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Antiquity

Posted on 11 May 202229 June 2022 By Norena Shopland
Welsh History

Bran the Blessed

Brân the Blessed (Blessed Crow) is a giant and king of Britain in Welsh mythology. Christopher Penczak in his book Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe claimed ‘Robert Graves, the somewhat controversial author of The White Goddess believed that Bran worshipped by an order of homosexual priests, and Amathon, a version of the Green Man, wrests Bran’s secret magical name by seducing one of Bran’s priests.’ However, in the 1960 introduction to Robert Graves’s The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, it is stated that Penczak misquotes Graves. The White Goddess, first published in 1948 by Creative Age Press is based on earlier articles written for the Wales magazine and draws heavily on the mythology and poetry of Wales and Ireland. It was revised and enlarged in 1952 and 1961. In the extract referred to by Penczak Amathon has stolen a dog from the underworld:

The Dog with which Aesulapius is pictured, like the dog Anubis, the companion of Egyptian Thoth, and the dog which always attended Melkarth the Phoenician Hercules, is a symbol of the Underworld; also of the dog-priests, called Enariae, who attended the Great Goddess of the Eastern Mediterranean and indulged in sodomitic frenzies in the Dog days at the rising of the Dog-star, Sirius. But the poetic meaning of the Dog in the Cad Goddeu legend, as in all similar legends, is ‘Guard the Secret,’ the prime secret on which the sovereignty of a sacred king depended. Eventually Amathaon had seduced some priest of Bran – whether it was a homosexual priesthood I do not pretend to know – and won from him a secret which enabled Gwydion to guess Bran’s name correctly. Hercules overcame the Dog Cerberus by a narcotic cake which relaxed its vigilance; what means Amathaon used is not recorded.

Sources: Christopher Penczak, Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe (Red Wheel/Weiser, 2003) & Robert Graves, The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Faber & Faber, 1960)

Maelgwn Gwynedd

Maelgwn Gwynedd (died c. 547) was king of Gwynedd during the early 6th century. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1095– c.1155) writing in Historia Regum Britanniae includes Maelgwn (Malgo):

Chapter VII
Malgo, king of Britain, and a most graceful person, addicts himself to sodomy.

AFTER him succeeded Malgo, one of the handsomest of men in Britain, a great scourge of tyrants, and a man of great strength, extraordinary munificence, and matchless valour, but addicted very much to the detestable vice of sodomy, by which he made himself abominable to God. He also possessed the whole island, to which, after a cruel war, he added the six provincial islands, voz. Ireland, Iceland, Gothland, the Orkneys, Norway, and Dacia.

However, it is accepted that there are no other sources to confirm this reference to sodomy, and is unlikely to be true.

William Christopher Brown in his paper, One Hundred Years of Sodomy: Courtliness and the Deployment of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century Histories of Britain, notes:

“Geoffrey’s use of the term “sodomitana” (sodomite), an identity, and its distinction from “sodomia” (sodomy), an act, is important. According to Peter Damian, and in accord with Foucault, sodomy, or “unnatural acts,” include “masturbation, femoral intercourse, anal intercourse, [and] bestiality.”

The Mabinogian.

Celtic cultures of Wales and Ireland are believed to have had homosexual and homoerotic practices, especially among the warrior classes. Mythological stories often reflect this homoerotic and transgender quality. A notable example is the transformations of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy into mated pairs of animals in The Mabinogion.

Gwrach y Rhibyn

The Gwrach y Rhibyn, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman, is said to approach the window of the person about to die by night and call their name, shrieking, “Fy ngŵr, fy ngŵr!” (My husband! My husband!) or “Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach!” (My child! My little child!), though sometimes she will assume a male’s voice and cry “Fy ngwraig! Fy ngwraig!” (My wife! My wife!).

For more details on this see Forbidden Lives: LGBT stories from Wales

Greek-Roman god Attis

(Image: Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales)

“Attis was known as both a “male” and “female” god in certain texts and had a religious following of “Galli” priests. They were known as “gender-variant” priests, sometimes depicted as neither man or woman. Some of their depictions represent them wearing clothes and ornaments often associated with femininity in Ancient Rome, wearing makeup and changing their hair colour.
The head of a sculpture found in Caerleon, near Newport, points to the existence of the cult of Attis, and potentially Galli priests in ancient Wales too.”

Source: Joe Ali, The fascinating ancient artefacts that show Wales’ LGBT+ history dates back thousands of years, WalesOnline, 11 February 2022

Emperor Elagabalus

“A hoard of more than 300 coins was found in Sully Moors in the Vale of Glamorgan in the late 19th Century, which shows Emperor Elagabalus. Elagabalus was reported to be sometimes referred to as a man, but historians also wrote that they identified as, and asked to be regarded as, a woman. They used to shave their body hair, wear make-up and wigs, and rejected being called a lord. Other evidence suggests that they asked physicians to change their body, promising them a lot of money to do so. Some details about a relationship with a charioteer called Hierocles are available, and a potential marriage to him.”

Source: Joe Ali, The fascinating ancient artefacts that show Wales’ LGBT+ history dates back thousands of years, WalesOnline, 11 February 2022

Tags: addicts himself to sodomy. Attis Bran the Blessed Emperor Elagabalus Gwrach y Rhibyn Gwydion and Gilfaethwy king of Britain Maelgwn Gwynedd Malgo queer Welsh mythology sodomia sodomitana The Mabinogion The White Goddess

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