Our Heart's Desire

Our Heart's Desire

"You shall receive whatever gift you may name, as far as wind dries, rain wets, sun revolves; as far as sea encircles and earth extends."
   __Culhwch and Olwen, from The Mabinogian (trans CM)


  How many times since childhood have we pondered our heart's desire3? When we were young, we grasped the notion of bountiful giving and the granting of wishes very easily from the folk and faery stories that we read. In  our growing up, we begin to struggle against the denial of heart's desire. As adults, most of us have given over even contemplating it.
    The heart's desire is not an illusory or unachievable ambition if we can suspend our adult disbelief. The true heart's desire is an integral potentiality, a germinated seed waiting to manifest. So what prevents us from achieving it? Our lives may be littered with unresolved and undeveloped wishes, all of which block the way to our true heart's desire. If we are to achieve the core of our wish, we must first rescind and cancel our immature wishes, unless, of course, we still wish to grow a monkey's tail, obtain a rocking horse, drive a steam engine, or marry Elvis Presley! We must cancel our old and immature wishes by calling them back and revoking them, along with other idle wishes we may have uttered and since forgotten. Then the way stands clear.
    If we can commune deeply upon our true heart's desire, rather than upon our fantasies, if we can envision it with every cell of our body and call to it, then we send a true song to make the pathway between ourselves and our heart's desire.

"What is your heart's desire? Which former wishes are preventing you from attaining it? Cancel them, as suggested above."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Sacred Life

Sacred Life

"Everything that lives is holy."
      ___ William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell


    For many hundreds of years, the false tale that whatever is alive is evil has been told: this tale has been told from fear and denial, from pain and rejection, as a way of explaining why things go wrong and why perfection cannot be expected. Many people regard the living world as a predominantly evil place, full of beings of whom we should be suspicious. For such people, the only good place, the only good beings are in heaven. Living defensively in the eye of evil is not a happy to live. Fear and suspicion darken everything with a sad pall.
    The opposite view sees all life as worthy of respect, as potentially able to achieve its fullest stature. Of course, not every being alive reaches its potential; but then neither does it sink into irredeemable iniquity. Entertaining the possibility of all things living being able to achieve their potential of holiness is a powerful and supportive way to live. But, like all life-ways, even this view can be abused: when we live as though no harm could come, we are foolish rather than innocent.
    Life is a sacred gift that all beings receive. It is the manner of our living that makes the difference. The way in which we relate to other living beings encourages them to change the world for good or violate the world for ill; the way in which we spend our lives illuminates or darkens those around us. But if we are not aware of the sacred potential in each living being, if we do not acknowledge it and respect it, we may become active agents of the soul's darkening. Everything that lives is holy because it is an abiding place of Spirit; every body is a home where the sacred gifts of Spirit may be born anew.

"Contemplate the living beings with whom you are in contact - not just human beings but other living beings of nature as well. Hold each of them in your heart and acknowledge their sacred gift."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Gifts We Really Want

The Gifts We Really Want

"Be sensible of your wants, that you may be sensible of your treasures."  
  ___Thomas Traherne, Centuries


    At this of the year, when the commerciality of Christmas swamps sacred and seasonal considerations, we ask and are asked, 'What do you want this year?"  True wants are not easily satisfied by prettily wrapped parcels; they immensities of space within us that we often block up by needs and yearnings. To consider our real wants is often too frightening.
    Our wants are sharper than super large screen TVs with 3-D or video games with super special effects, jewelry that dazzles the eye
or beautiful clothing.  Our real wants eat holes in us: never resting, never loving, never greeting, never finding, never seeking, never ever being satisfied deep down.
    Those ravenous wants define our treasures so truly. They create a Christmas list that no department store could supply: time to stop and enjoy, in a space of quietness and contentment, all the things we were put on earth to do; space to give and receive love reciprocally; grace to seek and find our spiritual joy; freedom from the tyranny of others' expectations and judgments; acceptance of ourselves as we truly are. But we can discover our true treasures and how near we actually stand to them. When we really listen to ourselves say, "I haven't  time to...... I never get to ..... I'm sick of ......," we come within sight of our treasury - that wealth that goes on being unvisited year after miserable year.
    The miracle of self-permission and allowance, the willingness to receive, the gift of truth - these are the keys to unlock the treasury that has been open to us this long time.

"Make your list of real wants in order to find your true treasures. Make a present to yourself of one of these by turning one of the keys above. "
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Aids to Healing

Aids to Healing

"Three things bring healing at Myddfai: water, honey, and work."    ancient Welsh triad

   The healing arts of the Physicians of Myddfai (MUTH' vay) in North Wales were renowned throughout Britain. This famous family was descended from the alliance between a human man and a faery woman who came out of a lake and taught her healing skills to her children.
    The source of illness lies not with physical symptoms but with some spiritual cause and that cause must be treated if healing is to come about. Many things cause illness to constellate: not only physical predispositions such as infection, lowered resistance, bad hygiene, and physical weakness, but also messy relationships, fear, anger, neglect of vocational or emotional needs, and so on. Any good healer knows that these factors must be understood and included within any diagnosis. This means working to establish a basis of trust with the client.
    The work of the client is also important. The minimum requirement of the client is that some benefit should come and the minimum obligation is a readiness to make radical change in order to facilitate healing: we may have to leave a situation or relationship or reform beliefs, attitudes, or ways of life before healing can have its effect.
    Our society embraces the concept of  'self-healing.' In its truest sense, self-healing is not about taking credit for health. It is about our willingness to change our ability to receive; about taking steps by which healing can happen. Healers know that healing comes with the help of many things: plant, chemicals, human support and attention, and spiritual guidance of allies, as well as the client's predisposition to be healed. The miracle of healing lies in treating the cause of illness not by merely quelling its symptoms.

