Aengus Óg, the Mac Óg, is generally regarded as the Irish god of love, although it’s difficult to know if this is how he was worshipped originally. He is himself a lover, a protector of lovers, a great hunter, and it is said he turned four of his kisses into birds, whose fluttering is felt in the hearts of lovers.

So why haven’t you ever seen a statue of him? Danu, the Morrígan, the Dagda, the Cailleach– all have commercially available statues and are popular deities. Why not Aengus, whom we have more stories about than most and who governs such a universal concept as love? Other love and sex deities are still popular. People love Aphrodite, Venus, Inanna, Freyja. Yet, not infrequently, people try to shoehorn love and sex into the portfolio of other Irish deities before they’ll approach the Mac Óg. Why?

PATRIARCHY.

Okay, not quite– it’s not like the ancient Irish weren’t a patriarchy– but seriously, I think it *is* our modern patriarchy, and our ideas of gender and masculinity, that hedge him out.

We’re not comfortable with a man who suffers the love-sickness in our culture. We’re not comfortable with a man representing the concepts of love or of sex. That is seen a vulnerable, softer sort of thing, and relegated to women (whether women like it or not). Men *have* sex, they don’t crave it when lonely late at night, they don’t long for a lover they miss, they can’t embody love and it’s madness, because in our culture those are feminine things (ultimately this stems more from a defining of what a woman can or must be, but it hurts everyone). Which is why, I think, you sometimes see people trying to stitch “love goddess” onto **the Morrígan** of all deities, rather than embrace Aengus.

It may be obvious by now, but I think this is something worth addressing and changing.