Dreaming with the Fast-Flowing Goddess

At the shrine of Sequana, at the source of the River Seine in the Dijon area of France, ancient Celts came to seek healing dreams in the sacred night. Cloaked pilgrims journeyed with their offerings, which included models of the organs that needed healing, carved from oak or stone. They bathed in the sacred spring, prayed to the goddess, and placed their offerings beside a sacred pool. They entered a long portico or dormitory, hoping that in the night - during sleep or in the twilight state between sleeping and waking that the ancients knew is especially propitious for contact with the more-than-human - the goddess Sequana or her emissary would appear to them.
    No magical power, other than simple cleansing, was attributed to the spring itself, but the waters were regarded as a source of creative flow, and as a portal to the Otherworld and its powers.
    We know the name Sequana from nine inscriptions found in the area. It has been suggested that it means "The Fast-Flowing One". Sequana is the goddess of the River Seine, which flows through Paris, and (according to Strabo) was the patron of the Sequanae, a Gaulish tribe in this region. Her special companion animal is the duck, and in a statue now in the Musée archéologique  de Dijon, a crowned Sequana is depicted riding in a duck-headed boat.
      Only the foundations of the healing shrine of Sequana at her spring, the Fontes Sequanae, survive, but we can glean a great deal about the ancient practice of dream incubation for healing from the contents of two pottery vessels discovered at the site. One contains more than a hundred  carved effigies of eyes, breasts, limbs, heads and internal organs. A second vessel contained more than 800 similar carvings. Pilgrims who needed healing for the parts represented ascended a series of terraces, pausing perhaps to drink from streams and cisterns containing the sacred waters, before reaching the main sanctuary and being admitted to the place of sacred sleep. Grateful travelers paid for inscriptions at the site thanking Sequana for gifts of healing, evidence that we have here a Celtic parallel to the practice of Asklepian dream healing in the ancient Mediterranean.
     What happened to this great precinct of dream healing in the realm of the Goddess when the Church arrived? One guess. The site was appropriated by the Church and re-dedicated to an invented male saint, St Sequanus.
     In reviving the memory of the "Fast-Flowing" Goddess, as we do in my Celtic-themed workshops and gatherings, we step towards cultural soul recovery - and remember a healing practice that can transform our lives.

Image: statue of Sequana in a duck-headed boat in the Musée archéologique  de Dijon.

If it looks like a duck, it could be a Celtic goddess

At the shrine of Sequana, at the source of the River Seine in the Dijon area of France, ancient Celts came to seek healing dreams in the sacred night. Cloaked pilgrims journeyed with their offerings, which included models of the organs that needed healing, carved from oak or stone. They bathed in the sacred spring, prayed to the goddess, and placed their offerings beside a sacred pool. They entered a long portico or dormitory, hoping that in the night - during sleep or in the twilight state between sleeping and waking that the ancients knew is especially propitious for contact with the more-than-human - the goddess Sequana or her emissary would appear to them.

    No magical power, other than simple cleansing, was attributed to the spring itself, but the waters were regarded as a source of creative flow, and as a portal to the Otherworld and its powers.

     We know the name Sequana from nine inscriptions found in the area. It has been suggested that it means "The Fast-Flowing One". Sequana is the goddess of the River Seine, which flows through Paris, and (according to Strabo) was the patron of the Sequanae, a Gaulish tribe in this region. Her special companion animal is the duck, and in a statue now in the Musée archéologique  de Dijon, a crowned Sequana is depicted riding in a duck-headed boat.

     Only the foundations of the healing shrine of Sequana at her spring, the Fontes Sequanae, survive, but we can glean a great deal about the ancient practice of dream incubation for healing from the contents of two pottery vessels discovered at the site. One contains more than a hundred  carved effigies of eyes, breasts, limbs, heads and internal organs. A second vessel contained more than 800 similar carvings.

