Hello, Shining Ones,
I’ve been reflecting lately on wells as portals to the Otherworld, and those who are guardians of the wells, safeguarding the passage between worlds, and the healing that can emerge from these liminal spaces. And so, for this month, I thought I’d share mythic ancestors who are enshrouded with well magic.
‘The oldest place-names tend to be the names of rivers. It might be argued whether rivers were named after deities, usually female, or vice versa, but at the time of the naming the two probably shared the same ‘personality’. In such a way, healing wells and springs, too, would have come to have their own identity.’
Mary Beith, Healing Threads
So let’s begin here with the wells who carry the goddess’s name and healing essence. We’ll travel with Brigid, Bóinn, Airmid and the Well Maidens from the Grail Romances.
Painting above of The Danaides by John William Waterhouse, 1903.
Despite their desperate refusal, these fifty sisters, daughters of Danaus, King of Libya, were forced by their uncle to marry their cousins. In retaliation against his brother, Danaus issued a dark command on his daughters so that all but one of them killed their cousin-husbands on their wedding night. The ‘one’, Hypermnestra, spared her husband because he respected her desire to remain a virgin. The Danaides were condemned for eternity to carry water in sieves or perforated jugs.
It is likely these sisters were originally water nymphs, sacred guardians of the waters. Akin to Celtic mythology, in the Greek tradition, water tends to be located in the realm of the divine feminine.
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