Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers

Exile

"Exile, like memory, may be a place of hope and delusion.
But there are rules of light there and principles of

darkness..... The expatriate is in search of a country,

the exile in search of a self......"

___ Eavan Boladn, "Object Lessons"

One of the strongest sorrows of the Celtic world was exile from one's own country. To be banished beyond the ninth wave of the shore was to lose touch with the integrity, power, and belongingness of the Land. Another form of exile came to the Celtic peoples in the Christian era: the self-chosen exile of Christian service in foreign lands. This was known as 'white martyrdom' to those who endured the pain of exile.

Unwilling exiles need the completion of their native land to make them whole. They are always longing for it -- indeed , they will reproduce it, living within a ghetto created by memory and regret = and are ever suspicious of anything the new land has to offer. When the darkness of exile's night passes, the light of expatriate dawn can arrive. The new land and the immigrant can begin a fresh relationship in partner-ship and (though the old country is never forgotten)

the new homeland can begin to bring nurture, support and joy in all possible ways to the welcome guest.

"From what are you exiled (for example: home, customs; people, places)? What new opportun ities surround you now?"

[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews, July 24th essay]

I cannot let this blog posting go by without bringing into mention Frank MacEowen's book

"The Mist-Filled Path". The subtitle of the book I've put in the title of this posting. In the

book Chapter 1 - 'The Threshold of Mist', begins with first "The Celts believed that there was another dividing line that all people could straddle, if only they stretched themselves a bit.

And that's the divide between the world and the otherworld." (Steve Rabery, "In the House of Memory.")

Then MacEowen begins with: "The mist called to me when I was a child. In the early mornings, and sometimes at dusk, I would look out the window into the thick woods behind our Georgia home and a deep longing would fill my soul....... Just beyond the mossy stone wall, just past the clusters of fern, I would often see the eerie gray-green mist swirling in the trees. It would hang there like a gull in the wind, as if searching for something. It seemed to capture something of my own quest, a deep childhood search for an experience of thy mystery of the sacred world. Some mornings I went outside to see the mist, up close and personal, and just as I would arrive at its edge, it would suddenly disappear from view, almost as if it had never been there. A strange shadowy afterimage would remain. At other times, I would look non with astonished eyes as the mist changed directions and moved away from me, visible retreating from my presence. It would glide along the tree line, withdrawing itself from my overly analytical stare. In truth, my precocious and unrefined piercing gaze was exiling me from the teachings of the mist. ..... The soul searches an ineffable intelligence that cannot be controlled. Like the mist, the soul, we might say, has a mind of its own. It cannot be forced, directed or squeezed into a box where it does not belong. It cannot even be fully seen or perceived, for the soul is a timeless, feathered thing that flies in more worlds than one."

He moves on a little later to say: "Exile is that undeniable sensation of being cordoned off from what is most essential to our souls. .... We may be exiles from a basic sense of joy in our lives. Sometimes our exile is characterized by our sense of being a stranger in our own families, not able truly to share wh0 or what we are without being criticized or judged. ... For many of us a kind of exile may lie at the very heart of our lives. It is an exile many people feel in the twenty-first century. It may express itself as an exile from nature, from ancestral traditions, from cultural homelands, or from spiritual lineages. Sometimes these lineages and traditions appear to be lost forever without the potential of reclamation, so the exile feels even more poignant"

And may I leave you with this bit of instruction from Jalal-Ud-Din Rumi:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep."

Fierce Defenders

Fierce Defenders
"I thank you, Andraste, and call out to you as one woman to

another..... I implore and pray to you for victory, and for the

maintenance of life and freedom, against arrogat, unjust,

insatiable and profane men."

___Dio Cassius, "Roman History"

This speech is attributed to the British Queen Boudicca (BOO'dik-a), known to later generations as Boudicea, queen of the Iceni. When she assumed rulership of the tribe after her husband's death, the Romans did not recognize her queenship. She was given a punitive lashing for her defiance, and her two virgin daughters were raped.

