centre of any Gaelic village, but they're rarely ever used, and She doesn't have a priesthood, as such. There are a few out there, I suppose, but not many, and they aren't organised. Áine still has importance to people involved in farming, or who need a particular kind of weather for any reason, and there are a few little things involving construction and land use, but everyone else hardly spends much effort on Her.
"It's the other two kinds of gods people spend most of their time on." Fionn turned to Éanna, his smile vanishing, his voice going low and serious. "I'm going to be talking about the Watcher now, if you'd like me to deafen you for this bit."
Éanna didn't look up, focusing on the essay he'd been trying to get through while they'd been talking. "Just leave me silenced, a Fháidh. I am trying to get some work done here."
"We could go somewhere else, if you like."
"If I can't hear you anyway, why would I care?"
His lips twitching, Fionn sketched a single rune in the air before it vanished with a flick of his fingers, a paling snapping into existence with a tingle of magic. "I'm certain you've heard of the Watcher before, Miss Granger, Miss Campbell. To go back to the metaphor I used a while ago, one of the three main kinds of gods are 'moon' gods. This category are less figures that are worshipped out of respect, but out of fear — people invoke them not to attract their favour, but to repel their ire, or that of the forces that follow them. These are, unsurprisingly, often compared to gods of death in other belief systems, though they aren't truly.
"The most common of these is usually called the Watcher, a euphemism used out of fear for speaking Her name. Which is sort of funny, I suppose, because the only name we have for Her was originally itself an epithet: Morríoghain, meaning something like the queen of monsters or the dread queen — the etymology is sort of up in the air. For reasons we'll get to, She's also sometimes called the Queen of Nightmares, though not usually by Gaels."
It took Hermione a second to figure out what to say. Because she had heard of this one, obviously. "You mean the goddess of war and fate? The one that likes crows."
Fionn shrugged, wiggled his hand in the air. "The Watcher is very complicated for one major reason: there is also a living person called an Mhorríoghain. This living person is also where the name Queen of Nightmares comes from, by conflation between the two.
"You are familiar with metamorphs, yes? and how they don't die from old age? Well, because of this, some metamorphs are very old. I'm sure you've heard of the Green Lady of Egypt. She was instrumental in the original formulation of warding and enchanting, and thereby pretty much single-handedly invented the concept of magic theory — this happened about five thousand years ago, at least, and she still lives today. A small number of metamorphs are believed to be older than civilisation as we know it. There's the Queen Mother in Asia, the Lonely Man in America.
"And the Queen of Nightmares in Éire. Many of these people, it's very hard to guess how old they are. People didn't exactly use regular calendars until quite recently, and the metamorphs themselves often have no idea — there is a limit to how much memory the human brain can contain, things start to get very fuzzy after a while. In some of her own writings, an Mhorríoghain claims to have very distant memories of first arriving in the land that eventually became Éire. Her people were wandering westward, following the sun, and eventually came to what seemed to be the edge of the world. They must have travelled very far, hundreds and hundreds of miles, over the course of years.
"She walked. To Éire."
That... That was impossible.
"She said it was very cold, then, like a winter that never ended. Her people lived at the edge of a great field of ice, living off of mammoths and elk, boars and seals, fighting off bears and wolves. She said she used to raise foxes, black and white ones. Eventually, the ice receded, the mammoths and the elk died out, and the land grew warm and wet. Her people started to settle down, but it made her antsy, so she left to wander on her own. She was surprised when she found she needed to make a boat, because the end of the world was no longer connected to the mainland."
"You mean..." Hermione trailed off, swallowed to try to loosen up her throat. She felt oddly shaky, part of her, just, failed to process the scale of what they were... "You mean, she came to Ireland...during the Ice Age."
Still smiling, as though he had little sense of the gravity of what he was saying, Fionn said, simply, "Yes."
"But... But that must have been eight thousand years ago."
"Mm, closer to ten or eleven, I think."
"...You're saying there's a living person in Ireland who's ten thousand years old."
Fionn shrugged. "Her own vague memories of her history seem to suggest as much. She doesn't remember that far back very well at all, obviously, but the general picture of it sure sounds like she wandered all the way to Éire when there were still glaciers here. She left and wandered around Europe for a bit, didn't come back until...oh, four or five thousand years ago, probably. She was specifically looking for where she'd buried her first child — having something of an existential crisis, as I understand it — but she never did find the site. The land had changed too much, you see. She's been in Éire, save for the brief excursion to the Continent, ever since."
