Sir, - Peter McCarthy (September 9th) may be a little off the mark when he suggests that comparisons cannot and should not be made between Mother Teresa, "a wrinkled, old nun", and Diana "the photogenic young princess".
For thousands of years, the staple spiritual diet of Europeans was the cult of the goddess. (Our own country, Eire, owes its name to one such Celtic goddess.) The cult of Brigit - "the exalted one" - was supplanted by the Christian Brigid; this pattern culminates in the Virgin Mary, in whom goddess worship was subsumed until the Reformation put severe limits to Marian iconography.
The emotional response to the tragic death of Diana - named after a goddess, as her brother pointed out in his eloquent eulogy - may be partly attributable to the re-emergence, in new guise, of the suppressed cult of the goddess. Mr McCarthy might like to know - as can be confirmed by Celticists, transpersonal psychologists, folklorists and anthropologists - that the goddess has always been able to manifest herself as crone and sparkling maiden alike. - Is mise,
Gabriel Rosenstock,
Gleann na gCaorach, Co Atha Cliath.