"Consider a current or past illness. What factors cause the illness to constellate? Which healing agents were helpful? What changes in situation or attitude had to take place before healing could come about?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Tasks of a Druid

The Tasks of a Druid

"The three tasks of a Druid: to live fully in the present; to honor
tradition and the ancestors; to hear the voice of tomorrow."
    ____Phillip Carr-Gomm, The Druid Renaissance


     The most difficult task is to live fully in the present. We are nearly always ahead or behind ourselves, planning the future or reminiscing and reliving the past.
      For the druid, the past is a potent place, redolent of past glories and triumphs. Nostalgic for authority and respect, the druid along with other spiritual seekers who follow an ancient path, is tempted to bathe indulgently in the rosy glow of myth and history. Yet the druid has to find ways of honoring tradition and the ancestors that truly respect them rather than enshrining and fossilizing them. And that can be done in the now.
     The future is such an unknown quantity that it is easier to project scenarios of doom or bliss than to hear its echoes. It is peopled by our descendants and by the sacred lore of tradition that we will have surrendered into their hands for practical use. The only way to access that future voice is to listen now.
      As we meditate upon the conundrum of these druidic tasks, we find ourselves rebounding from invisible walls. The sixteenth-century German mystic Jakob Boeheme knew the secret of this riddle: "He to whom time is the same as eternity and eternity the same as time, is tree of all adversity."
     Those who walk the druid path and regularly walk between the worlds learn that time does not run in the otherworld: past, present, and future are all accessible in a eternal now. The traditions and ancestors live now; the future is seeded in the now. There can be no disrespect or sentimentality forward or backward in time without severe unbalance to the now of this present moment.

"In the silence of your own grove, your own sacred place, consider your own tasks upon the path and what they entail."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews] 

Reality and Belief

Reality and Belief

"Nothing here is real without belief."

     Belief continually changes the way we perceive reality.
When a group of people speak of 'reality' they are not actually understanding the same thing, since each individual invests reality with many different sets of characteristics. Spiritual belief invests reality with many different qualities: simultaneously a fundamentalist believer will see the world as a place of fear, a mystical believe will see it as a place of peace, a creative believer will see it as a place of potentiality, a pragmatic believer will see it as just a place to live. It is the same for ideological beliefs, which define reality by different criteria.
     Reality and belief simply cannot be disentangled from each other.
     Beliefs evolve their own mythology and symbolism, methods of encoding meaning into the perceived and observed correlative of life. It is only when our views are challenged that reality shakes. True belief beings trust with it, a trust that things will not change,  that we will be supported. Belief can both support and enclose us, so that the nature of reality seems to become unchanging.
    The changing views of reality during this century have shaken many, causing fear and consternation. It is at this point of panic that fundamentalist beliefs become strangely attractive, for their dogmatic character ensures an unchanging stability for the fearful. For the rest, our own beliefs walk beside reality, giving it color, meaning, and purpose. Its subtle messages are the signposts of a greater reality that embraces both the seen and the unseen.

"How do your own beliefs color reality? Compare your views with someone else's."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Rediscovering Sacred Places

Rediscovering Sacred Places

"Through the medium of revelation, forgotten sacred places can re-manifest themselves."
    ___ Nigel Pennick, Celtic Sacred Landscapes

    What makes a place sacred? Is is some hallowed action? Is it the sitting of a shrine or temple? Is it the occupation by people who have honored the spirit of that place? Although there is no part of the earth that is not intrinsically sacred in its own right, our recognition of a place's sacredness tends to rest upon what other human beings have done at that spot, what they have erected by way of memorial, what holy actions and rites they have conducted to hallow it.
     Certain spots draw us to them, there is no doubt. Even if they harbor no ancient monument, if there is no story associated with their borders, we feel somehow at peace or exalted when there it must be through just that intangible process that our ancestors discovered their own sacred places - places of natural beauty whose drew them again and again to spiritual exploration. Some places act as natural thresholds, junctions between this world and the other where we feel in communion with the unseen world and its inhabitants.
    Some sacred places can be lost through neglect and forgetfulness; others are lost by a gross act of descralization. But a place can be rediscovered and resacralized if we attend to the spirit of the place and learn what it is that makes that place sacred. The prospect of the resacralization of the earth is just a lofty idea for many people, but it is one that all of us can foster, in cooperation with the spirits of the earth itself.

"Call to mind a place - it need not be recognized by others s a sacred place - where you have felt empowered and uplifted, Dwell upon the qualities and gifts that you associate with that site and how they make a connection with your own spiritual path. Take the first opportunity you can to verify your meditation by visiting  this place in person. Sense again the spirit of the place."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Prophecy

Prophecy

"O hear the voice of the Bard
Who present, past and future sees,
Whose ears have heard the holy Word
That walked among the ancient trees."
   _____ William Blake, "Songs of Experience"


    Celtic tradition has abounded in prophets: King Arthur's Merlin, the uncanny Brahan Seer, Thomas the Rhymer, the Welsh awenyddion (ah-wen-ITH'ion) or 'inspired ones,' and the many seers and seeresses of history. The ability to see through the veil from the temporal world into the world where time is always now is one that runs in the blood and surfaces in certain family lines and in lone individuals alike.
    Moments of true seeing and true utterance happens to everyone. They occur when we see clearly through the veil between the worlds., all unbidden, and observe what will be. Then we experience the slowing down of time, the growing sense of communion with precise coordinates of knowledge that click in our brain into startling patterns of revelation. Because our society tends to ignore such revelation, we usually shrug off what we have experienced as something of little importance, ignoring these subtle messages.
    These moments sometimes happen when we are on the brink of decisions, meetings, or agreements we suddenly have a sense that we are present at something momentously charged and potent, maybe having a flash vision of a future event when the fruits of the decision have matured. We may experience a sense of warning, a flash of insight that tells us clearly that the person we are meeting does not mean us well. We sometimes even remember past insights and visions that we indeed predicted and are now actually living through. At those times the same sense of timelessness and encompassment rises within us.

"Use your prophetic soul to look between the worlds to understand a recent action's consequences."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Revenge

Revenge

"Three incitements to revenge: screaming of female relatives, and seeing the bier of their relation, and seeing the grave of their relation without compensation."
    ____ triad from Laws of Hywel Dda

     Both Welsh laws of King Hywel Dda (HOO'wel THA) and the Irish brehon laws understood the deep-seated nature of revenge upon people who receive neither compensation nor apology for their wrongs.
    When wrongs fester without justice, revenge raises up its own host to deal with things. When we are pondering the causes of terrorism or vendetta, we should remember that these abuses arise among a people when appropriate compensation or justice is denied.
The causes of revenge lie deep in the human heart: a need for revenge is evoked by loss, grief, anger, the inability to gain compensation or redress, the bold-faced behavior of the guilty, the desire to cause a like injury to the guilty 'so they can see what it feels like.'
     Revenge can be maintained beyond the grave and cascade from generation to generation down the bloodline until all descendants are likewise infected by the disease. When revenge enters the bloodstream of a whole nation, then we face a situation that has defied boardrooms of arbitrators and peace-brokers. Proponents of terrorism seek redress on behalf of countries and nationalist sensibilities that they perceive have been abused or neglected. Terrorists are fueled by ancestral appeasement: they are no longer individuals with ordinary concerns, but the living incarnation of ancestral revenge feuds.
     If peace and reconciliation are to brought about, the wronged party must be listened to seriously and the source of injury must be investigated by impartial witnesses. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the release of forgiveness is the only sure balm to revenge.

