The Super Nova of 1006 in Culhwch and Olwen. Appendix 1: The Very Black Witch Daughter of the Very White Witch.

The Super Nova of 1006 in Culhwch and Olwen. Appendix 1:

The Very Black Witch Daughter of the Very White Witch.

Note that the Scales are held by Astraea 'Justice'

Arthur said, 'Is there anything now that has not been got of the things hard to find?'

One of the men said, 'Yes, the blood of the Dark Black Witch, Daughter of the Bright White Witch from the Valley of Grief in the uplands of Hell.'

Arthur set out towards the North and came to where the cave of the witch was. And Gwyn son of Nudd and Gwythyr son of Greidawl counselled to send Cacamwri and Hygwydd, his brother, to fight with the witch. And as they came into the cave, the witch rushed towards them and took hold of Hygwydd by the hair of his head and struck him to the floor beneath her. And Cacamwri took hold of her by the hair of her head and pulled her off Hygwydd to the floor, and she turned on Cacamwri and thrashed the two of them soundly and disarmed them, and drove them out whooping and hollering. And Arthur grew angry at seeing his two servants nearly killed, and he sought to rush towards the cave. But then Gwyn and Gwythyr said to him, 'It is not fair and not pleasant for us to see you wrestling with a witch. Send Long Amren and Long Eiddyl to the cave. And they went. And if the trouble was bad for the two earlier, worse was the trouble of those two, so that God knew not one of those four was able to go from that place, except that the four of them were set on Llamrei, Arthur's mare.

And then Arthur rushed towards the entrance of the cave and from the entrance he threw Carnwennan, his knife, at the witch and struck her through the middle until she was as two tubs.

The opening sentence of the penultimate episode in Culhwch, 'Kychwyn a oruc Arthur parth a'r Gogled, a dyuot hyt lle yd oed gogof y wrach', 'Arthur set out towards the North and came to where the cave of the witch was,' coupled with the conspicuous roles played by the 'northerners' Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwythyr vab Greidawl, has suggested to all commentators that the Hag's cave is in The North, i.e. Yr Hen Gogledd, the Old North, the once Brythonic speaking area of what is now part of Strathclyde in South-West Scotland and Cumbria in the North-West of England. And there is no doubt that there are certainly some very old traditions which locate an entrance to the Otherworld somewhere North of Hadrian's Wall. However, there is another way of thinking about the location of this cave and one which does not necessarily contradict this common-sense view.

The more precise address of the Black Witch given by the author, Pennant Gouut yg gwrthtir Uffern, 'the Valley of Grief in the uplands of Hell' indicate that he was not just thinking of some place in North Britain, but also of a very particular place in the sky. The term 'Uffern' in Culhwch has always been translated as 'hell' or 'Hell' as if it were the Christian Hell but this is misleading. In later times this term did come to signify the Christian concept of Hell, as it does in modern Welsh, but patently this cannot be the case here. Neither could it be claimed that this is a description of the entrance to that Happy Otherworld or Annwfn, which we encounter elsewhere in the stories of the Mabinogion. It is well known that 'uffern' is derived from the Latin word inferno, and 'the infernal region' would therefore be the less loaded, more literal, English translation of this word in this context. Because what is being described here is strikingly similar to the entrance to the classical Hades, where the cave of the Very Black Witch in the Valley of Grief seems to be identical to the cave entrance to the 'infernal regions of Dis' in the valley of Grief and Anxiety which is guarded by the 'coal black' or 'pitch black' crone, the Erinye or Fury, Tisiphone. Roaming close by are said to be other mythical beasts including Centaurs and the Lernian Hydra, hinting at the celestial location of the cave.

What the author appears to be offering here is another word-picture; we may see in The Very Black Witch daughter of the Very White Witch an image of Kore (again) otherwise called Persephone, Queen of Hades, daughter of Demeter the goddess of the harvest. In the previous chapter on Dillus the Horseman I pointed out that the abduction of Kreiddylad by Gwyn ap Nudd from Gwythyr ap Greidawl has long been regarded as a British version of the abduction of Persephone by Hades. It should not surprise us, then, to find Gwyn and Gwythyr acting as advisors to Arthur in the matter of the Very Black Witch, for they have both had previous dealings with her, for it is they who will fight for her every May 1^st forever until Judgement Day. Kreiddylat/Kore/Persephone is represented in the night sky as the zodiacal constellation Virgo and the cave of this 'crone' is the constellation Crater, considered by the ancient poets and philosophers to be the souls' entry point into corporeality, situated, as it is, in the uplands of the 'infernal regions of Dis'. Aratus describes it thus:

But if during an evening in the Spring the observer faces South and looks almost overhead, he will see how the souls, passing through the descending portal of Cancer, by veering slightly to the left, would go by Crater.

