Branwen, Reinterpreted

 I started painting Goddesses in December 2020 as part of a Goddess art challenge, one Goddess per day from a prompt list.  Many were new to me, so I had to research.  Branwen was Goddess #7.  Her story was mostly about her brother, Bran, as was my Branwen painting.  She ended up dead of a broken heart.  Death by patriarchy.  After I had read more feminist angles, I repainted Branwen, and referenced an article by Judith Shaw, reinterpreting her (included in link above).  It was a better interpretation than my first, but, I just read another section of The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas, and I need to reinterpret her again.

Branwen with her white raven, in front of Cadair Bronwen.  Original painting, prints, and merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America.

Branwen is associated with the white raven.  She is a Welsh goddess of sovereignty, and in the landscape she is represented by Cadair Bronwen, a rounded mountain topped with a cairn.  Judith Shaw notes that the mountain looks like a nipple when viewed from afar.  

Approach to Cadair Bronwen (source)

Reading The Living Goddess, I came across a section entitled "Images of Death and Resurrection" that led me to further research on megalithic monuments, which made me reconsider both Branwen's white raven, and her mountain:

In The Living Goddess, Marija Gimbutas writes, "In the cycle of life, the feminine force -- the goddess -- not only manifested in birth, fertility, and life sustenance, she also embodied death, decay, and regeneration.  As death wielder, she loomed as a terrifying raptor, a poisonous snake, or the stiff white nude.  For Old European cultures, death did not portend the ultimate end but remained part of nature's cycle.  In Old Europe religious imagery, death was immediately coupled with regeneration.  

"Raptors - birds of prey - most often embody death in Old European imagery.  The "Vulture Shrine" at Catal Huyuk provides a graphic example.  The walls of the shrine show painted vultures with outstretched wings swooping down on headless bodies.  

SVII.8, ‘the Vulture Shrine’, north and east walls, showing vultures feeding on headless human bodies, with a ‘hand’ pattern on their backs. Reproduced from Mellaart 1967, 169, figure 47.  (source)

"Several thousand miles away, in the megalithic tombs of western Europe, another bird of prey predominates.  There devotees carved the likeness of the owl, specifically its eyes, into the bones and stones of the awesome monuments.  This imagery also appears on the solitary standing stones known as menhirs.  At both Catal Huyuk and the megalithic monuments, additional features connect these two raptors with the goddess.  Some of the vultures of Catal Huyuk possess human feet, while the megalithic stony owl eyes stare from above a necklace and human breasts--and frequently appear with the human vulva."

"An understanding of the practice of excarnation helps us to clarify the role of the bird of prey in Neolithic religion; it particularly explains its role in the death process.  In this burial practice, people did not bury their dead immediately, but exposed them outdoors on platforms.  There, birds of prey would strip the body of its flesh, leaving only the bones.  The removal of flesh was considered necessary to complete the death process.  When only the bones remained, the individual could be buried and the next segment of the cycle could begin.  Two different raptors predominated in Old European mortuary symbolism, each in a different region:  the vulture dwells only in the Near East and southern Europe, while the owl lives in most of Europe.  Although excarnation was not universally practiced, through Europe and the Near East vulture and/or owl symbols represented the goddess who brought death, yet ruled life and assured birth."

A quick google search told me that ravens, as well, will consume the human flesh from corpses.

While looking for information of the megalithic owl monuments mentioned by Gimbutas, I came across an entry on encyclopedia.com entitled "Megalithic Religion:  Prehistoric Evidence".

From that article,  "The origins of the goddess's image as a bird of prey are rooted in the Paleolithic, as is documented by portrayals of owls in Upper Paleolithic caves and by the large birds and wing bones of large fowl found in Paleolithic graves.

"Disarticulated skeletons and skulls in megalithic tombs are proof that excarnation was practiced. Corpses were offered to the goddess, who was embodied in birds of prey. This practice is illustrated in frescoes of vulture shrines of Çatal Hüyük, central Anatolia. Large birds were also buried in megalithic tombs, probably as sacrifices to the goddess. Excavations have uncovered a large deposit in a chambered tomb at Isbister in Orkney, Scotland. The greatest number of bones came from the white-tailed eagle. Others were from short-eared owls, great black-backed gulls, rooks or crows, and ravens (Hedges, 1983). All these birds feed on carrion."

Additionally, the article discusses how the form of megalithic monuments connects to the Goddess.

"Archaeologists once assumed that these megalithic monuments had evolved from simple to more complex forms, but the new chronology shows that some very elaborate buildings predate the simple gallery graves.