"How has revenge been a factor in your own life and that of your ancestors? What solutions have been found to be acceptable?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Perseverance

Perseverance

"An eident drap will pierce a stance. [A steady drop will pierce a stone.]   ___ Scottish proverb

    One of the prime figures of perseverance within the Scottish tradition is King Robert the Bruce. The apocryphal story of his hiding in a cave and watching a spider attempt to make its web again and again tells us that this was how the Scottish hero mustered his own perseverance to struggle on. When life seems stacked against us, whence do we find the perseverance to continue?
    When is perseverance not enough? When we have tried to the limits of our ability, when we have tried all avenues of pursuit, when there is no more help to be sought, is it reasonable to consider whether this project is the right one or if it is being approached in the right way. Sometimes a reappraisal of method can bring about a fresh change. If you are still pushing a rock up the mountain after a reasonable period of perseverance, it might be time to stop and reassess.
     Perseverance is not a common virtue these days, especially amount those who expect quick or instant results. The ability to carry on with a project and see it through is often a painful, painstaking, incremental task that does not yield results in n obviously satisfactory way.  It is a task scorned by many as a waste of time and effort. Yet many wonderful achievements have come to birth as the result of daily, incremental, crablike progress.
    We must have the patience of water itself, which cleaves the stone over many centuries.

"Are your plans on target; are they realistic and achievable? What changes would their manifestation bring to your life? Are you approaching your goals by the best possible route? Is there other help available? What factors are still lacking?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

I changed my background template because my other one had be messed with and reduced to a timy square.. I noticed that I  am not the only one that has this done to the blog sites.  I was thinking of making a change anyway.  The image above is from the tarot deck Victoria Regina deck - I think this card image shows a type of perseverance...
Sobeit

Traveling Slowly

Traveling Slowly

"By increasing the speed at which we pass through the landscape we may greatly alter the time-sequences which are an integral part of our perceptive experience of it."
    _____ Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape


     We notice and remember features about walking journeys that are not apparent to us when we drive. The spirit of the land cannot speak to us directly when we speed through it; it cannot catch our eyes through the outstretched branches of trees, or in the gleam of hidden water, or in the deer-brown bracken of the hillside under the glancing winter sunlight.
     The time-sequencing of our landscape perception changes radically when we speed by unaware of what we are passing, or when we use a journey to work or read. We can pass through areas and have no recollection of having traveled through them.
    Our subtle perceptions are never engaged when we are car-bound because our senses themselves are not engaged; these outer and inner senses are connected. The sense of our own velocity when we move under our own steam, rather than with the help of wheels, imparts the message of the wind; the feeling of our feet upon the ground brings us into relationship with the presence of the land; our ears, unshielded by carriage walls, are able to tune into the subtle sounds of the earth; our noses can smell the distinctive scents of the landscape; most potent messengers of memory infused into all these experiences, but predominating over them all, is the sense of the land itself and its own story into which we are straying.
     Wherever we walk, we enter the story of the land, becoming part of it. But only the one who travels slowly can perceive that story and learn from it.

"Take a walking journey along a route you would normally drive along. What is different? How did you relate to the land you journeyed through?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Renewal

Renewal

"When the great concrete megaCity chokes the globe from pole to pole, it shall already have, bedded in some hidden crack, the sacred seed of its own disintegration and collapse."
     ____ David Rudkin, Penda's Fen

   What we have paved over feels safe, secure, permanent, habitable, civilized. Already a majority of people feel uneasy in the countryside or in open land, without sight of buildings, shops, and the full panoply of urban living.
    When a civilized place is abandoned by people, the green world takes it back again. The first tough weeds quickly force their way through the concrete, splitting the man-made amalgam of civilization, and soon the wild seeds of life celebrate their return by germinating unchecked until the stone is covered with green.
    The prospect of ending or decay is greatly dismaying to people who feel that it means the end of life as they know it. And they are rightfully fearful, for the enemy of life is stasis. The seeds of renewal are always mysteriously buried within the thick of decay and corruption, ready to spring up when all seems lost.
   At this time of the year, when the trees look disheveled, when growth stops, we may feel the loss of a personal thing and cross the threshold to depression. Yet the roots of renewal lie in the contemplation of the way in which this year's leaf mold on the forest floor will become the rich earth for the next year's glorious growth.
    The urbanization of the soul has become in many ways like a 'great concrete megaCity' that petrifies the living impulses of our natural heart. The lesson of this season is to welcome the elements that free our soul into wider ways of living, to burst out of the urban soul into the great expanses where renewal can clear all the impedes our way.

"What is static or decaying in your current life? Commune with the fruits of this season and find out how you can welcome change in."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Spiraling Prayer

Spiraling Prayer

"People visited groves and springs at the sacred times and made the Turas, circling these holy places and wells. A sort of concentric prayer, spiralling inwards."
   ____ from a speech by Nuiala Ahern,
       Irish Member of the European Parliament


    The word turas (TU'ras). which means 'journey' or pilgrimage' and 'time' refers especially to the circular, spiraling prayer and meditation form used by people in the Celtic countries as they walked sunwise around a sacred site. Making  the turas or circling around a sacred site, well, tree, or stone, is still a living part of Celtic spirituality today. \
     The motion of this walking prayer is always deiseal, or sunwise- that is from left to right. The clockwise method of making the turas is considered to be the fortunate and appropriate way of moving, while tuathal, or counterclockwise is considered to be less fortunate. (Note: In the southern hemisphere, sacred motion is counterclockwise)
     We need to circle, spiraling around the sacred site with our body, in tune with our intentions and wit6h the presence of the site. The process of spiraling around builds power, strengthens intention, and brings us into attunement with our soul's thread. It also attuned us in another way: as our planet spins around the circling year, we too simultaneously experience the turning of our soul toward the source of greatest spiritual light. Each season is a mystical gateway of opportunity and understanding, a sacred time of wisdom. If we live with awareness of the year's cycles, we will achieve a direct alignment with those sacred opportunities.

