Uninvited Guests

Uninvited Guests

"Three things that come without asking: fear,
jealousy, love."
   Scots Gaelic triad


   When fear grips us, our ability to act quickly or think clearly evaporates; we may become completely petrified and powerless. Fear often skims along just below the surface of perception, ready to appear when given opportunity. Its appeasing can lead to avoidance: we can be thrown out of the house of our soul by extreme fear. Fear cannot be evicted or overcome as such, though it can be transformed. Fear holds the key to lock away our abilities. To gain acess to them again, we have to grasp the key and transform fear into power, recognizing that one becomes the other, just as water becomes ice.

   Jealousy brings with it a fierce twisting of our perceptions so that everything concerning the object of our jealousy isdistorted. When Cuchulainn fell in love with another woman, his wife, Emer, was consumed by a terrible jealousy that changed her perceptions utterly: "What's red is beautiful, what's new is bright, what's tall is fair, what's familiar is stale. The unknown is honored, the known neglected." The only cure for Cuchulainn's enchantment and Emer's jealousy was for the God of the Otherworld, Manannan, to shake his cloak between them to bring them both forgetfulness. By all accounts, this is the only socially acceptabe antidote to this particular guest.

  Love is not altogether a welcome guest either. Its coming is often accompanied by disorientation and upheavel. It is frequently confounded with illness, as when King Ailell took to his bed with an unspecified disorder: his doctors finally proclaimed that he was suffeirng from 'the two deadly pangs which no doctor can cure: love and jealousy.'  The only remedy for love is reciprocated love; this and nothing else can erase the pangs.

"Which was the last of these uninvited guests to nvisit you?  How did you cope?  What did you learn from its visit?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Power of Three

  The Celts thought, spoke and wrote in threes. Three-pronged statements called triads encapsulated Celtic wisdom and history in a form that the bards could remember, recite and pass on to their successors. In folk tales the hero or heroine is often granted three wishes; the triple goddess and god arise in many forms; and, underlying all this, is the magical seccret about three - it is the first number after one! Because the moment you see one and two you have three, which is the relationship between them. This is the mysterious 'third force', which seems invisible, but makes all the difference.

The three fortunate concealments of Britain

"The first fortunate concealment: the head of Bran the Blessed, son of Llyr,

which was buried in the White Hill in London, with its face toward France...

Second, the dragons in Dinas Emrys, which Lludd son of Beli concealed

and the third: the bones of Gwerthefyr the Blessed, in the chief ports of

this island. And as long as they remained in that concealment, no]

Saxon oppression would ever come to this island."

Affirming threeness:

You can harness the power of three by making three affirmations at the beginning of each day. These may be specific statements of intent for the day or more general aims or observations. Express your affirmations in the positive rather than in the negative. For example:

1. I will get up right now and take a long walk in the woods before going to work.
2. I am enjoying my job, especially the long meetings, which give me a chance to observe how people are interacting with each other.
3. My relationship is deepening gradually and bringing me great sense of fulfilment.

[From: "Celtic Inspirations: by Lyn Webster Wilde]