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]

Wanders, Nomads and Outcasts

Wanders, Nomads and Outcasts

"Alone in the greenwood must I roam,
Hollin, green hollin [holly],
A shade of green leaves is my home,
Birk [birch] and green hollin."
   ___'Green Hollin,'   anon. Scots ballad


    Among the Celtic peoples, young warriors were temporarily outcast from their tribe as part of their rite of passage into adulthood, under the guardianship of elders and teachers. Some of our young people today purposely choose to enter a period of nomadism during which they can learn the freedoms and hardships, learn the self-sufficiency, practical wisdom, and unfettered vision of the 'uncivilized.'
     The choice of the wanderer to live a nomadic and unsettled life is often bewildering to those who are settled. Before civilization, many lived in encampments, while others followed the movements of animals. Settled folk have often denounced nomads as low-class, uneducated, and suspect - easy scapegoats upon whom accusations of murder, theft, and black magic might be lodged.
     In our own era, we see new patterns of nomadism emerging as civilization begins to swell and become unwieldy. Those who no longer 'fit' either become exiled from settled existence as outcasts or choose to 'drop out.' The outcasts of civilization roam the streets in homeless vagrancy. Some have merely fallen through the cracks, others have chosen to scavenge the society in which they cannot succeed, and still others are natural nomads or solitary hermits who need a concrete wasteland or a natural wilderness to encompass them.
     We who are settled do well to consider the strengths of the nomad, to honor the wisdom and freedom of having no roots, to respect another way of living that we may one day need to learn.

"Monitor your own attitudes towards nomads and wanderers. What part of your own being and beliefs is nomadic in character?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Authentic Spiritual Traditions

Authentic Spiritual Traditions

"The Druid system forbade learning from books...... and insisted
on oral and meditational communication with other people and
Nature.... sustaining spiritual Traditions through individual relationship with the Infinite, rather than by ready-made recitations from previous people's findings."
   ___W. G. Gray, Patterns of Western Magic, in
    R. J. Stewart, Psychology and the Spiritual Traditions


     Genuine, living spiritual traditions arise from our own life-context, not from our adoption of other people's experiences and teachings. This rather startling revelation is the received tradition of the Celtic realms and of traditional societies worldwide that rely upon oral rather than written sources.
      Today, when so many people are seeking to appreciate their ancestral spirituality, there is a hunger for 'authentic sources.' Unfortunately, many seekers gravitate to poorly research or speculative commercial works that have no basis in any kind of practical spirituality.
       Our individual relationship with Spirit has to be personal and immediate for it to have authenticity. It cannot be gained by reading books. In every place, in every time, with every person, Spirit communicates in its own ways. Those who advance their spiritual lives by spending time in nature, in meditation, and in practice learn the eternal knowledge which is the heritage of mystics in every tradition. To simply make repetition or to blindly accept the findings of others, without personal perception and understanding, invalidates our spiritual path.
     The truly authentic spiritual tradition is the one we are actively practicing: while it may indeed correspond with that of many other people, there will always be features within it that arise uniquely from our own living context, which we know to be authentic to the very core.

"Recognize at least three principles discovered from your own life-context by which you spiritually steer."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Seasonal Thresholds

The Seasonal Thresholds

"This has been our way: Spring for plowing and for sowing; Summer for strengthening the crop;
Autumns for grain's ripeness and for reaping;
Winter for consuming its goodness."
    ____ Cath Maige Tuired, from Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Book of Days (trans. CM)