"Visit a tree, rock, well, or other place in nature to which you feel particularly drawn. Make your own turas about it. If you live in an urban environment, find a stone that can represent a sacred site within your own home."
[From: The Celtic Spirit  by Caitlin Matthews]

Grace Before Food

Grace Before Food

"Be with me, O God/dess, at the breaking of bread,
Be with me, O God/dess, at the end of my meal,
May no morsel of body's partaking
Add to my soul's freight!"
    ____ Scots Gaelic grace, (trans. CM)


    The blessing of food or the saying of 'grace' before eating is regarded as old-fashioned behavior to most households these days, except perhaps on Thanksgiving, when it plays a traditional role.
    The blessing upon our food is itself a thanksgiving to all who have participated in the preparation of our meal: the grains, the earth, the elements, the animals, the ones who have processed our food and sold it to us - everyone is involved.
If we contemplate only one item of food on our table and trace back through the steps that brought it there, the scale of our thanksgiving becomes very real - a network of cooperation that is one strand of our life.
   The Gaelic blessing above seems very relevant today. With the addition of chemicals and pesticides and the genetic manipulation of the cellular structure of our food, many people are very worried about production methods where only the usual agents - air, sunlight, water, and root mixture - are allowed to influence the food we eat is now widely recognized,
   Very few people wish to harm their bodies or souls by participating in immoral and disrespectful food-production methods. The same goes for foodstuffs whose gathering and production endanger other species of animals or plants or further exploit already exploited people. Our choice of food is determined by the staple items of our region and our culture, many of which are in short supply. Can we change our eating habits in order to be able to breathe a true blessing upon our table?

"Write your own grace or meditate upon silently before you eat."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]



Deferred Decisions

Deferred Decisions

"Do not go Monday, be still on Tuesday,
Wednesday's a bad day, Thursday is slow,
Friday's unlucky, Saturday's grudging.
So give up your troublesome travel tomorrow!"
    ___Scots Gaelic song (trans. CM)

   This song is sung to beguile the welcome guest,
to delay her departure and cause her to stay longer. Sometimes, though we cannot be so self-indulgent; we need to take incisive action rather than defer it.
    Procrastination is subtle and invasive self-persuasion that second-guesses all avenues of possibility as they present themselves. It is always easier to leave a difficult decision to the next day, to put off reading and signing a complex document until a later date, to ignore a request until the time is more convenient and our mood more amenable. The prince of procrastination is Shakespeare's Hamlet, who virtually worries himself into mental illness. When deferred actions are deferred too long, the fear around their performance becomes horrifically amplified.
    When we are stuck in procrastination, we need 'a rabbit bolter' - something that flushes realizations out of their deep hiding places up to the surface of our attention. This bolter may involve taking a day off work and away from the family, going into nature or to a place of some peacefulness, without stimulus and interference from any outside source so that our minds can cease their squirrel-cage contortions and come to rest in focused attention upon how we must act. In our prayers and in the companionship of our spiritual allies, we can ask for help, clarity, and strength to make the right decisions and to defer them no longer.

"Choose one current predicament and meditate upon possible solutions."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Living in the World

Living in the World

"Were All the World a Paradise of Ease
'Twere Easy Then to Live in Peace."
     ______ Thomas Traherne, Centuries


     When we first plunge into the the full flood of response to our spiritual path, the world seems a wonderful place. Our ecstasy is often so persuasive that we enter a period of convert fervor and rapidly become bores, singing the delights of our chosen way for the benefit of any friends (or total strangers) unfortunate enough to meet us.
    For anyone descending from the spiritual high-ground, the next phase is the most challenging to our chosen way. All delights, joys, and insights that we enjoyed at the peak suddenly run up against all the lethargies, doldrums and seemingly meaningless interludes of daily life. If our prayer life has been connective, it becomes prone to a strange interference in this phase; if our meditations have been colorful they suddenly start receiving black-and-white transmission; if our spiritual allies have favored us with intimate interviews, they suddenly become amazing elusive. No one and nothing seems to be on the same wavelength anymore.
    The individual who finds himself in such a predicament needs to look at each new challenge to his newfound spiritual peace as a practical opportunity to manifest some of his theoretical notions.
     It is not solely in the otherworld or in paradise that spirituality is to be implemented, but in the world in which we live. If our spirituality cannot supply us with resourceful encouragement, then it is very shallowly rooted in us. It is in the challenges to our spiritual peace that we find the strongest solutions. Like a parched tree that has to send out deeper roots to sources of water, we also have to send our spiritual roots deeper in search of help. To live our sacred text, to implement our holy philosophy, there is no better place than here and now.

"Apply your spiritual wisdom to the most challenging daily trial."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Guardians of Power

Guardians of Power

"Who has seen the Cup flame in the West,
who has not also seen the breath of Nine
smoke on the air above the Cauldron's rim?"
    ____John Matthews,"The King's Moon-Rite"

    In British folklore, the Lord of the Underworld has a cauldron whose brew is available only to those who are courageous and worthy in one of the earliest written texts to mention Arthur, the hero himself goes in quest of the cauldron as proof of his sovereignty. It is tended by nine women who heat and empower the broth by their exhalation: these are nothing less than the guardians of life.
    The nine sisters of the cauldron are the forerunners of the two Grail guardians of medieval Arthurian tradition: the beautiful Grail maiden who carries the blessed vessel and the ugly Grail messenger who stimulates the knights to quest for the vessel. Whether Grail or cauldron, the vessel in question bestows special qualities upon whose who imbibe its contents, conferring immortality, healing, or specific virtues that manifest the quester's intrinsic life-purpose.
    These nine sisters are the ones who guard the vessel of life and grant every living soul special gifts. Each breath that they breathe across the cauldron or our life's essence imbues each of us with our particular vocational gifts and tendencies. If we ignore the blessings of the guardians of life, we do not flourish easily; life is an uphill grind, and we have to reinvent the wheel at every turn. If, however, we examine the nature of our particular brew and discover with what blessings and potentialities we are each imbued, we can find a wonderful unfolding richness in all we attempt.