Hermione had absolutely no idea how to process that kind of time depth. She'd heard of the Green Lady before, of course — she had been instrumental to the development of runic magic, having essentially invented it single-handedly, so she was mentioned in class now and again. Hermione had had trouble with her to begin with. Okay, the Green Lady was still around, she lived in a magical town in the Faiyum Oasis, but she predated the pyramids of Egypt. Take the difference in time between Hermione and, say, Julius Caesar — the famous pyramids at Giza, the thing most people imagined when they thought of ancient Egypt, they had been older to Caesar than Caesar was to Hermione...by a margin of about five hundred years. That was absurd to think about just by itself. And the Green Lady, a person who was alive right now, was older than that, by about another thousand years (nobody knew precisely). Making the Green Lady, approximately, three times as old as the Roman Republic.
Hermione could kind of, almost, wrap her head around that. Like, early Egypt was to early Rome as early Rome was to modern Britain. Fine. Absurd, but fine. Then, the Green Lady would be sort of like, say, the ancient Greeks for the Romans — she meant, the pre-Classical Mycenaean Greeks, from the time of the bloody Trojan War, the Green Lady would be sort of like the equivalent of one of the culture heroes remembered from that time. Fine. She could...almost imagine that. It was completely ridiculous to imagine a person from that long ago had been alive this whole time, but magic was ridiculous sometimes. It wasn't completely incomprehensible.
But, if what Fionn was saying about this woman was true, she was twice as old as that. She could remember hunting wooly bloody mammoths. That was just...
That was completely incomprehensible. It was making Hermione a little dizzy, honestly.
"Now," Fionn said — casually, completely ignoring both Hermione and Rachel staring at him in dumbfounded disbelief. "The thing to remember about mages is that we all slowly become more powerful with each spell we cast, as our bodies and minds adapt to the presence of magic. This process doesn't seem to ever actually stop — you do start to see decreasing returns, but when we're talking about accumulated effects over centuries, it hardly matters. So, the truly old metamorphs start to become overwhelmingly powerful, by the standards of ordinary mages. Those who were already ancient at the time of the ancients were, in fact, often worshipped as gods in physical form.
"And an Mhorríoghain has an extra bit of intimidation potential. See, she's also a natural legilimens." Finally, the significance of what he was saying actually seemed to be occurring to him. His voice had dropped a bit, going somewhat more solemn, the smile gone. "A natural legilimens who not infrequently subsumed the minds of the people she killed, back in more violent times. Repeatedly, over the course of millennia. An Mhorríoghain might or might not be the most magically powerful being on this earth, but she is the most powerful mind mage in all of history. It is said that, not only can she snuff out the mind of any mortal as easily as she might step on an ant, but she can read and influence people's minds from a distance. A great distance.
"This is where that title Queen of Nightmares comes in. You've heard of the art of dreamwalking, yes?"
"Ah..." Hermione swallowed, her voice came out rather thinner and shakier than she was quite happy with. Not that she felt she could be blamed for that, the idea of someone this powerful even existing was, just, unnerving. (She understood why Fionn had offered to deafen Éanna now.) "Yes, I have. It's, um, when legilimens wander into the mind of another person in their sleep. Supposedly, if they're aware of what's happening, they can control what's going on — much like lucid dreaming, except both the legilimens and the subject will be experiencing it together."
Which was very neat, Hermione thought. When Harry had explained what was going on with him sleep-legilimising the Dark Lord — given as his justification for sleeping with Blaise down in Slytherin, which Hermione suspected was at least partially just a convenient excuse — Hermione had immediately wondered if there was any way for non-legilimens to do that. Not only did such a thing have potential therapeutic uses, but also... Well, it just sounded fun, didn't it, to do whatever you wanted with someone in a context with no true limits and no real consequences.
Hermione would admit the larger part of her interest in the subject was the idea that she could have shared lucid dreams with Lyra, where they could do whatever they wanted without Hermione having to worry about hurting anyone, or what impression she was giving other people, or the morality of whatever they were doing. If only to feel out how she felt about all kinds of things, and also just for fun. She even thought it might be theoretically possible to modify the enchantment they were poking at to exploit Lyra's omniglottalism to easily spread languages to third parties to act as a bridge between their minds to accommodate such a thing...though of course at least one of them would actually have to learn how to lucid dream, and they would need Eris's cooperation.
