deisel (tradition)
deisel [ 'd'eʃel ] ( Old Irish ; neuirisch Deiseal ) means in the insular Celtic customs in the direction of the solar cycle or the clockwise direction. The opposite direction is called tuaithbel [ 'tuaθbel ] ( New Irish tuathal ).
A movement in the deisel is considered to bring good luck, in the tuaithbel as ominous. Ritual processions, as they are described in the old Irish hero legend, always had to be carried out in the direction of the sun's path if they were to produce a beneficial effect. In order to achieve a negative "success", like a curse, the opposite direction had to be taken. Often “ curse stones ” on a bullaun (“stone plinth”) were also turned against the course of the sun. Turned the other way around, the curse stone became the wishing stone.
In a story from the mythological cycle of Celtic mythology, the river nymph Boand desecrates her husband Nechtan's secret spring in the Síd Nechtain by walking around in the tuaithbel , whereupon she drowns. The source goes over and this is how the Boand ( Boyne ) river is said to have been formed.
During the patterns (pilgrimages) of Baile Bhuirne (Ballyvourney, County Cork ), the Turas in Gleann Cholm Cille and elsewhere, the stations with the bullauns are still circled clockwise.
Similar customs can now be seen at the Scottish Hogmanay , where the participants walk around a fire clockwise and hit a goat's skin with a stick or fire tongs.
literature
- Helmut Birkhan : Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , pp. 805-807.
- Bernhard Maier : Lexicon of Celtic Religion and Culture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 466). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-46601-5 , p. 97.