I toyed with this idea for a couple years.
The bean-sídhe (banshee) of Gaelic (Irish, Scottish, Manx) folklore is a harbinger of doom. Bean-sídhe literally means "woman of the fairy folk" and she is a guardian spirit to the ancient Gaelic families. Heard more often than seen (she usually appears as a woman in a silver-grey cloak, hence their veils and cloaks here), she visits the family home in the evening and wails and laments through the night to warn the family that one of them will soon die. You hear her crying three nights in a row, you know that you should begin planning a funeral.
The bean-sídhe is often viewed with dread, given her association with death, but she herself means no harm; she is only trying to warn your family of impending death as well as safely guide the soul of the dying to the world of the spirits, and since she is a guardian spirit and this is "her" family she is genuinely grieving.
The bean-sídhe has her human counterpart in the keening-woman, who has historically been hired to keen (wail and sing lamentations for the dead) at funerals. The wealthier the family of the deceased, the likelier that there would be many keening-women. These women were effectively in charge of guiding the community through the grieving process and often took girls as students to learn the lamentations and the art of crying while singing. Many of the laments are indeed beautiful, sad songs, but the purpose of keening is not so much to sound pretty as to provide emotional release.
For more information, look here: http://www.keeningwake.com/keening-wake-event/
When many mná-sídhe (plural of bean-sídhe, hence "fairy-women") are heard wailing at once, it's a warning that somebody important (politically, religiously, etc) will soon die.
With that last tidbit, I have imagined for years this enormous chorus of fairy-women keening (ritualized wailing and singing lamentations, from Gaelic caoin, "to weep, to mourn") for humanity, for life as we know it. It's meant to raise awareness of if not address the climate change.
Here, I have drawn from as many ancestries as I could, not just Celtic, since many traditions have ritual wailing for the dead.
West African traditions have tales of female spirits wailing in grief for those kidnapped and enslaved.
Many American Indigenous traditions likewise feature wailing female spirits. La Llorona of Mexican and Central American lore probably has roots in these tales of such wailing women, and La Llorona herself could be likened to a banshee, except that she is generally more actively malevolent than her Gaelic counterpart.
The globe in the center is meant to convey a rough idea of the altered coastlines caused by sea level rise and melting ice caused by global warming, plus smoke from steppe wildfires across Russia and Siberia, plus the implications of a hurricane where the polar icecap should be. It has a macabre similarity to "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli, but instead of surrounded by the gods and heroes of Greek mythology, the globel is surrounded by a banshee chorus wailing in warning over climate change.
This this chorus of fairy-women and keening-women is wailing to warn of this existential threat. I have come to associate the banshee, as messengers to warn of death, with our own precarious current situation, wailing to warn us that we take action immediately.
As of Summer, 2024, the vast majority of climate scientists believe that we will soon surpass our 1.5 degree Celsius global warming goal and provoke further climate change tipping points.
And we have the means to avert this; bold action at all levels of society, from government to household, hitting some key social tipping points like massive greenhouse gas emission reductions and preparing for greater resilience, and certainly equity for all. And action is needed now before the less than six years remaining this decade.
I can relate so much to the keening women, some days.
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