She still hadn't mentioned the idea to Lyra yet. Partially because, if she was being honest, she suspected Lyra would come up with some kind of absurd solution instantly — as fun as it was to think about, the idea of doing it was actually a little intimidating.
But anyway, Fionn was talking about the single most terrifying person Hermione had ever heard described, she should probably pay attention to the conversation. (No matter how unnerving it was.)
"Well, ordinarily, a dreamwalker will just wander into the mind of the person closest to them. There is a range to these magics, you see. But with how powerful an Mhorríoghain is, her mind can reach very far. Many of the stories about an Mhorríoghain involve her entering the mind of a sleeping person, to impart advice or to give a warning. Or, in extreme cases, to plague them with imagined horrors, psychologically torturing them while they're asleep, and thus at their most vulnerable — undetected, through their wards, often from hundreds of miles away. It is said she can completely destroy her victim's mind if she wishes, drive them insane or kill them outright. From a great distance. In their sleep.
"There are very good reasons the Romans hardly stepped foot in Gaelic lands — they were the ones who gave her the name Queen of Nightmares."
There was a short beat of silence.
"Bloody hell," Rachel muttered. Which about summed it up, Hermione thought. "People like that actually exist? Like, in the real world, not just stories and shite?"
Fionn nodded, slow and solemn. "Yes, an Mhorríoghain certainly exists. I've been in a room with her once, in fact, though I never got very close to her. Honestly, even being a good dozen metres away from her was viscerally terrifying — and this was with her being civil, she wasn't doing anything, she's overwhelming just existing. Imagine the combined magical and mental presence of our guests from Miskatonic, but like five times worse."
...Right, Hermione could imagine that. Actually, no, she couldn't imagine that — Hermione thought the Miskatonites, when they weren't hiding it (somehow), were quite intimidating enough, thank you very much — but she got the idea. She was going to go out on a limb and assume she very much did not want to meet this person ever.
Luckily, Fionn moved on without Hermione saying anything, because she had no idea what she possibly could say. "Now, as you might imagine, ancient people did sort of end up worshipping her. It probably would have started as small things, little bits of ritual to beg for her favour or just appease her, but their regard for her eventually developed a character one might call legitimately religious. As Magic does, the more people cast this idea into it, the more it took on its shape, until this idea took on a life of its own. In time, there was a true goddess, a self-aware Aspect of Magic, modeled off of the living person — the theory is this is how all the gods developed, an Mhorríoghain the goddess is unique only in that the person who originally inspired Her is still around, instead of slowly evolving through cultural memory passed down generations.
"You'll find, because of this, Gaels will often refer to the woman and the goddess interchangeably. For one, gods are relatively limited in the effects they can have on the physical world — they are extremely powerful, yes, but they need some kind of conduit to affect things here. An Mhorríoghain the person is not limited in this way, but she also involves herself in mortal affairs less than does an Mhorríoghain the goddess. The Watcher's priesthood is one of the largest in Gaelic society, and it is commonly suspected that She uses Her servants to push us in one direction or the other with some regularity. That we are all, unknowingly, pieces in a game She's been playing for generations. And so She is called the Watcher — because She is always watching, whether waking or in dreams, to ends we cannot possibly imagine."
"And...people worship this person." Rachel sounded more than a little disturbed, her eyes narrowed and lip curling. "I mean, no offence, but this Watcher lady sounds kind of...Satan-y."
Well, at least Hermione wasn't the one saying it.
Fionn let out another unphased hum, shoulders tilting in a shrug. "That's sort of complicated, honestly. The whole 'moon' category we're on here — and, much like with Áine, it is almost always the Watcher, though I'd say even more so — is veneration for the purpose of repelling evil or misfortune. This may take the form of begging the Watcher Herself to not decide to mess with you, sure, but people also ask the Watcher to protect them from other people, or monsters or faeries or just bad luck, what have you. Our equivalent to saying god damn it invokes the Watcher — even for people who don't worship Her at all, it's just the idiom now — though it is a much more extreme thing to say than it sounds just translating it. In general invoking gods, even casually in conversation, is a much bigger deal to people who truly believe they exist, as most Gaels do.