     Pilgrims who needed healing for the parts represented ascended a series of terraces, pausing perhaps to drink from streams and cisterns containing the sacred waters, before reaching the main sanctuary and being admitted to the place of sacred sleep. Grateful travelers paid for inscriptions at the site thanking Sequana for gifts of healing, evidence that we have here a Celtic parallel to the practice of Asklepian dream healing in the ancient Mediterranean.

     What happened to this great precinct of dream healing in the realm of the Goddess when the Church arrived? One guess. The site was appropriated by the Church and re-dedicated to an invented male saint, St Sequanus.

     In reviving the memory of the "Fast-Flowing" Goddess, we take another step towards cultural soul recovery - and remember a healing practice that can transform our lives.

Dream gifts: the mystery name of a Goddess

It's happened again. My dreams have given me the assignment of tracking a mystery word. I am pretty sure that this time it is an ancient name of the Goddess in Celtic realms. In a dream in the early hours:

I am walking with a friend on the embankment of a river in a great city, near the museums. The whole scene is wrapped in thick fog, and it is getting quite dark. However, our spirits are bright. We are discussing a female name in an ancient inscription that is new to us and may only just have been discovered. The name is something like SOMERSA.

I can see the letters, in Roman capitals, in a longer text, but cannot freeze the whole tableau as I rise from the dream. And as I listen to my voice in the dream, I am not sure whether I pronounced the name as "Somersa" or "Sumersi".

     Fully awake, I am happy and excited. As so often in my life, I feel that an unknown word from a dream is a gift that will open rich new avenues of exploration..

     I am fairly certain that the mystery word is the name of a goddess. I think of the Gaulish name of a great Celtic goddess: Rosmerta. Her name appears on a number of inscriptions from what are now France, Germany, Luxemburg and Romania. Etymologists think that her name means “Great Provider”. Smert, the stem, means “provider”. Ro means “very” or “great”. The –a suffix is a typical Gaulish feminine ending.

     In the iconography, Rosmerta is usually shown holding a cornucopia and a purse or patera. In Roman times, she is often accompanied by Mercury holding the caduceus of the divine messenger and a money bag. In one image, Mercury offers his money bag to her, a worthy consort indeed. In a statue from Clermont-Ferrand, she is not merely wearing a winged cap, like Mercury; her head has sprouted wings.
     Mercury and Rosmerta. A political marriage between a Roman deity and a Celtic goddess? The Romans were fond of this kind of mix-and-match. It seems that Celtic realms as far east as the modern Czech Republic, the deity the Romans named Mercury had a previous and parallel Celtic identity, as Vinucius, the “Raven-Wise”.
     The Romans had another name for Rosmerta: Abundantia. She is the personification of abundance. A marvelous statue of the goddess under this name, now in the Musée de la civilisation gallo-romaine, in Lyon, shows her with an offering dish containing two birds in her right hand, while her left hand holds up an abundance of fruits in a fold of her dress.
     If I play a little word assembly game, putting the modifier Ro in front of my dream word and compressing it a little I get Rosmersa. Close to the more familiar goddess name, but not a match. And I hear the hiss of that final S in my mind. No getting away from that.

      Maybe my flirtation with Rosmerta and abbondanza is coming down like that river fog over a fresh revelation that I have yet to grasp. I listen to the name I dreamed, as I spoke it in the dream. Was it Somersa, or Sumersi?
     Some might associate either version with ancient Sumer (to which other dreams call me) or with the Sumari songs of Jane Roberts. For me, the trail goes cold when I turn in those directions. I do hear the echo of “Summer” in the name. A goddess of abundance might well have a summery name.
     The dream detective in me will remain poised for new clues. Maybe he will try to go back into the mists of that dream, and see if he can view the inscription and hold it in steadier focus. Perhaps he will try to fold time, as a dream archaeologist, and journey back to the world from which it comes.

Graphics: Top, Rosmerta as Abundantia. Bottom, Morning by the River Vltava in Prague.