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]