"See, an Mhorríoghain might be extremely powerful and more than a bit scary, both of them, but that doesn't mean they're evil. People who use the Powers model you're familiar with usually classify the Watcher as either a Dark kind of Fate — a god of Doom, for lack of a better word — or a god of Death — and not of the Dead, but the act of dying, particularly through violence — but this isn't truly accurate. It'd be more appropriate to call Her a guardian, if a scary one.
"Partially, this is something carrying over from an Mhorríoghain the person. She has done a lot of damage in the past, yes, but this was typically in reaction to something, either defending someone important to her or enacting vengeance on their behalf. Particularly, her children — an Mhorríoghain doesn't have children very often, but they do turn up now and again. Éanna's family was founded by one of her granddaughters, in fact. Anyway, what violence she has committed, historically, was most often defensive, or at least provoked, however disproportionate most would consider it. She once wiped an entire clan off the face of the earth in reaction to the murder of one of her children, the stories tend to go like that.
"An Mhorríoghain the goddess, on the other hand, is more considered a guardian of the Gaelic people as a whole — when She does punish Gaels, it's usually for doing something very dishonourable. Though, Her machinations aren't always obvious. In Éire, the magical families isolated ourselves from our non-magical cousins relatively early. Which ended up coming very much in handy when the Cromwells came around. They did not like Catholics or pagans much, and most of Éire were one or the other — or both, it's not difficult to slot the Christian God into our traditional practices, a syncretic Gaelic-Christian belief system is actually quite common — but they had a hard time finding very many of us. In retrospect, we think it's possible the Watcher had manipulated us into isolation, to prevent much greater deaths.
"If I were to try to fit the Watcher into the Powers framework, I'd say the Infernal Power is probably the best match. Her priesthood mostly serve Her in exchange for power and knowledge, learning all sorts of magics and the secrets of the universe directly from the source. Rather like Hecate, I suppose. She's very intimidating, yes, and I'd prefer to avoid attracting Her attention whenever possible, but I would hardly call Her evil."
...
No, Hermione. Coming to an arrangement with an Aspect of the Infernal Power in exchange for magical knowledge (and power) was...was a bad idea. Yes. Bad.
However tempting that did sound on the surface, it really would be a terrible idea. Playing around with high magic was not something to be done lightly — and it went without question that no god would just give her knowledge, it would expect something in return. And backing out of a deal would be a bad, bad, bad, bad idea. If nothing else, she should never put herself in a position where reneging on such a deal was even a possibility, just in case.
No matter how very fascinating the idea might seem. It was a bad one.
(Hermione was in so much trouble.)
"Actually," Fionn said, his head tilting a little, "I don't think I would call any of an Tuath Dé evil, precisely. In other religions, evil has a purpose in their cosmology, which doesn't really exist for us. Some of an Tuath Dé might be less nice than others, but that doesn't mean they're evil. They're all teachers or guardians of some kind, when you get down to it, even the Watcher.
"Though, I'll admit that relationship is less obvious with, say, Áine or an Mhorríoghan than it is with the last category. In the metaphor I mentioned earlier, these would be the 'sun' gods. Though this is poetry, they're not literally sun gods — the literal sun gods are usually considered to be one's earth, like Áine. Confusing, I know. Anyway, these gods are patrons of a sort, their entire purpose is to teach their people things. Usually things that are necessary for organised society to function, so Brits normally consider them to be Light Powers — and high magics associated with them do tend to be light, though not always — exactly which Power they get labeled with depending on exactly what it is they do.
"Probably the easiest to fit in the Powers system is Airmed — She's obviously an Aspect of Life, all Her priests are healers — but most of the rest don't really fit very well. There are dozens of these, sometimes particular to people in a certain profession or who practise a certain craft, but Lú and Bríd are easily the most common. Lú, called the Good King or the Artisan, is usually considered an advisor to kings and a master of enchanting, and by extension a patron of leaders of all sorts as well as enchanters and alchemists. Sometimes even authors and poets — there's an intimate connection between enchanting and the written word, as hard as it might be to cleanly define what His sphere of influence is, the logic follows. He's easiest to understand as a teacher of the things the leaders of society need to know. The sciences and the arts, yes, how to live an honourable life, to be trustworthy and dependable, but also how to be tricky, to get what your people need even if it requires the deception and manipulation of your enemies.
"Bríd, the Mother, is Lú's complement in a way — a keeper of the hearth, a master of war, and a protector of children."