"List up to nine qualities that are blended in your unique brew of life. Speak to the Gifting Mothers and ask how their blessings may be used."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Pilgrimage Routes

Pilgrimage Routes

"Though the long tracks know no glad step,
And the circle goes unblessed;
From their long homes may the old ones
Welcome travellers upon their quest."
   _____ Caitlin Matthews, "Pilgrims' Blessing"


   Pilgrimage is a step beyond tourism, which merely comes to look at places and enjoy them; pilgrimage involves a deeper engagement with the land,with the sacred nature of the experience that is had not only at the destination but along the route as well. Those who travel with a spiritual purpose find pleasure and enjoyment no less than the tourist, but their experience is colored by the reality of their contact with the unseen worlds - not only with the apparent landscape about them, but with its inhabitants and guardians.
    When we re-engage with the sacred place of our spiritual heritage, the ability to be a pilgrim affects our experience of the places we visit; the ability to see beyond the desacralization, the skill to travel the road with expectant and prayerful hearts, the greeting we send out - before we even begin to travel - to the ancestral guardians and spiritual presences who have awaited our coming this long time.
   In pilgrimage, it is the ability to give blessing upon places we visit, rather than seek blessing for ourselves in our travel, that is most appreciated. In offering our blessing, we are able to resacralize both the way and the site: for if we become alive to the generous and sacred nature of each place, so may many others; and we will have become guardians and pilgrims of a new generation for all the generations to come.

"Make your own pilgrimage to a special place or sacred place during the wintertime, drawing upon some of the ideas above."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Activities for the Winter Months -

* Practice introspection, meditation, contemplation, drawing upon the peaceful sanctuary of this season.

* Shift burdens by doing something about (e.g. make your will) or by giving up unnecessary patterns.

* Remember your ancestors and celebrate their wisdom.

* In this deep season of darkness and introspection, seek the sun at midnight, the rich treasures that lie in the lap of Winter.

* Be aware of the ancestral teachers, the grandparents and elders of the spiritual traditions, whose footprints have kept the pathways open.

* Cut back old growth in the garden and burn or compost it.  Dig over the soil in preparation for the Spring.

* Walk and meditate outdoors for at least ten minutes daily.

* Be active with like-minded others, in recording, preserving, living and learning about the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples, especially those in your own land.

* As you travel through the land of Winter relate your spiritual journey to the wisdom of this season.
[From Celtic Devotional by Caitlin Matthews]

Three Rocks of Judgment

Three Rocks of Judgment

"The three immovable and perfect rocks on which the judgments of the world are sustained: the poet, the written word, and nature."
    ___ Irish triad from Senchus Mor

    This triad speaks of the three kinds of authority by which judgments can be made: authority from the divinatory composition of poets, from the letter of the law, and from the law of nature. These are the three traditional 'courts of appeal' that sustain the law.
    The first court of appeal is the oral word, and its exponent is the poet. The divinatory prowess of the ancient poets was considered to be both wise and authoritative. The spoken word is still a lively defender and prosecutor in modern courts of law, able to sway juries and reveal discrepancies in evidence.
    The second court of appeal is the written word, which now has precedent over the spoken word in our society. The written word is not so flexible as its spoken counterpart and has tended, over the centuries, to become the 'dead letter of the law' rather than a perfect rock upon which judgments may be based. The written word is indeed a strong rock if it is administered and maintained by people of probity and good guardianship, but it can also be interpreted in narrow and unhelpful ways. Many traditional legal frameworks stand in need of redrafting to encompass the changes that have overtaken our world.
    The third court of appeal is nature itself, which has its own immutable laws to which both word and writing must bow. The natural laws cannot be overset by human judgments. They govern the whole round of life. As we seek to manipulate nature, to bypass its natural processes, we find out just how enduring and implacable its laws are. Beyond human memory and written judgment stands nature, the final court of appeal, reflecting the truth of our actions and desires.

"What are the three rocks that sustain your world?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews] 

The Ancestral God

The Ancestral God

"The Gauls all claim to be descended from Dis Pater, claiming that this is the tradition preserved by the Druids."
   ____ Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul


    On his Gaulish campaign, Julius Caesar studied the nature of the people he intended to conquer, learning that they believed themselves to be descended to conquer, learning that they believed themselves to be descended from Dis Pater, or the Father God of the Underworld. Caesar noted that it is on account of this fact that they celebrated all their festivals and holy days from the eve of the previous day , when darkness falls, rather than from the morning of the day itself. The primacy given to the night over the day by the Celts is a respectful remembrance of their beginnings and of their divine ancestor.
    One Irish figure who fills the role of Dis Pater is Cu Roi (KOO roy) with his otherworldly revolving tower in the West of Ireland. He wields a long-handled beheading axe and oversees the awarding of the champion's portion at Brieriu's Feast by coming in the guise of a dark giant, to offer the contenders a sportive  game: he will kneel for them to behead him in return for being beheaded themselves! Only Cuchulainn (Koo-HULL'en) is brave enough to take up his challenge: he kneels willingly, is spared by Cu Roi, and so is proved the worthiest champion.
    Cu Roi's partner is Blathnad (BLAN'id), the Goddess of Flowers.  Theirs is a partnership that reminds us of the relationship between the Greek Goddess of Returning Spring, Persephone and Plutos, the Underworld God of the Dead. Life and death are a partnership like day and night: after growth, decay; after death, new growth. The message of Dis Pater to all his descendants is, "All of you shall come to me, to my house when you die." The secret of his consort is that we too shall grow again, emerging from the darkness of night.

"Meditate upon the cycles of life and death, night and day."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Making Peace with the Ancestors

Making Peace with the Ancestors

"Dear ones in the house of the dead,
Can you forgive
An old woman who was your proud
Daughter, who now too late
Returns your love?"
   ___ Kathleen Raine, The Oracle in the Heart


  We often do not understand those who closest to us until it is too late. This is especially true of our parents, upon whom we heap the faults of our upbringing. Parents struggle to do the best thing for their children, but these efforts are seldom appreciated until the children themselves become parents and enter into the war of attrition that we call growing up. When we are adults, our activities take us far from our parents' domain. The death of parents is perhaps the last part of growing up, usually happening when we are raising our own children, so that we stand midway between youth and age. Those who now find themselves in the eldest generation of a family discover new responsibilities: as they become grandparents: they look to the new generation to solve old, long-standing problems. This ancestral bequest tends to gather weight and momentum as it rolls from generation to generation, sometimes becoming too heavy for any one person to carry.
   Making peace between ourselves and our ancestors requires two things: the ability to speak the truth lovingly, and the ability to forgive and let go of issues that have muddied the way between us and the dead. We need to offer a word of love, a sign of admiration or praise, a visit, a gift or even a phone call - some direct communication while there is opportunity, before the time for regret is all that is left.

