So last week, in part one of Chapter 5, we left off with the pregnant mare I met on Dartmoor, who carried in her eyes Rhiannon mother of Pryderi, the lad born the same hour as an otherworld foal. We left off with the way myth cycles like the Mabinogion encode traces of a belief that in my opinion is at least as old as the neolithic mound of Silbury.
We explored the idea that pregnant women, animal mothers and the earth all share a powerful knowledge and kinship of the oldest kind, and perhaps can even shapeshift amongst themselves at will. We entertained the thought that mounds (hills, cairns, tombs) of earth are navels of the world. That they are omphalos-points, and therefore oracular, like famous Delphi whose first prophetess was Gaia herself, and after her the Python. I would argue that in this way, the earth is an oracle. The animal ancestor is an oracle. And the pregnant woman is an oracle too. She is twinned, two in one.
I wonder why we talk about menstruation as the time of female visionary states, but not pregnancy? Why do we never imagine oracles as those who are doubled suddenly, carrying two hearts, two minds, two souls, instead of one? Carrying the pattern of life as it literally unfurls itself? All my friends who I’ve known through their pregnancies have been absolutely oracular and uncanny throughout. Dreaming things and speaking things aloud and coming up with ideas that made my hair stand on end.
So, here in the second half of this chapter, we will continue exploring a few more stories that carry traces of these patterns. Two more from the Welsh mythscapes of the Mabinogion, one from the Scottish borderlands, and a quick look at Rapunzel threaded through.
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