"Um, maybe I'm missing something, but those seem...completely unrelated." Hermione could sort of see how Lú made sense — from what little Fionn had said, it sounded a little bit like someone had taken Hermes and decided to make him king of the gods, with everything that followed from that. It was weird, but not hard to wrap her head around. (Especially since a lot of Irish myths involved the hero winning more through cleverness than power, a poet trickster king sounded like exactly the sort of thing they'd be into.) But, those three things Fionn had listed for Bríd, that sounded like mixing up Hestia, Ares (or probably Athena), and, what, Hera? That didn't make any sense.
Fionn just seemed amused, his seemingly constant smile turning a bit crooked. "They're more related than you might think. If we think of the Artisan as the patron of things the leaders of society need to know, the Mother would be the patron of things the people in a society need to do. Bríd is often considered a goddess of fire, but specifically harnessed fire — the fire of the forge and the kiln, thereby patron of smiths and potters, and the fire of the hearth, thereby patron of family and the home and a bulwark against winter. Bríd is also associated with animal husbandry — Her major holiday now was originally meant to ask Her to help breed more cows and goats and such — and thereby patron to shepherds, weavers, and tanners. She's also considered a goddess of war, but specifically defensive war, and thereby a mentor to warriors and a protector of children — especially the abused or orphaned, most orphanages and the like in Éire are actually run by priests of the Mother, and it's not unusual for priests to intervene to remove at-risk children from abusive homes. In fact, the current high priestess was rescued when she was a young child, seven or eight maybe, and essentially adopted by the temple in her village. Temple isn't quite the right word, but you know what I mean."
"That kind of sounds like a lot of things for one god to be responsible for," Rachel said, sounding rather doubtful. "I mean, if you're going to have more than one god to begin with. Isn't the whole point of having a whole bunch of them...having a whole bunch of them?"
Fionn chuckled a little. "We do think Bríd used to be smaller than she is now. We think that, long long ago, she was a goddess of fire, and of war and sex."
"And what the hell do those have to do with each other?"
"Miss Campbell, it's not unusual for goddesses of war to also be associated with sex and love. Like Ishtar — not organised, methodical, strategic war, but the madness of war, the violence and the chaos, and also the madness of love, the lust and the thoughtless passion. We think, the old, Ishtar-like Bríd was popular enough that she overtook a lot of less prominent gods, slowly absorbing their traits as the centuries went by, changing as her worshippers, as society itself changed. The Bríd that exists today is a lot more...hmm, civilised, you might say, than we think she must have been in prehistoric times. Enough that, in a lot of ways, She's actually considered a patron of civilisation itself, one that spreads the knowledge necessary to keep organised society going, while also protecting her people from threats external and internal. It might seem odd, that the Bríd we know came out of what probably used to be a very violent figure of war and fire and chaos, but that's what happens after centuries upon centuries of change. The gods may be immortal, but they are not immutable."
Okay, that made sense, actually. Basically, as the ancient Gaels transitioned from nomadic tribes to a settled people, their war/sex goddess had been domesticated, sort of, to reflect their changed way of life. That wasn't too difficult to wrap her mind around. A very similar thing had happened with Aphrodite, actually — Hermione had read a theory that Aphrodite had actually been Ishtar (or Astarte, the Phoenician equivalent), imported to Greece from the east, and that her image had been moderated over the course of centuries to be more compatible with the local culture. (The existence of old depictions of Aphrodite as armed, especially on Kythera, seemed to imply that was a good bet.) The Gaels must have done something very similar, just in a somewhat different direction.
She thought she maybe understood the general picture he was trying to get at. Maybe. "So, what you're saying is, all Gaels, or the ones that are actually religious, worship three gods. One that represents the land, a sort of agricultural deity, which is usually Áine, one that's, like, a patron or a teacher or a protector, usually Bríd or Lú — which one it is is often a matter of class, or occupational — and a third one that's so scary they scare off scary things, usually the Morrigan."
Nodding in agreement, Fionn's lips were twitching with an amused smirk — probably at her description of the Morrigan. "Yep, that's about how it works. There are a whole bunch of others out there, but those are the most common by a mile and a half."
"And they don't really fit into the Powers at all? Are they really Light or Dark, even?"