"Temples and tombs were built in the likeness of the Mother of the Dead or Mother Earth's pregnant belly or womb; this is the key to understanding megalithic structures and their floor plans. The idea that caves and caverns are natural manifestations of the primordial womb of the goddess is not Neolithic in origin; it goes back to the Paleolithic, when a cave's narrow passages, oval-shaped areas, clefts, and small cavities were marked or painted entirely in red, a color that must have symbolized the color of the mother's generative organs. The rock-cut tombs and hypogea of Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia are usually uterine, egg-shaped, or roughly anthropomorphic. Red soil is found under each temple of Malta.

"In western Europe, the body of the goddess is magnificently realized as the megalithic tomb. The so-called cruciform and double-oval tombs, as well as Maltese temples, are unmistakably human in shape. Some monuments replicate the ample contours of figurines of the pregnant goddess.

"The earliest form of the grandiose chamber tombs is the passage grave, which consists of a corridor and principal chamber. The natural cave, with its connotations of the goddess's womb (vagina and uterus), was probably the inspiration for the aboveground monumental structures that were erected later. The basic form of the passage grave—a shorter or longer passage and a round, corbel-roofed chamber—dates from the fifth millennium bce in Portugal, Spain, and Brittany.

"The interior structures of many Neolithic court tombs found in Ireland are outlined in a clearly anthropomorphic form. In addition to a large abdomen and head, some structures have legs and even eyes. The term court cairns or court tombs comes from the semicircular entrance, built with large stones, that characterize these structures. In many instances, the court and one or more chambers attached to the middle of the edifice are all that remain of the cairn (De Valera, 1960, pls. ii-xxx). However, better-preserved examples show that the court marks the inner contour of the anthropomorphic figure's open legs; the chambers or a corridorlike structure next to it, which leads into the very center of the mound, represents the vagina and uterus. The same symbolism is manifested in different areas and periods. The Sardinian tombe di giganti of the third and second millennia bce, consisting of a long chamber entered through the center of a semicircular facade, do not differ in symbolism from the Irish court tombs.

"The other type of grave is a long barrow whose shape resembles that of a bone, a symbol of death. Like the court tombs, this type of grave has an entrance at the front that leads into an anthropomorphic or uterus-shaped chamber.

"It seems that megalithic structures and long barrows, not unlike Christian cathedrals and churches, served as shrines and ossuaries. No doubt the large monuments, exquisitely built and engraved with symbols on curbstones and on inner walls, such as those at Knowth and Newgrange (O'Kelly, 1983), Ireland, and Gavrinis, Brittany, were sacred places where funeral, calendrical, and initiation rites took place. These monuments should be called not "tombs" but rather "tomb-shrines." The egg-shaped mound that covers the tomb-shrine of Newgrange is sprinkled with white quartz and looks like a huge egg-shaped dome. Probably it was meant to represent a gigantic cosmic egg, the womb of the world.

Tomb-shrine of Newgrange (source)

"In megalithic gallery graves of France, Switzerland, and the Funnel-necked Beaker culture in Germany, partition walls sometimes have round holes. Their meaning is apparent if the still-extant veneration of stones with holes is considered; belief in the miraculous power of holed stones is still found in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, and in many other European countries. Trees with holes play a related role. By crawling through the aperture of a stone or tree, a person is symbolically crawling into Mother Earth's womb and giving oneself to her. Strengthened by the goddess's powers, he or she is reborn. The crawling constitutes an initiation rite and is similar to sleeping in a cave, that is, "sleeping with the mother," which means to die and to be resurrected. Well-known sculptures of sleeping women from the Hal Saflieni hypogeum in Malta, dating from approximately 3000 bce, most likely represent such an initiation rite.

"The pregnant mother's (or earth mother's) generative potential is emphasized by the symbol of a mound and omphalos (navel)."

Is Cadair Bronwen not a breast with nipple, but a pregnant belly with an omphalos?

From the same encyclopedia entry, "In his analysis of the Silbury Hill monument, Michael Dames shows that in Neolithic Britain the hill functioned as a metaphor for the goddess's pregnant belly (Dames, 1976). The entire structure forms an image of the goddess: the hill is her belly, the ditch forms the rest of her body in a seated or squatting position. The circular summit of Silbury Hill is the goddess's navel, or omphalos, in which her life-producing power is concentrated. 

Silbury Hill monument (source)

"Veneration of sacred hills was found in Europe until the twentieth century. Worship of the earth mother was celebrated on mountain summits crowned with large stones.

Approach to Cadair Bronwen (source)

Summit cairn of Cadair Bronwen (source)

I am convinced Cadair Bronwen is a pregnant belly and omphalos.  Branwen is the Great Mother Goddess, who also rules death and rebirth.  She is way more powerful than the patriarchal story of Bran allows.  I feel like I should banish that first painting, showing her dead of a broken heart.  The Goddess doesn't die of a broken heart, she reigns still.  And her raven (or is it Branwen in raven form?) will eat your flesh so you can be reborn.  Thanks, Branwen.