Note that Aratus points us South and upwards not North, but this did not stop other Greeks and Romans from thinking of entrances to Hades / Dis as being somewhere in the North, or in the West, or for that matter at the Cave of Dionysus, or the Cave at Ithaca. Indeed Macrobius describes it as follows:

Cancer (is) the portal of men, because through it descent is made to the infernal regions; Capricorn (is) the portal of the gods, because through it souls return to their rightful abode of immortality, to be reckoned among the gods.This is what Homer with his divine intelligence signifies in his description of the cave at Ithaca.

Proving that these Cosmic entrance and exit caves could be said, in the same breath, to have both a celestial and a mundane location. A little later Macrobius adds more detail as to the specific celestial address of the cave, although a little confusedly because as Stahl and others have pointed out 'Crater is between Corvus and Hydra' or between Corvus and Leo not Cancer and Leo:

Another clue to this secret is the location of the constellation of the Bowl of Bacchus in the region between Cancer and Leo, indicating that there for the first time intoxication overtakes descending souls with the influx of matter.

So to recap, I think that the Very Black Witch corresponds to Virgo in her guise as Persephone Queen of Hades, (perhaps confused here with Tisiphone the 'pitch black' witch) and the cave of this crone is Crater also known as the Bowl of Bacchus, the portal of descending souls into the infernal regions (Uffern).

Earlier, I gave reasons which strongly suggested that Hygwydd who carries the cauldron on his back should be equated with the serpent Hydra who carries Crater on his back, and that his brother Cacamwri being pulled to the depths by two millstones should be equated with 'long and slender' Serpens being pulled to the depths, (by two mill wheels) due to the precession of the Vernal equinox along the ecliptic. As can be seen from fig ix, if the Black Witch is meant to be Persephone/Virgo then it is now easy to appreciate the author's meaning when he says, 'the witch ... took hold of Hygwydd by the hair of his head and struck him to the floor beneath her. Cacamwri grabbed her by the hair and pulled her off Hygwydd'. This is very much the picture which could be seen from Plinlimon Top on the southern horizon at midnight, May 1^st 1006, the occasion of the first appearence of SN1006: Virgo above and dominating Hydra who is laid out on the ground along the southern horizon, Serpens, ready to strike, above Virgo.

Just in case we missed it the author, as is his wont, tells it again but now Arthur's two servants are called Hir Eiddyl and Hir Amren.

And Arthur grew angry at seeing his two servants nearly killed, and he sought to rush towards the cave. But then Gwyn and Gwythyr said to him, 'It is not fair and not pleasant for us to see you wrestling with a witch. Send Long Amren and Long Eiddyl to the cave. And they went. And if the trouble was bad for the two earlier, worse was the trouble of those two...

The meaning here, unambiguosly, of Hir is 'Long'. Bromwich & Evans suggest for Eiddyl 'weak', and Y Geiriadur Mawr gives 'eiddil FEEBLE, FRAIL, but also SLENDER. Surely Hir Eiddyl should be translated 'Long and Slender', terms often used to describe Serpens and which seems to make much more sense, in any case, than 'Long and Weak'. Hir Amren is also 'Long Something or other', (the meaning of Amren is unclear to me). Who are 'Long and Slender', and 'Long Something' if not these two Serpent Constellations once again?

The jocular image of all four of these 'men' being carried away together, draped across the back of Arthur's mare Llamrei (Grey Leaper), might appear to challenge this analysis, but measured against the accumulative weight of the surrounding evidence it is hardly a killer blow. Firstly, the sending of two lots of two of Arthur's servants to fight the Black Witch is patently another one of those 'doublets', which keep cropping up, to go along with the two boar hunts, the two birds visiting Twrch Trwyth and so on. The narrator consistently uses these doublets to reinforce an image or to get across some other specific aspect of an image. Sometimes this is not immediately apparent, for instance, the image of Hygwydd with the cauldron on his back and the image of Menw with the boar's bristle in his beak are really two aspects of the same 'super constellation' of Hydra, Crater and Corvus. I don't think it is a coincidence that this habit of relating two versions of the same story is also a noted characteristic of the star tales related by Hyginius and Eratosthenes. In addition, in one or other, or both of these doublets it is usual to find that the names of the characters appear to be fairly transparent 'codewords' for the constellations, not just any constellations mind, or made up ones, but only those classical constellations in the vicinity of SN1006, and it is worth repeating here some other examples along side Hir Amren and Hygwydd, and Hir Eiddyl and Cacamwri:

The 'maiden' uorwyn Kreiddylad – Kore - The Maiden = Virgo 
The Very Black Witch daughter of the Very White Witch - split into two tubs –  Persephone Queen of Hades, daughter of Demeter (Tisiphone - 'the pitch black crone'?) = Astraea/Libra?Virgo 
Dillus the Horseman – Pholus the Horseman = Centaurus 
The marchawc 'horseman' Kyledyr Wyllt ('the Wild') – The Wild Horseman = Centaurus 
Menw ab Teirgwaedd (in Bird form) - Little son of Three Shouts - Corvus the Crow
Gwrhyr Interpreter of Languages (in Bird form) - Corvus the Crow
Hygwydd carrying Cauldron = Hydra carrying Crater 
Hir Amreu – Long something = Hydra 
Caccymuri? being pulled to the depths by 'millwheels' = Serpens 
Hir Eiddyl - Long and Slender = Serpens

I said earlier that I thought the author was likening Arthur, in his nine day and nine night battle with Twrch Trwyth for the 'precious things', to Phoebus Apollo's, (the Sun), nine day and nine night journey through Scorpius. What he seems to be describing now, in the denouement to this episode, where Arthur throws Carnwennan, his 'little white knife' at the witch and cuts her in two, is the Sun's journey through Virgo at the Autumn Equinox, the place along the ecliptic where the sun slices through Virgo, splitting her into two parts, and where, in the present 'Age of Pisces' night and day are also divided into two equal parts:

And then Arthur rushed towards the entrance of the cave and from the entrance he threw Carnwennan, his knife, at the witch and struck her through the middle until she was as two tubs.

For the two thousand or so years of the Age of Aries the Autumnul equinox occurred in Scorpius, until around 6BC when the Age of Pisces began, but at some point in late antiquity, (no one knows precisely when) a new constellation was invented, Libra, the Scales, which took the place of The Claws of Scorpius (this is the reason why the sun spends only nine days and nights in the present, curtailed Claws). Hinckley Allen pointed out that it was often said of Libra or 'The Balance', which consists of two pans either side of the thin white line of the ecliptic, 'that the constellation was invented when on the equinox, and so represented the equality of day and night. Virgo was (and, as Justice still is), often pictured holding these Scales.

Astraea's scales have weighed her minutes out, Poised on the zodiac

The sequence of zodiac constellations in this area of the ecliptic which have been progressively 'pulled in to the Depths' at the Autumnal equinox in historical times, if we incude Ophiuchus/Serpentarius – 'the thirteenth house' and Libra the late replacement for the Claws of Scorpius, is as follows: Sagittarius, Scorpius, Serpentarius, Libra, Virgo. this suggests an interesting possibility: Arthur's (The Sun) fight with Twrch Trwyth for the 'Precious Things' (Scorpius), Cacamwri (Serpens/Serpentarius) being dragged to the Depths, and Arthur (Phoebus) splitting into 'two tubs' (Libra) the Very Black Witch (Virgo) with his little white knife (the ecliptic) may well be a display of knowledge concerning this sequence

In 6BC Virgo 'returned to the frame' at the Autumnal equinox, just as Pisces now ruled the Vernal equinox, a cosmic event famously heralded by Virgil as the start of a new Golden Age and which later Christians took as a prophecy of the birth of Christ the Fish, son of the Virgin, a belief which held particular currency in Wales. Virgil said:

“Now comes the last age by the song of the Cumaen sybil;

the great order of the ages is born anew;

now the Virgin returns,

now the reign of Saturn comes again;

now a new child is sent down from heaven above.”

This, of course, is the 'prophecy' alluded to in the ` 'legendary' Taliesinic poem Cad Godeu:

Sages, wise men,

prophesy Arthur!

There is something which has been before

[and] they sang of that which has been:

and one came about

because of the story of the Flood,

and [the second was] Christ's Crucifixion

and [the third is] The Day of Judgement to come.

[Like] a magnificent jewel in a gold ornament

thus I am resplendent

and I am exhilarated

by the prophecy of Virgil

Perhaps there is a suggestion here that the appearance of SN1006 was seen as heralding the emergence of a saviour, a new Arthur, in line with this prophecy. As David Carpenter has pointed out 'The biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan saw its hero as specifically another Arthur, 'king of the kings of the Isle of Britain'.ⁱ

fig ix. The Southern Horizon, Midnight, May 1^st, 1006 A.D. From Plinlimon Top

iThe Penguin History of Britain: The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284. By David Carpenter. No wonder an Anglo-Norman survey of Britain in the 1150s lamented how the Welsh 'threaten us... openly they go about saying, by means of Arthur they will have [the island] back... They will call it Britain again'