"They don't fit into the Powers, no, but it's slightly more complicated than that." Fionn shrugged. "See, high magic tends to be polarised, just by default, and you can sort of say a god is Light or Dark just by observing what rituals that invoke them come out like. Using that standard, we can say that Áine is definitely Light, the Mother and the Artisan are almost always Light, and the Watcher is usually Dark. You can craft a ritual invoking the Mother that comes out dark, and you can craft a ritual invoking the Watcher that comes out light, but neither is very common. You can't really say they make sense thought of as this or that Power, though. Áine could sort of be put in with the Lively Power, I suppose. Some scholars describe the Artisan as a god of Order and Knowledge, and the Watcher as Fate and Death, but those descriptions of them aren't really very good — they're almost hilariously wrong, honestly, based on outsiders misunderstanding what they're about.
"You can sort of call them Light or Dark if you want to, but we don't think of them that way. The Mother is the Mother, and the Watcher is the Watcher; they can be thought of as complimentary mirrors of each other, in a way, but that is because of who they are and what they guide their priests to do, not because one is Light and the other Dark, by definition. Whether a bit of magic feels light or dark is an artifact of the intent of the person crafting it, not a consequence of some big metaphysical or philosophical...thing. Does that make sense?"
"I...think so." From what she understood of the Powers model thing, the original use was to categorise the purpose of a ritual, so a ritualist could better understand what they were trying to accomplish, and be certain who they wanted to invoke to do what. The 'Powers' were really just different kinds of magic a person could do, not entities in themselves. The people who'd created the model had associated different Aspects with the Powers as hints for which gods they could invoke to do what they wanted — the original intent wasn't that the different gods were really part of the Power they were Aspects of, just that they had a hand in that kind of magic.
But, well, as Fionn had said, gods are not immutable. Magic Itself reacted to the concept of the Powers model, and in time began to learn how to reflect it. Ritualists now actually could explicitly invoke one of the Powers, and have Magic respond as expected, even though that probably hadn't been possible at the time. From what Lyra said, Aspects associated with the same Power were connected, in a way, even if they weren't the same being, so it was possible they'd drifted together over the last centuries...or, perhaps, they'd always been associated, due to their similar spheres of influence, that might predate the idea of the Powers. The point was, it wasn't unusual that the Irish gods didn't really fit in the Powers model — the model was intended to describe the practice of ritual, not the actual nature of Magic, if that made sense.
Hermione had the feeling Eris was actually unusual in how well she fit into the idea of the Chaotic Power, which might be because she technically post-dated the invention of the concept. According to Lyra, Eris had developed out of the idea of Chaos as defined by the Powers model, augmented by modern attitudes about personal freedom and the like, so it wasn't a surprise Eris fit within the model so well.
Which meant, so far as these things went, Eris was actually a very young goddess. Lyra said Eris said she wasn't certain, but she couldn't be older than three hundred years or so. That might seem old to an ordinary person, but Fionn had implied the Watcher was easily four or five thousand years old, and possibly older, and Lyra claimed Death — the Deathly Power was technically all one entity, but Lyra always called it Persephone — was as old as the human race itself. (Possibly older, it depended on how self-aware precursor species were.)
By godly standards, Eris was practically a baby.
...Which made the thought of much older, presumably more powerful gods having dedicants walking around even more unsettling than it had been before. Great.
Thankfully, Rachel picked up the conversation before the silence could stretch on too awkwardly long. "So, what, your religion is just asking gods to do things for you and teach you things?" There was something about Rachel's voice that sounded a bit off, though Hermione wasn't sure what. Like she didn't really believe him...or maybe she was just a little bit jealous — after all, she would have been raised Christian, and God doesn't exactly take very active role in his worshipper's lives.
"Mm, how much influence an Tuath Dé actually have on our lives is a matter of debate. The gods are powerful, yes, but they are not physical beings — directly affecting the physical world requires...let's call it leverage. Affecting physical things is much easier with a physical thing. The gods can guide events, some, with little nudges here and there, and you can lend them the leverage necessary to pull off bigger things through the use of ritual, and gods can provide knowledge and advice in dreams. But the average person has very little contact with the gods. Ritual can be very dangerous, and you have to get a god's attention before they'll take it upon themselves to visit you.
"The exception, of course, is people like me." Fionn paused for a moment, eyes tipped up to the ceiling and biting his lip, fingers tapping on his knee. "Well, let's do this. I grew up in a family that worships the Mother, primarily. There are traditions that go with that, things to do with certain holidays, rituals around various things — making things, life events, marriage and childbirth especially, but also educational and professional milestones, all kinds of things. I mean, cultural ritual, things you do because it's tradition, not magical ritual, though there are some of those too.