Before going into battle against the Romans, Boudicca released a hare from the fold in her cloak, in order to make a battle augury: the direction and nature of its running would determine her chances of victory. She also called upon the Goddess of Victory, Andraste - she who is Unconquerable - in order to uphold the Icenian cause against the Romans. With her troops, this mighty queen killed an estimated eighty thousand before she was defeated. Rather than risk capture and the dishonor of being paraded in a Roman triumph, she committed suicide.

There are many who will applaud Boudicca's forceful action against Roman barbarity to herself and her daughters. Her shock tactics and powers of leadership certainly confounded and weakened the Romans for a significant period - long enough at least to have avenged the insult to her royal person and her daughters' honor.

When men encounter the fierce defender who lies within women they are frequently dismayed or even terrified. Let a child be harmed or a animal mistreated, a beautiful area polluted or human rights diminished and we see that the warrior queens are not dead and forgotten; they still stride among us, calling out to the Unconquered Goddess for help in times of need.

"What causes your warrior instincts to surge to the surface?"

[From: Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

Journey to the Heart of the Labyrinth

Journey to the Heart of the Labyrinth

"Spiralling towards the center,

We know that we have come

to the center of who

we are."

____ Philip Carr-Gomm, "The Druid Tradition"

The old Cornish midwives of the southwest tip of Britain used to have a flat stone into whose depths a spiral labyrinth was carved. Expectant mothers about to give birth would be encouraged to trace this spiral pathway in order to help the birth. By tracing it over and over with their fingers and reciting certain secret prayers, they could help the long gestation of the child draw to its close. It was believed that this practice would clear any obstacles standing in the way of an easy birth and bring the child forth from its long months in the dark.

The correlations between the birth process and our own spiral circuit with the labyrinth become clearest when we trace the route of our life to date. In order to begin our spiritual journey, we must first be born from the heart of the labyrinth: the mysterious womb. As children we know our origins; as adults we begin to forget, so we have to painfully take the path home in unknowing, coil by coil. For many of us, the heart of the labyrinth, the goal of the spiritual journey, is anticipated as a place of horror: a stalking place for Minotaurs and other beasts. But though we may expect to find all kinds of alien and external influences lurking there, we find, on arrival, nothing more than ourselves.

Only by treading the turning, spiraling coils of the labyrinth of our lives can we come to perfect understanding of what lies at the center. It is as familiar to us, as dear and memorable, as the road that leads homeward.

"Meditate upon the different phases of your life in roughly seven-year intervals. Write down the qualities, discoveries, and themes of each phase. Arrange each of these phases around the paths of a labyrinth, noticing which paths and themes come close to each other."

{From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"}

Mother-Right - Celtic Spirit Essay for the Day

"They bound themselves by the sun and moon that the possession of

the (Pictish kingdom)....should be held by the right of the female

rather than that of the male progeny to the end of the world.:

___Geoffrey Keating, "Forus Feast at Eirtinn

In our times, a reconsideration of the role and status of women has brought us into new relationships with mother-right, with a proper acknowledgment of the gifts of the feminine. For men and women this has been a rediscovery of a secret inheritance, for our connection the mother-country of the soul has been fractured. Our society has been (and for the most part still is) patriarchal: things are ordered from the masculine point of view, generally for the benefit and enhancement of masculine privileges. That which partakes of the feminine has been marginalized and neglected - including not only the lives of women but also the feminine side of male nature.

A whole new way of living and valuing things comes into focus when we consider the mother-right. The hidden side of our nature, the side that intuits rater than reasons, the part that view things from the inside out rather than from the outside in, can come into play when mother-right is allowed to function normally. This does not mean switching a patriarchy for matriarchy, for each of these extremes is as unbalanced as the other, Rather, it means allowing the side of our society and individuaoity that has been recessive to take its rightful place. This recognition of the feminine quietly acknowledges the intrinsically royal nature of mother-right, which speaks as sovereign from the depths of the mother-country -- a land that still waits to be fully rediscovered and restored.