"Make a soul-flight to a place where you and a relative who is now dead used to meet together. Speak the words that you would have liked to say before death intervened. Listen to the words that your relative speaks to you. Thank and bless your relative."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Samhain

Samhain

"Samhain night with its ancient lore
was occasion for new and merry custom;
it was learned in the wildness, in oak-woods,
from spirits and fairies."
   ____ The Metrical Dindshenchas (trans. CM)


    The festival of Samhain (SOW'en) marked the start of Winter when beasts were brought in from the hills to the nearby fields for winter slaughter or for overwintering in barns. Samhain was a liminal time in which the world of the living and
the ancestral realms overlapped. This was a time for the remembrance of the dead: candles were set in the window to welcome the loved ancestors and to shine upon the path of the unquiet dead to bless them on their way.
    There was always an element of fear and trepidation about this night - the eve before Samhain - and also one of expectancy. When the dead were abroad, certain kinds of divination could be practiced, which asked questions of the ancestors. This night was one when young people disguised themselves and played pranks on the community. The modern custom of trick-or-treating is based upon the old tradition of 'mischief night,' where the guisers begged for food and drink from door to door. At inhospitable houses, the gate might be removed from its hinges, or other petty misdemeanors might be performed.
    The great fear that many still have about this night is not aided by the commercialism of modern Hallowe'en, which emphasizes ghoulish fascination with ghosts rather than communal reverence for the beloved ancestors. As enter the darkness of winter this evening, let us remember our own ancestors with love, with a prayer that all unquiet souls be led to blessedness and peace, with a hope that this sacred festival may be restored to its former respect as a time of communal honoring.

"Light a candle for the ancestors this evening and breathe your blessing upon all who no longer walk in this world."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Ancestral Dependence

Ancestral Dependence

"The one whose solitary boast is his lineage, has no descendant of any virtue."
   ___ Welsh proverb (trans. CM )


    The Celtic peoples honored the keeping of remembrance, and repetition of genealogies and family lists. Such genealogies were 'memory resident'  in bards and poets, one of whose chief tasks was to recite these ancient lineages on  important occasions. In our society, we generally leave such matters to the professional genealogist or herald, and so our own memory dwindles. As a result of this neglect, strange obsessions sometimes develop. People with no knowledge of their lineage sometimes invent family trees or make outrageously unsubstantiated claims regarding their descent. Such acts have a terrible pathos about them. At the other extreme, we find those who dine out on their ancestral achievements without any attempt to make their own mark. Both they and the people who invent their lineage fall into the trap of ancestral dependence. Whether actual or invented, our lineage is a path that moves through us to our own descendants. Our physical bloodline may have many great and good ancestors among its number, but their deeds do not flow through our veins or belong to us unless we make them our by similar doing.
    Dependence upon the ancestors is often just a manifestation of laziness, a way of absolving ours4elves from total engagement in life; it is also a form of theft that robs our hard-working ancestors of their credit. We cannot live in the reflected glory of ancestral honors without absconding from our own lives and missing the very real opportunities to become worthy ancestors in our turn.

"Honor your ancestors, known or unknown, by a worthy act of your own."
[From The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Ordinary Things

Ordinary Things

"There are three slender things that support the world: the slender stream of cow's milk into a pail; the slender blade of green corn in the ground; the slender thread running over the hands of a skilled woman."
  ____ ancient Irish triad


    The comfort and nurture we derive from dairy products is the gift of the cow, that supremely important animal to the Celtic world.  The cow, a unit of wealth, was so highly prized that it is remembered in the heavens among Celtic speakers who know the Milky Way as 'the Way of the White Cow.' The fertility of the fields was always considered a measure of how committed a ruler or chieftain was to his land and people: poor crops were an indication of poor rulership. Along with the milk of the cow, the bannock (loaf) of bread made up the staple diet of most people before the advent of the New World potato, so grain was another measure of prosperity and well-being.
     Before the coming of industrial looms, all clothing was made laboriously by hand. The woman of the house (with the help of her daughters) clothed her entire family; she would take the unwashed wool, comb and card it, and then timer-comsumingly spin it from the distaff until it could be labor-intensively woven on a hand-loom.  That wool kept the cold out, but the greatest skill went into weaving fine linen, garment for wear next to the skin. It is by the help of the ordinary thing that much of our own living is supported. In different countries, there are different staple grins and foodstuffs, different materials. From their slender existence our own is sustained.

"What three ordinary things are the supporters of your life? Make your own personal triad."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Language of Winter

The Language of Winter

"We have all of us eaten the pomegranate seed of language, and we are its Persephones in its ways of structuring our experiences of ourselves and the world."
  ____John Moriarty, Turtle Was Gone a Long Time

    John Moriarty refers here to the Greek myth of Persephone, who went into the Underworld with the god Hades. When sought by her mother, Demeter, she was licensed by the gods to return to the middle world again, as long as she had not eaten anything while in the Underworld.  But Persephone had partaken of six pomegranate seeds, and so it was judged that she could return to earth for only half of the year. During those six months that she remains in the Underworld, we have winter. Similarly the ways in which we think and speak, the concepts that we use to frame experience, give their own limited seasonal coloration to our culture. Meaning is submerged in the very words we speak about deeper mythic states, which is probably why we have such a correspondingly rich folk-story tradition, which speaks of nothing else.
    The revolt against the language of winter is everywhere around us as people attempt to explain their own subtle experiences. This revolt often expresses itself in extreme ways - as an unhealthy stretching out toward the bizarre, the unexplained  and the alien, when all the time the common has but subtle experiences of life are so ordinary. When we begin to use the wisdom of the pomegranate seeds of language with the insight of those who have experienced the deep riches of the Underworld, we will be liberated Persephones, able to bring beautiful spring to our bare acres of expression.

