a recording of this lecture will be available to ticket holders for two weeks after the event
Lugh, the Many-Skilled, is the best-known of Irish male deities, and apparently the most popular. Handsome, charismatic, charming, and adept at all that he does, he has been called virtually the ideal designer god. In modern times he is often thought to have originally been identified with the sun. Scholars have linked him with the names of gods and places across Europe to turn him into the Irish version of a single ancient pan-Celtic deity, Lugus. Equally famous today is a sensationally feisty and charismatic Irish goddess, the Morrigan, who is regarded (and often feared) in modern memory as a deity of battle, darkness and terror. She also, however, operated in the medieval stories as a goddess of love, bestowing sovereignty and victory on gods and heroes with whom she mates. The purpose of this talk is to discover what the actual evidence is of both, and to see whether a closer relationship can be made with either in the process.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