"Anyway, something that's very common is called welcoming the dawn. Every morning, you light a candle, and thank the Mother for watching over you while you slept, and ask for good luck for the coming day. It doesn't do anything, really, it's a prayer and not a proper ritual. It's supposed to be done alone, but children who are too young do it with their mother. Mine got sort of messed up a little bit — when I was still very little, my parents got divorced, and I stayed with my father's family. So I started trying to do it by myself younger than I was supposed to.
"But I didn't really know the proper prayers, see. I just made stuff up. And I would just...chatter. Trying to talk to Her."
He wasn't saying... "Did you do your dedication when you were a little kid?" Did that happen very often? There was Lyra, and she'd implied Cassie was a white mage, had been most of her life...
"Oh, no, I was the usual age. What happened was... Well, the candle started to talk back. Little whispers, not really clear words, exactly, it's hard to explain." Rather like the Goblet, Hermione assumed, more impression than language. And probably not nearly as loud — if it gave him a migraine every time, she doubted Fionn would have kept doing it. "When I told my family the dawn spoke to me, they thought I was just being a silly little kid at first, but eventually one of my aunts, also a priest of the Mother, realised what was happening.
"See, it's kind of hard for me to say what's normal for a Gaelic mage to do, because I'm not really normal. From the moment my family realised what was happening, I was no longer expected to participate in anything observing the Artisan or the Watcher or Áine — in fact, I was expected not to. Because, if the Mother speaks to me, that means I'm one of Hers. I already had the favour of one god, so there was no point seeking the favour of any others."
"How common is that? I mean..." Hermione glanced at Rachel for a second — she hadn't been in the know before, as far as she knew, about what Lyra was. She'd hardly reacted when Fionn had mentioned Eris and Lyra, though, so maybe Rachel knew more than Hermione had thought. It was...probably fine, to talk about this in front of her. She'd already heard plenty of incriminating things by now anyway... "A lot of Brits don't even think the Powers are real anymore, you know. Lyra has to hide it, and she knows about a couple other black and white mages — she hasn't told me who, but I think it's just a couple — so she's under the impression it's very rare."
"It's more common than you probably think — just, Brits have made high magic very illegal, so people tend to keep it to themselves." Fionn shrugged, as though the fact that under British law he could technically receive a summary death sentence — at the hands of any random Auror who figured out what he was, at any moment — was a matter of little consequence. (Hermione wasn't surprised, Lyra was equally cavalier about it.) "It's not common enough it's considered normal, exactly. It's considered, um, a noble calling, let's say. Cases like mine, where the god pursues the priest and not the other way around, that's considered a pretty big deal — it's a huge honour to be picked, for the priest and their family. And, there aren't so many of us that there are priests, just, all over the place, but there are enough for us to organise, a bit.
"The big priesthoods, like the Mother's, there are two different kinds of priests, called na saoithe and na fáithe — literally, sages and prophets. Na saoithe are also sometimes called na draoithe — druids — but that term is mostly just used in legends and stories these days, not for real, living people. Now, na saoithe are the big, important people. They manage local schoolhouses and orphanages, and various other properties of the priesthood, they conduct the big, public rituals. Some of them will attach themselves to important people, and sort of act as personal advisors, protecting them and helping them.
"Na fáithe, on the other hand, don't have the same prestige. We tend to just wander around and do our own thing. I've been one since my induction when I was fifteen and, after I was finished with my lessons under na saoithe, I was set loose to do whatever it was I was led to do. I taught a seminar in ward-crafting at the Academy in Éire for a year or so, and then I wandered the island, enchanting, teaching, healing. That's pretty normal, for fáithe.
"After a couple years, I fell in with Saoirse. I can't say why I did, it just...seemed the thing to do. I've sort of attached myself to Síomha, in a way, like how certain saoithe attach themselves to leaders and influential people. In fact, there are other priests of the Mother who call me a shaoi now, though I really don't think I've earned it. And I'll stay with Saoirse, helping Síomha and doing my thing, until the Mother pulls me somewhere else."
...So, a lot like how Lyra just poked her nose into whatever jumped out at her, but instead of fucking things up for the hell of it, just...helping them. Somehow, Hermione had thought serving a real, actual god would have been more complicated than that. It was almost disappointing, in a way, but Hermione really shouldn't have expected anything else — one thing that had been drilled in over and over since her introduction to the magical world was how surprisingly mundane they could make literal magic.
