MABON
(Welsh) {MAH-bahn or BAY-bone] Also maponos and Maponus. Mabon means "great son", the child of Modred whose name means "great mother". He was stolen from Modron at three years old and later rescued by King Arthur.
Mabon's myths overlap those of Gwyn Ap Nuad, and they may have once been the same deity. Mabon rode wild horses, had prized guardian hunting hounds, and he may have been an actual ruler of Wales who later came into myth.
He is also a minor sun God, yet he represents the power in darkness. His images transcend all the life stages of other Gods. He is a king of death and the Otherworld, a deity of the harvest and fertility, and was once called "The Divine Youth" by his followers. He represents innocent youth when young, strength and virility as a young man, and the sacrificial God when elderly. His image is linked the hierarchies of sacred animals , and he may have once figured heavily in long lost Celtic creation myths since he is equated with the expelling of and control of the darkness and of storms.
Some Celtic traditions see him as the original being, the first God, the first life carved out of the primal void of the divine womb.
He was adopted by the Anglo-Romans as Maponus and was honored at Hadrian's Wall. He is sometimes called a masculine Persephone, or the Celtic Dionysus because of his linkage with the grape harvest. |