     The gifts of each season create thresholds and doorways of opportunity for us as the year turns. The circuit of the earth about the sun is like the turas (TU'ras), or revolving walk of a pilgrim about a sacred site: at each point of the circumambulation, there arises a different symbology in the changing weather and in the correspondences of the growing world. As we become more sensitive to the annual turas of these changes, we can become attuned.
    When the first spring flowers emerge, the winter may still hold sway, but we sense the time of beginning; we struggle, like the young plants, to bring ourselves over the threshold of emergence. When summer's heat encourages us to leave off our warm clothing, we pass through the threshold of confidence and action. When autumn leaves drift from the trees, we look for the threshold of gathering. When winter fastens its grip on the world, we cross the threshold toward reflection and stillness.
     Through every station of the earth's revolution, we pass through a kaleidoscopic variety of moods, expectations and opportunities. Everyone has preferred seasons, accepting their gifts with pleasure. Those seasons that we actively dislike may be offering us opportunities to come to terms with aspects of our own annual distress - with depression, impatience, anger or fear. If we can live each moment of the year as it is happening, with attention to the seasonal thresholds and their gifts, we may discover a new resourcefulness that will enrich our lives with special joy.

"Consider the gifts and opportunities that you receive from each season."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Conversation

Conversation

"What is sweeter than mead? - Intimate
conversation."
     ____ "The Wooing of Ailbe," early Irish story


    The kindling of mind upon mind, the flame of word upon word, is the essential fire that brings hearts gladly to the hearth of friendship. In the charmed circle of intimacy, friends lean together just as stars in their loneliness seem to draw closer together at nightfall. In our separate revolutions in time and space, we sometimes become like planets, solitary and aloof from all others, unable to bring ourselves into the fold of intimacy, able only to preach portentously from a high pulpit, untinitated into the vulnerability of the truly human.
    But in our special relationships, we can enjoy a wonderful exchange when we take time to draw together, to share and to listen, to quicken to the ideas and viewpoints of another. In intimate conversation, our thoughts and opinions find a yoke-fellow who will help draw them nearer to manifestation. In deep converse, our uncertainties and anxieties can be uttered fearlessly, and just as trustfully received and allayed.
     An intimate friendship passes beyond the intimacy of lovers; they shared currency is not physically sexual, although it can prove just as intoxicating. As ideas cascade and themes are tracked to their very source, a heady ferment fills the cup of friendship. It is in the quiet times of intimate talk that we really come to know each other and realize how much we share.

"Make an opportunity in the next month to have a really good, deep and intimate conversation with a close friend."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Protecting The Boundaries

Protecting The Boundaries

"Cuchulinn's geasa were that no woman should
leave his land without his knowing of it; that no birds
should feed upon his land without leaving something
for him; that no warrior from another tribe should be
upon his land without his challenging them."


    The untranslatable Irish word geis (GEE-YES -- the plural form is geasa) means a binding obligation that has to be upheld at all costs; it is sometimes also used in the sense of 'taboo,' something forbidden. The concept of geis, in the obligations or prohibitions it entailed were often pronounced by seers directly after a child's birth or at her initiation into adulthood. We each have things we must observe and actively do, as well as things we must strictly avoid. One geasa are our boundary-protectors. If we observe them, they will insure our own survival and integrity; they will keep us from harm.
    Our geasa increase or evolve as we ourselves grow. Self-chosen geasa - "I will always dye my hair red" or "I will never meat" - are joined by geasa that are laid upon us - "My employer requires me to wear a black suit" or "My religion enjoins me never to make war on others."  These may be followed by stronger and more binding geasa - "I pledge to keep faith with my country" or "As an addict, I must never use alcohol."  Our identity, talents, and integrity all have their own special obligations and prohibitions.
    We do not choose all our gaesa; those that are laid upon us are often highly inconvenient, restricting our freedom. Yet they protect us and remind us of the boundaries of our honor, and, as the contracts of life itself, they maintain the boundaries of the universe in a special way.

"What are the geasa of your life? What obligations are you bound to perform? What prohibitions must you observe in order to be safe?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Cutting Through the Celtic Twilight

Cutting Through the Celtic Twilight

"Fachs are chiels that winna ding. [Facts are
things that cannot be shifted.]

    ____ Scots proverb


    The reappreciation of the Celtic tradition in the nineteenth century led to an overly romantic view known as the 'Celtic twilight.'  Professor J. R.R. Tolkien once remarked that 'anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.' It is a very dangerous place to inhabit, this twilight, as the poet W. B. Yeats discovered; he, who had himself been instrumental in the formation of that twilight, hit the hard iron of reality during the savage Irish civil war, writing in "The Snare's Nest by My Window".

