"It is one of their tenets that nothing perishes,
but, as the Sun and the Year,
is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions."
___ Robert Kirk, "The Secret Commonwealth"
The Rev. Robert Kirk was a Scots clergyman with a great interest in faeries and the second sight. His research caused him to talk to many Gaelic people who had firsthand knowledge of these matters. He formed a whole philosophy
of the faery world, including this understanding of the spiraling pilgrimage of life. The wisdom of any turas lies not in the arrival, but in the traveling. With our modern goal-centered, destination-seeking perspective, we have forgotten this concept of the renewal of the spiral of life. We pay attention to the end, to the certificate of achievement, to the self-congratulation of conclusion, when we should be more involved in our spiraling progress through life. Each year, our own spiral path, things change and yet remain unchanging,l freshly and eternally rediscovered, a delight to our senses, powerful enough to move our soul. This unchanging renewal is chanted by mystics all over the world who declare that 'there is nothing new under heaven.'
Yet these eternal things do not feel stale or repetitive to us when we experience them. They are rediscovered in moments when we have been exiled from or have neglected their savor and wonder: the unstained clarity of a new day, the urgent grasp of sexual need and its assuaging, the laughter of our child, which stays the same whatever age he reaches. All these things are ever new and always the same; time and perspective alone have renewed them for us.
"What is old and always new, what is deep and always true for you this day?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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