"Recall a subtle experience of your own. Write it down or speak it onto tape in a way that captures the mood and experience."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Mantle of the Universe

The Mantle of the Universe

"You never enjoy the world right, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars."
    ___ Thomas Traherne, Centuries


   To re-experience the integration of ourselves with nature, we have to take ourselves out of our four walls and set our life-story in the context of nature's terms. This means becoming especially aware of one area of the natural world - an area that is our listening place, an area where we tune out the old broadcasts of our separateness and return to the original station of the universe belonging. In that place we enter into a new relationship with nature, conducting a dialogue of one with the other, in which both parties speak and both listen to the other.
    In this communion, a further state of belonging may be experienced - initially just in brief glimpses, then sometimes for longer and longer periods. It is the condition that poet and mystic Thomas Traherne speaks of above: the temporary loss of our sense of identity, a softening of the hard boundaries that separate us from the tree and the animal, from the earth and the sunset. In this condition, we experience ourselves as no different from nature or anything within it. We come into true relationship with nature in such moments, which strip away our hubris, our control, and our feelings of separation and bring us once more under the mantle of the universe.

"So sit in nature and just be with it, without judgment or mental comment. Let your attention be drawn to one feature around you. Be present to it as though it were another being: listen and speak;
speak and listen. Finally experience the feature and yourself occupying the same space, breathing the same air. Just be. Slowly reverse the steps above until you are fully restored to your own body and consciousness again. "
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Criticism

Criticism

"To correct is good, for the mind accepts correction; not so is reproach, against which the mind rebels."
    ____ Colman Mac Beognae, Apgitir Chabaid
    (trans. CM)


     Certain kinds of criticism stick in the mind like a thorn.  The words of the cleric Colman are specifically addressed to teachers within his monastery, but all who are in positions of authority and responsibility should guard their words carefully, lest reproach rather than correction comes to their lips. This is especially true for parents, teachers and all who deal with the young, who are especially susceptible to reproach. Continued criticism, offered in place of helpful suggestion, can overwhelm a child and leave her with little self-esteem. Correction shapes technique and eliminates errors over the course of time, until the student himself becomes expert, able to guide and correct in his turn. Reproach, on the other hand, is like lime: whatever it touches immediately shrinks away. Wherever reproach has spread its acid nothing further grows.
    Criticism springs from three desires: a desire to improve, a desire to detract, and a desire to hide the same fault in oneself. The last of these desire is the deadliest; by casting criticism on others, we throw a convenient smoke screen over our own faults, which often perfectly mirror the thing we have pointed at elsewhere. The only way to guard against unwarranted criticism in daily life is to think first, keep silent when possible, and speak only words that will be received without undue offence.

"Consider a recent situati8onh in which you were criticized or you criticized others. Was correction or reproach used?  What wisdom can you learn from the situation?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Authority and Authenicity

Authority and Authenticity

"Our deeds remain single till they wed perseverance...."
     ____ Welsh proverb (trans CM)


    Many people seek validation for their spiritual pathway. Because we may have garnered the components of our spiritual search from many different places and traditions, we often have a feeling of fraudulence or lack of authenticity.  Our efforts to make sense of these components to make a living habitation or pathway from them, are haunted by fear of authority. We feel that if we change the received pattern, if we deviate from the spiritual tradition into which we were born, we will be punished or shunned. This has certainly been the message given by organized religion to those on a spiritual search: authority is withheld from those who heretically deviate in our society; authenticity can derive only from the centrally authorized mandate.
    No human being shares the exact same spiritual path as another. Each person constellates various elements of spirituality that speaks to him, borrowing from old traditions and new perspectives. Finding authority for what we do, who we are, cannot come solely from the human world: authenticity arrives when we have begun to move from the known into the unknown through the unique thresholds that life opens to us. Perseverance is the key.

"Answer these questions to get a sense of your own search for authority and authenticity:

* Whose approval am I seeking?
* Who encourages me?
* How do I gain vitality? What drains my vitality?
* Who.what do I need to control?
* To whom/what do I consistently relinquish power?
* What do I need for self-nurture?
* Which old  repeating patterns prevent me living in balance?
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews] 

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 access to them again, we have to grasp the key and transform fear into power, recognizing that one become the other, just as water become ice.
     Jealousy brings with it a fierce twisting of our perceptions so that everything concerning the object of our jealousy is distorted. 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, when 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, Mananna, to shake his cloak between them to bring them both forgetfulness. By all accounts, this is the only socially acceptable antidote to this particular guest.
      Love is not altogether a welcome guest either. Its coming is often accompanied by disorientation and upheaval. 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 suffering from 'the two deadly pangs which no doctor can cure: love and jealousy.'   The only remedy for love is reciprocated love and nothing else ease the pangs.

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

The Land of Women

The Land of Women

"Do not fall on a bed of sloth,
Let not your intoxication overcome you,
Begin a voyage across the clear sea,
If you would reach the Land of Women."
   ___ Voyage of Bran mac Febal, early Irish text (trans. CM)


     These words are addressed to the Irish hero Bran mac Febal by an otherwordly woman who summons him to set forth on his quest to the Land of Women - a place that in early Celtic tradition was considered to be the abode of bliss, satisfaction and achievement. She urges him to clear his sights, attend to the task at hand, conjure a vision of beauty and delight and set off toward it. Regions of the Celtic otherworld can be reached by the voyage of the soul across the severing waters of the west, containing a series of islands that must be encountered in sequence before the traveler comes to the innermost Land (or Island0 of Women. The wisdom-keepers of the soul-voyage reveal themselves as a sisterhood of women who guard the mysteries of life. In Britain, there is the myth of Avalon being guarded by Morgen and her eight sisters; in Gaul, there are reports of sisterhoods dedicated to teaching, fostering, prophecy, healing, crafts, shape-shifting and weather magic.
     While we may not be summoned in so dramatic a way as Bran, we each have a quest to which we are called. This quest concerns the fulfillment of our life's purpose and is about using our innate gifts in the widest possible way. The inhabitants of the Land of Women have no patience with sloth. They are the energizers, keepers and empowers who maintain the dynamo of the world. To do this work, they need our assistance and application. If we make our voyage toward them, we will indeed find our way to the goal of desires.

