Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 9: Melusine

Sources and Influences

BAM: Melusine:

Thealogy

Melusine (as the name is spelled in most published versions of the Charge), or Melusina, is at first sight a strange choice to include in the Goddess names of the Charge, since she doesn’t seem to have started off life as a Goddess, but as part of a mediaeval French legend.
Her rather endearing legend (Sabine Baring-Gould: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (New Edition). Rivingtons, London, 1869.)  has it that Emmerick, rich and virtuous Count of Poitou, had a son, Bertram,  and a daughter, Blaniferte. Nearby lived the Count de la Forêt, a poor relation with a large family. As an act of charity the Count of Poitou adopted Raymond, the handsome and charming youngest son of this family. One day they were out hunting in the forest together, and had become separated from their servants, so that there was no one to witness what followed. A boar rushed up to them, and Raymond, in trying to kill the bear with his sword, accidentally stabbed the Count of Poitou, who died. Raymond killed the boar, and wandered off into the forest in despair at what he had done.
After some time he came to a glade in the forest (you see, it really does have all the features of a fairy tale), illuminated by the light of the new moon, which contained a fountain, with three maidens nearby. One of them asked Raymond why he was afraid. He recounted his sorry tale, and she advised him to go back to Poictiers as if he didn’t know what had happened, relying on the fact that the whole party would be returning in dribs and drabs, not to draw attention to him. When the Count’s body was found, it would be assumed that he  had fatally wounded the boar with his sword, and that the boar had gored him with its horn before it died.
Raymond talked with the lady, who was Melusine, a ‘water-fay of great power and wealth,’ (Ibid, p.474.)  until daybreak. She asked him to persuade Bertram, his adoptive elder brother, to grant her as much ground around the fountain as could be covered by a stag’s hide, where she would build a wonderful palace. She promised to be Raymond’s wife on one condition: that he would leave her alone to spend Saturdays completely alone, and he would never intrude on her seclusion.
By means of Raymond cutting the stag’s hide up into strips, the land which Bertram gave to Melusine was actually a great area. Melusine and Raymond where married, with great ceremony, in the castle Melusine erected there. She kept on extending this castle, and called it Lusinia after herself, a name which has become corrupted to the modern Lusignan.
Melusine and Raymond had many children together, all of them hideous and disfigured in some way: their first, Urian, had one eye red and the other green; their fourth, Anthony, had claws on his fingers and was covered with hair; their sixth, ‘Geoffry with the Tooth’, had a boar’s tusk growing out of his jaw. Despite their deformities, their children grew up to be great heroes, warriors, and monks.
Meanwhile Raymond’s love for Melusine never faded, and he faithfully left her completely alone for twenty four hours every Saturday. Then one Saturday Raymond’s father asked after Melusine, and he said that she was not visible on Saturdays, but his brother whispered to him that people were gossiping about the reasons for her disappearance every Saturday, and he really should look into it, to set people’s minds at rest. So Raymond went to Melusine’s rooms, which he found empty, except that he could not enter the bathroom, because the door was locked. So he put his eye to the keyhole and found Melusine in the bath with her lower half changed into that of a fish or serpent.
Raymond said nothing to Melusine about this, and she gave no indication that she knew he had seen her. But then Geoffry with the Tooth attacked and burned the monastery of Freirmund, killing the abbot and 100 monks, including one of his brothers. Raymond was devastated, so upset that when Melusine approached him to comfort him, he repelled her with the words, ‘Away, odious serpent, contaminator of my honourable race.’
At this Melusine left him, but said that he and his successors would see her hovering over the castle at the deaths of its lords. She left by the window, leaving an impression of her foot in the stone. Two of Raymond and Melusine’s children were still in the cradle, and the nurses would see a shimmering comforting figure near the cradle at night.
It was long believed that Melusine would appear in the air over the castle of Lusignan before the death of its lord.
There are mediaeval accounts extant of this legend. In 1387 Jean d’Arras, secretary to the Duc de Berry, was ordered to collect all available information about Melusine. This was published in 1478, and repeatedly republished in the years to come. It contains a similarly legendary genealogy of Melusine, which brings the story rather closer to home: Melusine (the youngest), Melior and Plantina were the daughters of the Scots king Helmas, who married a fay named Pressina. She made him promise not to witness his lying-in, but he rushed in through his joy at the birth, and Pressina took away the triplets. When the triplets were fifteen, Pressina told them how their father had broken his promise, and Melusine determined on revenge. She and her sisters chained up King Helmas in the heart of a mountain called Avalon, which some sources locate in Northumberland. Her mother was so angry at this that she punished Melusine by condemning her to spend every Sabbath in half-fish-form, until she would find a suitor who would not enquire what happened to her on Saturdays.
So why include this mediaeval southern French legendary figure among the Goddess names of the Charge? Her name (in the form Melusine, rather than the form of Melusina, as used by Baring-Gould) does occur in Crowley’s The Law of Liberty, from which so many of the Crowley quotations in the original version of the Charge come. But I feel that the most likely source and inspiration for this inclusion is actually the chapter referenced here, in Baring-Gould’s book. He recounts the legend, as above, but then goes on to theorise about what is going on mythologically in this story. He highlights the death-omen aspect of the story, which may also serve to give the figure of Melusine a more home-grown aspect than the other Goddesses:

‘As Grimm has observed, this is a Gallic and therefore a Keltic myth, an opinion confirmed by the Banshee part played by the unfortunate nymph. For the Banshee superstition has no corresponding feature in Scandinavian, Teutonic, or Classic mythology, and belongs entirely to the Kelts.’ (Ibid, p. 488.)

Perfect for inclusion in a ritual of a cult which has survived underground for centuries: a little-known figure, who is not borrowed from wider mythology.
Obviously the enquirer may object that she is not a Goddess at all, but a mermaid, but the answer to that can be found in Baring-Gould as well. He finds parallels to her name in Goddesses in very diverse cultures. For example Mylitta was the corresponding moon-Goddess to the sun-God Moloch. In Greece the priestesses of Demeter were called Melissae. Selene, the moon, was also called by the name Melissa, which passed into the Gallic Celts’ popular mythology as a title for nymphs, until it was attached to Melusine.
In fact he believes her to be a moon-Goddess, in the form of half-human and half-fish. He gives various examples of Goddesses in this shape from North America, Iceland, and Ceylon. Ultimately he likens Melusine to

‘...the Semitic moon-goddess, who followed the course of the sun, at times manifesting herself to the eyes of men, at others seeking concealment in the western flood was represented as half woman, half fish, with characteristics which make her lunar origin indisputable. Her name was Derceto or Atergatis.’ (Ibid, p. 497)

So in fact Melusine would seem an ideal figure for inclusion here: she is fairly obscure, genuinely old (admittedly not as old as, say, Artemis, but she would fit the period for veneration by a postulated witch cult which had gone underground). She is near to home, with links in her stories to Britain, and even without them links can be forged to the Celts. And she is also a figure who has parallels in many different cultures, so has the required element of universality.