"Tuirigin is a successive birth that passes from every
nature into another...flowing through all time from beginning to end."
_____ Cormac's Glossary, (trans. CM)
Tuirigin (TOOR'ghin) is a very precise word for which there is no English equivalent; the nearest we can get to a translation is 'a circuit of births.' One might assume from that definition, that tuirigin is the same as reincarnation, but this is not so. In tuirigin, the soul moves between the otherworld and this world in a series of journeys.
This understanding and remembrance of past lives was acknowledged within the didactic stories told by the Celtic church, which saw the ancient legends as vehicles of wisdom. Among these is the story of the legendary Fintan, who passed from human to animal shape, finally being reborn from a human mother. From his living memory, the whole history of Ireland can be reconstructed in conversation with learned men of Ireland, he admitted, "A continuity of existence remained in me, which I do not deny. " This is significant, when we consider that any notion of rebirth has been uncanonical within the Roman Church since the Council oh Lyons in 1274. Despite that official condemnation, adherence to early druidic and similar classical understandings of metempsychosis - the migration of soul from one body to another - seems to have survived.
Tuirigin is nothing less than the birth of the true nature, for it is not until the soul has been fused with everything else that it assumes its true nature; the soul's many turnings bring about its wisdom. The Celtic tuirigin is about fusion - not the refining of the soil till it reaches nirvana, but a profound communion with everything that brings authenticity to the soul.
Meditate upon your true nature and authenticity of soul."
[From The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]
No comments:
Post a Comment