"Mediate upon the feminine in your life. Revisit the mother-country of the soul where the feminine's holy and regal nature is recognized."

[From "The Celtic Spirit" essays by Caitlin Matthews]

OverThrowing Illusions

"Each man is in his spectre's power

Until the arrival of that hour

When his humanity awake

And cast his own specre into the lake."

__William Blake, "Each Man Is in His Spectre'sPower"

Long before Freud and Jung, William Blake coined the word

spector to signify the illusory self that, by its appetites and desires, overrules and dictates to the true self. The illusory self becomes our personal image, the projected likeness we want others to see.

The spector is fed by our patterns of appeasement, by our fear of authority, by our need to be perfect. Lest it take hold of our lives, we have to return to our essential humanity, to the core of our being, to the soul within us, and clarify by the soul's mirror what constitutes self and illusory self. In everything we do, we need to determine whether we are acting out of the core of our integrity or at the dictates of the specter.

Where mind and heart, reason and compassion are separated, there Blake's specter roams hungry and unchecked through our life. Casting off our illusory self is an act of maturity that strengthens the light of the soul. Acting out of our own heart, rather than out of projected self, we come once more to the true likeness with which we have been endowed.

"Where is the specter raging through your life? What false projections of your soul are showing on your screen this week? Meditate upon what life would be like without the support of those projections. Search for your true, authentic self."

[From "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews, July 20th's essay]

Change

"Now ebb, now flood, now friend, now cruel g(f)oe;
Now glad, now sad, now weel, now into woe;
Now cload in gold, dissolvit now in ash;
So dots [does] this world transitory go."
-- William Dungar, "O Wretch; Beware"

The aftermath of order and chaos are natural frequencies that balance our lives. Custom and change are but their children, who allow new influences and possibilities into the world. When things become too formalized and ordered, they become stale and static, lacking the life and energy that only change can bring. Yet when change strikes, we feel out of control, disordered, even attacked by its sudden overturning of all that we have known. Despite that, change is not, of its essence, antagonistic to us, only to our habitual and clinging notions. Long periods of change and fluctuation can be very wearing, however, because we have no order or pattern to give context to our living.

The period leading up to the spring equinox is similarly a time of great upheaval in nature: the first full moon of March usually heralds high tides and strong winds that enliven the long-dead period of late winter. The change of spring is one that we welcome with all our hearts, but we appreciate it warmly only because of what has gone before it. Our ability to cope with change will improve if we discover the art of living in the present moment, of being at home where and when we are.

"What strategies do you use for coping with change? Meditate upon the fresh opportunities and energies that change is currently bringing to your life."
[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

Walking the Earth Sacredly

It is all sacred. Every hill and every valley. Our land is a living thing, not a grave of forgetfulness under our feet.
-- Owen M. Edwards, cited in Emyr Humphreys, "The Taliesin Tradition"

The way in which we walk the earth matters greatly, but our feet do not always remember this. Instead of walking the earth sacredly, we tend to stamp with proud disrespect in every stride. How can we remember the sacred dimention of the earth? Only when we realize it as a living entity does this understanding come home to roost. Nearly everyone has at some point experienced the impinging of a greater living presence when we have seen a beautiful view or stood at a powerful land feature through which the earth's soul is clearly discernible, but this feeling fades away once we are back in our home surroundings.
To get a sense of the living presence of the earth, as an ensoulded being, we can chose to purposely notice the abiding life of the earth by sitting in nature and focusing upon its breathing, its rhythms, and its soul. This requires that we filter out our own concerns and presence and focus instead upon the earth's. Whenever we give up this kind of time and attention, the rewards are striking. We learn, at first hand, the beauty and presence of the sacred earthy; we hear its ancient stories, songs, and myths; we become aware of the humbling fact that we are a part of the earth, not the earth of us.
With this realization, we can take up a new relationship with our planet, walking gently and with remembrance, dancing the song-lines of the living mythic landscape in our soul's circuit.

"Today, wherever you walk, be aware of each step as a blessing upon the earth."
[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]