From there, they wrapped up pretty quickly. Hermione and Rachel both had a few little questions, about how much the Gaels actually had to do with their gods, what the priesthoods did, exactly. Most of it was...well, surprisingly mundane, as the magical world tended to be. Sure, little community schools and clinics were largely run by people who had literal gods whispering into their dreams, but that didn't change how anything worked on a day-to-day basis, or at least not enough for it to amount to that much of a difference. Most of the priesthoods, from the way Fionn talked about them, they could be understood pretty easily as just an ordinary mutual aid society. Just, with magic. Perfectly normal, really.
Which, she didn't know why she'd expected it to not be normal, when she thought about it — once upon a time, white and black mages having some significant role in societies all over the world had been normal. From that perspective, the modern restrictions on high magic was what was strange, society as she knew it now was anomalous.
(Of course, that was also true of the muggle world, in a lot of ways. Thinking about the modern day in historical context could be weird sometimes.)
Before long, Fionn lifted his paling deafening Éanna, and they all left. Fionn had answered some of the questions she'd had, but that whole conversation had really just highlighted how little she knew about these things. Hermione had some reading to do, she thought...from older sources, preferably, before attitudes had turned against high magic. Unfortunately, very few of those books would be in English — there might be some old enough, but they'd probably be in, like, Chaucerian Middle English, which was a bloody pain to read. But, French spelling hadn't changed that much (though the pronunciation had), and of course Latin would be pretty much the same, but she'd need a dictionary for that, which would be an even bigger pain, so French would be ideal. She should drop by the Bookstore and see if Anomos knew of anything...
"So, is Lyra one of these weird priest people then? That's what it sounded like."
Hermione froze in the middle of the hallway, blinked down at Rachel, the younger girl staring curiously up at her. And let out a long, frustrated groan. Apparently Rachel hadn't known about Eris, this was going to be fun...
She would wonder when Lyra would learn to clean up her own damn messes, but she didn't have to ask. The answer was never.
[The existence of old depictions of Aphrodite as armed, especially on Kythera, seemed to imply that was a good bet.] — There's some conjecture, by both ancient people and modern scholars, that the cult of Aphrodite originated on the Greek island of Kythera. You know the popular myth, that Aphrodite just bubbled out of the ocean and drifted to shore? That shore is usually said to have been Kythera. There was a temple to her there, old even to the ancients, and interestingly she was depicted as a warrior, with armor and spear and shield. The general assumption is that the temple was originally built to Astarte, but gradually Hellenized over a few centuries to become Aphrodite.
The Ionian Greeks later Flanderised her into a flighty sex bunny, because ancient Athenians were misogynist bastards. Silly girl, war and state power are for men! — Lysandra
(Fuck the patriarchy!)
Really, Maïa? You're the one who totally dropped the secrecy ball on this one...
So, reading through this chapter, I couldn't help but come up with Lyra's responses to 'What can you tell me about...?' So:
Aine — er...she's kind of like Gaia or Demeter, I guess. Just...kinda always there. Doing her thing.
The Morrigan — If you annoy your uncles badly enough, they'll drag you over to Ireland and beg her to eat you. Oh! She was probably the one who rewound time when Angel and Sarah destroyed New England that one time, yeah I can see why she'd actually listen to her, I wouldn't want to piss her off, either. Um. She's probably in Ireland, somewhere. She doesn't get out much. She's probably about the closest thing there's ever been to an Avatar of Magic Itself, I guess, or maybe Death as the Ultimate Inevitability, you know, eternal and existing in the collective consciousness of everyone... No, I'm not worried about offending her, I mean, do you know how offensive most people are to gods? They don't even believe they exist. I might be a disrespectful child, but when you're twelve-thousand years old, who isn't?
Lu — Um...I think his realm of influence can be best described as "literally everything I was ever taught as a child". Yeah. That pretty much covers it.
Brid - Yeah, she did used to be more like Ishtar. She grew up and got boring, like the Athenians tried to do to Artemis, but Brid liked her people too much to tell them to piss off and skip merrily back into the wilds, so now she's just...really mumsy. Like Meda got mumsy.
(Okay, Sandra just finished her read-through, so I'll shut up and stop being silly, now.)
—Leigha