Living the Metaphor

Living the Metaphor

"Then as now the Cauldron of Ceridwen.... was on the boil; and its life-giving drops .... were
being scattered abroad, according to what,
by mere human computation, amount to nothing, but the accidents of pure chance."
    ___ John Cowper Pwys, "Obstinate Cymric"

  From Ceridwen's vessel of inspiration three drops flew out and were caught by the child Gwion as he sat tending the cauldron. When a spark of knowledge catches the tinder of our being, it runs through us like a forest fire. All the metaphors and images by which we have lived our lives become incandescent with immediacy and meaning. After the kiss of knowledge, Taliesin, who  was once the boy Gwion, declares that he has been in many times and places, that he has been a drop in the air, a letter among words, a sword in the hand, a string in a harp, and many other conditions associated with the human state. It is the metaphor of himself in the immediacy of the realized present that sings.
   To realize and truly live our metaphor, we need the random grace of the cauldron's drops to awaken us to our true potential. Suddenly, meaning explodes behind our eyes and thoughts run together and connect like the colors on an easel when it rains. This is the experience of the child Gwion when he puts his lips to his hand to cool the scalding drops. The incubation period of knowledge for Gwion is nine months in the womb of Ceridwen, where he brings together the many metaphors of himself and learns their truth. By the time he is born, they have become a part of him; he is living repository of his own knowledge.

"What metaphors do you apply to your own life (e.g. lone wolf, a rolling stone, a busy beaver, a foolish clown)? What triggers knowledge of these metaphors? What fixes their truth in you?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]