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart;s grown brutal from the fare,

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love.

    Many of the popular myths and fantasies that have been woven around the Celts - some self-fabricated - have been designed largely to mantle the unpalatable facts of conquest, colonization, and cultural diminishment.  Romantic traditions are tales that both colonizers and the colonized have spun after the event. The living, transformative myths are those speak out to us of all eras and conditions. But the minutes we listen to romantic traditions, with their victimhood and inadequacy thinly veiled by bombast and boast, we mire in a quicksand that will suck us out of reality into a jealous cauldron where bitter nationalism and retributive terrorism can be brewed.

"Take a hard look at the romantic traditions concerning your own people. What enemies to the common good are lurking behind them?"

[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews] 

Homecoming

Homecoming

"Come you in and sit you down,
What you lost shall here be found.
Bowl and cup shall slake your lack,
Cast the bundle from your back.
No more wandering, no more war,
Come you in and close the door."
   ____ Caitlin Matthews,
       "The Wanderer's Welcome Home"

    The annual sense of settling down to things as the year turns toward winter makes us appreciate our home at this time. Home supplies us with roots, it nourishes us and makes possible all that we do, holding and cradling us when our activities are concluded for the day.
    Yet there are many for whom the family house is no home: young people who yearn to fly the nest and who are dissatisfied with their paretns' way of running things, for example, and relatives who have to live with their family as dependents because of age or infirmity.  And there are many who are with a home of their own, who lodge uneasily in inconvenient, noisy apartments, in temporary accommodations, in dirty alleyways or on draughty doorsteps. For wanderers and travelers, the home is wherever they lay their heads.
    The home that lives in our hearts and minds forever calls out to us to come and be where we are most true to ourselves. It is a strong spiritual calling to our soul to inhabit our body in the fullest sense. When the spiritual concept of the soul's home and our desire for a place to live become confused, there is a remarkable upheaval, even war.
    People move from one land to another, seeking a home of their own. When we acknowledge and welcome the soul within, we come home in truth; we can jettison the burden of expectation that we have been carrying this long while and, for the first time, come home, really home.

"What or where is home for you?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]
image above is from: Original page: http://www.paintinghere.com/painting/Abundant_Harvest_3453.html

Fall

Fall

"Autumn is a good time for visiting;
During its short days there is work for all...
There are sweet acorns in the high woods,
Cornstalks are kind over the brown earth."
    ___ ancient Irish poem of the seasons
             (trans. CM)

   After the labor of the grain harvest, the people of the Celtic world looked forward to a more sociable time together, although they by no means stopped work.  This autumnal time is full of the bustling preparation for winter, a task to which animals and birds still pay serious heed. Without their intensive harvesting and harboring in the storehouses of tree and earth, there would be little to sustain life in a very few weeks.
    As the garden begins to look straggly and unkempt, the work is to uproot, to collect seeds from the clustering seed-heads, and to dig up the ground in preparation for the winter ahead. Autumn's many-colored intensity begins to deepen and wrap us round as this season makes its royal progress, shouts its long goodby to the growing time. Trees lean together in more contemplative coteries, their summer dancing stilled until the strong winds begin, when their leaves will tear loose to be blown about the world in wild jigs and solitary war dances.
    There are those who find autumn a time of melancholy reflection, a reminder of death and decay; but the world is a wiser place if we attend closely to its turning. The cycle of our years is annually enriched by the lessons of the fall: as students return to school and college, so we can turn to this expansive tutorial of the year's new term in search of maturity, heart's sharing and the work of our dedicated living.

