Flidais

A friend recently asked me about the Goddess Flidais. Flidais (pronounced Flee-dash, Flee-dish, Flee-ish) is one of the less well known of the Tuatha Dé Danann (the people/tribe/nation of the Goddess Danu). The fair haired Flidais Foltchaoin or Flidais 'the beautiful haired', is an archetypal Mother Goddess figure of abundance, fertility and nurturing, but also she's much more.  Flidais is the woodland Goddess (often equated with Diana or Artemis), mistress of stags who travels through the forests in her chariot drawn by deer; she's the huntress but also the protector and nurturer of the woodland and wider landscape along with all its wild inhabitants, its trees, its flora and fauna. For me Flidais is the Earth Mother avatar through which I communicate with the woodland and wider nature, the Goddess to which I feel closest and the one I most frequently seek a connection with. Flidais doesn't just protect wild animals, no, she also protects domestic animals too, to which end she's said to possess a herd of cattle who can produce bountiful quantities of milk on demand. She's a shape-shifter, so can appear to us in many guises according to necessity, though often in the form of a woodland animal, hound or deer; for me she appeared as a deer. Some historians doubt her existence although Flidais features in several of the ancient Ulster Cycle of tales such as in the Cattle Raid of Cooley, The Driving off of Flidais’s Cattle (where her magic cattle feature) and other texts. These texts also described her as strong and as knowing her own mind, a highly sensual and sexual Goddess, and is mentioned as having great sexual prowess. Flidais as you'd imagine being a Mother Goddess figure is a Goddess of nurturing and healing, she's the one you'd turn to when it's all getting to much and you need some support as only a mother can give; she protects the poor, the destitute, the outcast and the fatherless children. She's a mother herself, in the 'Book of invasions' to daughters Dianann and Bé Chuille (sorceresses of the Tuatha Dé Danann) and Bé Téite (the cultivator) and to son Arden (also a cultivator); in the Metrical Dindshenchas she is said to be the mother to Fand (the sea Goddess) and in the 'Fitness of Names' Nia Segamain is also sited as her son. That in brief is Flidais.