"What gifts have your faery godmothers given you? How are you using them to further your quest?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Kindling the Hearth

Kindling the Hearth

"Mother of our mothers,
Foremothers strong,
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how to kindle the hearth."
   __ Caitlin Matthews, "A Blessing for the Hearth Keepers'

    The hearth is a special shrine that is still ceremonially tended in some Gaelic households. Before retiring, the woman of the house 'smoors' the fire - that is, covers any fresh fuel with ashes so that the fire is banked in and slowly burning. In the morning, the fire can then be easily woken without recourse to fresh kindling.  Three blocks of peat, (turf) are then placed in the grate, their ends touching so that they radiate out in the customary three-legged triskele symbol and a prayer is made over the fire, normally invoking Brighid as saint or goddess, since she is the protectress of the hearth. Among traditional peoples, the tending of the hearth is one of the chief duties that fall to women, who also tend to be the repositories of practical spiritual traditions. These two tasks seem to be interlinked: keeping the hearth and maintaining spiritual practice are daily habitual tasks that cannot be avoided without loss of integrity to the whole household. Today, we may no longer kindle the hearth, but this does not exempt us from kindling our spirit. Many people now incorporate small domestic rituals into their daily life: lighting a candle upon their hearth-shrine, acknowledging their guiding spirits and allies  with flowers and offerings, spending time in meditation in a quiet room, making an earth-shrine in their gardens and window boxes. As each home becomes again the focus of dedicated spiritual practice, the hearth-light is rekindled and we remember our own part in the reverence of Spirit as ancestral hands guide our unremembering ones.

"Create your own hearth-shrine and make it the kindling point of your spiritual practice every day."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Sacred Encounters

Sacred Encounters

"A sacred being cannot be anticipated; it must be encountered." 
    ___ W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Head


   Many people who are about to embark upon their spiritual quest come to consult me (Caitlin Matthews). They are curious about what they will find and who they will encounter. They have high expectations about the spiritual beings they are going to look up and 'work with'. As gently as I can, I try to explain that though they may be interested in encountering particular gods or goddesses, animals or heroic characters, they may not necessarily find the ones they hope to. Sometimes, it is true, there already exists a special relationship between a person and a spiritual being - a strong, enduring bond that takes no account whatever of the kind of spiritual discipline practiced or quest undergone. Whether that person treks into the realms of Christianity or the regions of Buddhism, the same being will turn - sometimes baffling out of place, sometimes very much at home - to her meditations and dreams.
     The most potent spiritual help may come from nameless and sometimes unknown figures who appear in meditation, soul-flights, dreams and visions. Occasionally, however, our helpers are well know - great figures of history, myth or religion. At those times we may feel humbled or overwhelmed by the sacred encounter, as well as suspicious that we may have made up the encounter from an overactive imagination. Listen to the advice and wisdom that these figures give you, if they come to you; see if it works practically, if it is trustworthy. If everything checks out, you may be privileged to be accompanied by a sacred being who is known and loved by many. But remember that our spiritual guides and teachers often take forms different from the ones we expect. Do not reject their teachings simply because their appearance may not accord with your expectations. If the help is good, then so is the teacher.

"Who are your spiritual friends and teachers? Visit one today."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

October

Month of October - penetrable is the shelter;

Yellow the tops of the birch, solitary the summer dwelling;

Full of fat the birds and the fish.

 ___anon. Welsh poem

October sees the last days of autumn and the presage of winter. The themes of this month are the ordinary and the extraordinary, conflict and consensus, adaptability and renewal, combat and competition, the work of women, the reality of joy.





Enemies of Wisdom

Enemies of Wisdom

"There are three things that spoil wisdom: ignorance, inaccurate
knowledge and forgetfulness."
  ___ ancient Irish triad


    Wisdom supports and maintains the universe in every place. Although we now feel that ignorance is largely conquered in our world by better education, it still holds sway in many areas especially where people are purposely kept away from sources of spiritual wisdom by experts and professionals who prefer to keep them ignorant.
   We live in a world of easily coined and readily accessible facts, a world where true wisdom is contaminated by or mingled with wild supposition, doubtful hearsay, and poor research. Inaccurate knowledge arises when people are keen to get the meat but lack the patience to capture, kill or cook it. A remarkable number of books appear yearly, for example, claiming to teach the reader everything about a subject in a month or even a week! It is hard to know where most censure should be heaped: on the hubris of the writer and publisher or on the credulity of the reader. Inaccurate knowledge will not connect us with the living roots of wisdom; only precise knowledge wedded to practical experience can do that.
     But a far greater enemy of wisdom than either ignorance or inaccurate knowledge is forgetfulness. Wisdom has been warped by forgetfulness, because we have lost both wisdom's context and its application as our traditional guardians have virtually died off. Few alive now have access to anything more than the theoretical structures of spiritual wisdom. Now we must urgently bring wisdom out of its academic closet, putting theory and practice into harness together so that the living power of wisdom may be restored to our world once again.

"What are the characteristics of wisdom by which you steer your life? How are they manifest in your actual practice?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Fruit of the Otherworld

Fruits of the Otherworld

"Every high and lonely thought that thrills my spirit through
is but a shining berry dropped through the purple air,
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere."
   ___ A. E. (George Russell), "Connla's Well"

    Over Connla's Well grow the nine hazelnut trees of wisdom that drop their nuts into the water. The salmon of knowledge eats of the nuts and is found by Fionn mac Cumhail (FINN mak KOOl), who, like Taliesin (Tal-eeESSIN), becomes omniscient. This experience changes the very nature of pereption, returning the ordinary senses to perceive in more subtle ways.
    This story in its various permutations, stands as an explanation of how the fruit of the otherworld comes to ripen in our world. The fall of the hazelnuts into the waters of Connla's Well is an image of the abundant generosity of the otherworld to our world. The ideas that come to us in moments of inspiration arrive in our heads so instantaneously that we may be tempted to give credit for their arrival to ourselves. The generosity of inspiration is frequently seen precolkating throughout the world. When the nuts of the nine hazels fall into our world, they fall in many places simultaneously, ensuring that the fruiting wisdom will germinate in at least one location in our world. This explains the seemingly coincidental discovery of inventions or the realization of ideas in several places at the same time: the same idea is in the air, ready to be pulled out of the ether. Only the most promising, dedicated, and attentive become the stock upon which the otherworldly fruit is grafted, for the benefit of all.

"Give thanks for the fruits of the otherworld that you have received and helped ripen. Be aware when the nuts of wisdom are falling into your lap; run with the inspiration!"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]