"Take a walk where you can best appreciate the turning season. As you walk, commune with the spirits of the plants, trees, and animals that you encounter and learn from them the message of fall."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Healing the Violation of Theft

Healing the Violation of Theft

"The children of the wicked
In storm and in wind
Lie in the heather,
Their blood on the field,
Their shafts by their sides,
And their quivers full."
   ___ Scots Gaelic song (trans CM)

   In our society, theft, robbery, and burglary are very real threats, causing us to take many arcane precautions. Theft - even if it happens when we are out of our house - is a terrible violation of our space and causes great insecurity. The fact that someone has taken our things is almost swallowed up by the thought that a stranger has been in our space and touched our surroundings with his malice.
    It is clear that of thieves there will be no lack of till the world's end. Whether theft arises as a result of envy, greed, or need, the one who suffers theft will be just as shocked and violated in the end. So how do we restore a sense of safety or security afterward?
     The healing of such violation as theft requires a ceremony that reconsecrates ourselves or our surroundings. Such a ceremony involves a statement of facts, an expression of anger or frustration at those facts, an actual and a symbolic cleansing of the violation, a restatement and marking of our own or our home's boundaries, and a reconsecration affirming our home's sacredness. All these aspects can help reweave the violation after theft.

"Create your own simple ceremony to reconsecrate your home, your car, or yourself after a robbery."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Unquiet Mind

The Unquiet Mind

"Oh, the mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap may who ne'er hung there."
    ____Gerard Marley Hopkins, "No Worst, There is None"

    As social pressures to be all things to all people increase, so does the prevalence of mental illness. It has been customary to think of such illness as an unfortunate heredity problem suffered by others, but it becomes clearer every day that it is common to all of us.
    Signs of mental disquiet are not usually apparent to others and do not impinge upon others' lives until the person's behavior is affected. Behavioral changes do not have to be labeled as madness to draw our attention, however. We may realize that our partner's failure to make good decisions results from his inability to shift his received expectations, for example, or that our friend's addictive behavior is based upon terrible insecurity. We may even notice signs of creeping paranoia in our own lives: a fear so great that we avoid any occasion to notice it, a truth so frightful that we spend our lives projecting it upon everyone but ourselves.
    The ability of soul-friends to recognize the early stages of such states of mind is often acute. With our own friends, we can keep a watchful eye out for signs of disquiet, offering reality checks, asking questions and giving opportunities for help to be requested. It is not generally our place to treat the early signs of mental disquiet, but it is always our task to encourage, support and befriend in times of turmoil.

"What are your own current 'cliffs of fall' ?  How did you get there? What help is available (or could you seek) to help you down?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Tune of the Cosmic Dust

The Tune of the Cosmic Dust

"Human beings, vegetables, cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player."
     _____ Albert Einstein, interview


    Those who, like Einstein, come daily into contact with the physical laws that order the universe cannot help but catch the strains of that great dance in which we are all whirling. Whether it be in the intricacy of cellular formation, or in the flow of currents, or in the vast patterning of the stellar orbits that illuminate the heavens, scientists are privileged to see into the structure of that dance.
    The inapprehensible motion of life escapes our daily awareness, as does the tune of the cosmic dust  that orders us all in one great dance of life. We do not hear it playing until we come to a point where our ordinary and subtle senses are aligned together.  Then we come into harmony and awareness of both worlds at once, the apparent and the unseen worlds in conscious communion within us. These privileged moments cannot be sought; they come unbidden, surprising us into mystical vision. It may be that when we interrupt a walk on a high place at evening to admire the view, we apprehend the revolution of the earth as a physical motion beneath our feet; it may be that we become aware of a rhythm that weaves about the steady beating of our own heart, as if it were a partner in the dance.
    The resonances to which we respond and the relationship between ourselves and the music of life gives us the only clues available about the nature of the invisible partner - clues reassuring enough that we can trust the source of our music.

"Attune to the cosmic tune and rhythm of life; stand and dance."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Apprehending the Possible

Appending the Possible

"If you escape the narrowness of dimensions

and create a space for all things

to become what they desire to be

you will see the time which is placeless

you will hear what has never been heard

and you will see what has never been seen."

   ___ Dei Hughes, "The Rose and the Atom"

     One of the disciplines used by bardic schools was to enclose the student poet in a darkened room, there to pursue a set subject through the spirals of a metaphor until a poem resulted. This custom was the last remnant of druidic meditational practice, whereby darkness became the womb of light.

     In our own spiritual practice, there must be some similar way of creating space, of allowing the unseen to be perceptible, of putting our little world into the context of the greater universe. Whatever method of meditation we employ, the results of our contemplative experience cannot be compared or shared with anyone else's. When we have stretched time, defied the boundaries of space, walked where the planet was fashioned, and heard the song the sirens sang, then have we passed beyond the limitations of everyday speech and understanding.

     We become part of the larger universe as we allow our fixed grasp to loosen. The power of imagining the possible is great, but how much greater the power of perceiving the possible unfolding in its own myriad, unimagined way! The space where this can happen exists within and around each one of us each time we enter into the discipline of spiritual attention.

"Sitting in the darkness and silence, be attentive to the mystery of the universe rather than to yourself.  Record your findings in words, music, or pictures."

[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Kinship of Nature

Kinship of Nature

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."   ____ William Shakespeare, As You Like It


   As we walk through the countryside at this time of the year, it is easy to feel our symbiotic connection with nature. The rich profusion of colors and the abundant seeding and fruiting of the land in preparation for autumn all beckon us into a wider family circle. We return home after such a walk perhaps to the city, brimming with a sense of belonging, but this feeling fades sooner or later as we are immersed once more in the daily running of our lives.
    We place reminders of nature's beauty about our home. Driven by recognition that our kinship with nature is slipping, we surround ourselves with 'natural' or 'organic' things. While such things may remind us of our wider relationship, they do not truly connect us, since kinship must pass beyond strictly visual reminders if it is to be authentic.
     It is in the touch of nature that connection is most strongly made, for it is the most physical levels that recognition of kinship is triggered. We engage with our kindred when we are in physical contact whether we tend our garden, groom our dog, or receive the kiss of rain upon our skin. These moments of precious contact are opportunities for loving thankfulness, in recognition of the fact that we are wholly akin to a greater family. When we live our lives open to such moments, we enter a wider embrace that includes us all.

"What relationships do you have with your natural kin, apart from other human beings? What trees, animals, rocks and places call out to you as kindred? Become more aware of these precious kindred
and the way in which you yourself are included in the relationship."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Landmarks

Landmarks

"We can have inherited no single syllable from the names given by Paleolithic hunters, but never since their day have our landmarks been without them, without some sound to enrich and confirm their personality."
    ____ Jacquetta Hawkes, A Land


     The abiding landmarks of our country have personality, quality and emotive properties. Landmarks - features of the land that speak to us of the ancient sculpting of the earth in distant eras - recall the coming of humankind, who raised and shaped the land in new ways; and they embody the myths, deeds, and actions that have happened there.
    The process of naming places in the land began in ancestral eras too distant to imagine, but we can guess that our ancestors, like us, saw the broad outlines of gigantic figures - the jut of a giant's knee, the rocky profile of a noble face, the upturned breasts of a goddess, the vast cauldron of a river-filled canyon or valley.
    Every natural landmark is redolent of the myths and legends of the land. Even in seemingly featureless places, stories still run like veins of golden song beneath the sleeping earth. The utterance of the landmark's name can be a magical evocation of its stories and remembrances.

"Recall the features of the landscape around your own home. What would they be like without manmade structures upon them? What stories, traditions, and songs abide in your land? If your land was once occupied by other peoples, what was its name in that time, and how does it preserve that meaning?
   When you next walk in your locality be sensitive to the spirit of the place. Name the area, get to know it; let its story be told again."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

September

"Month of September - benign are the planets;

Tending to please, the sea and hamlet;

Common it is for steeds and men to be fatigued."

 ___ anon. Welsh poem

The month of September sees the fruit and berry harvest, and the turning

of the trees to their many colors. The meditation themes for this

month include appreciating the harvest, home, wandering, belonging,

boundaries, nationhood, music, beauty and ceremony.