Books for the Soul

Books for the Soul

"That I might search all books and from their chart,
Find my soul's calm!"
     ___ St. Columba's "Song of Exile"


   When St. Columba went into self-imposed exile on the Island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, he borroweda particularly find volume of the psalms from Abbot  Finnian of Moville and had it secretly copied. When Finnian discovered what had happened, he demanded not only his book back but also Columba's copy, on the principle that 'to each cow her calf.' Columba, whose enthusiasm for the dissemination of knowledge often outran his ethical judgment, had to comply.

   In the early days of book transcription, only sacred texts were considered important enough for an illuminator and scribe to spend several months working on them. Today printed books are widely available; we are able to read a variety of writings, from sacred scriptures to poetry, from biography and history to philosophy, from legends to novels.

   If we look among our shelves, there are certain books with which we would never wish to part, dear to us because they provide us with soul-food. These are not always sacred texts: they may be myths, folk tales, or other stories whose narrative inspire us with their abiding wisdom; they may be biographical accounts of people whose lives and works have been inspiring to our own soul's circuit.

"Which book comes nearest to being your soul's chart? Meditate upon a passage from it today. Make your own blessing for the author."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Service of the Grail

The Service of the Grail

"Go, heart, until the lamp of licht [light].
Go, heart, do service and honour."
    ___ anon., "Go, Heart, unto the Lamp of Licht"


   The traditional concept of service is based upon the honor of the soul and the respect that we tender to other souls. In the Grail legends, the sacred vessel of healing and restoration can be accessed only by questers who are sufficiently attuned to their souls to ask the 'Grail question' which is said to be "Whom does the Grail serve?" - a question that, once asked, accesses the healing that it freely brings. It is only when we are able and willing to look beyond the boundaries of our own concerns and inquire what is wrong and to what extent we are involved in putting things right that we truly understand service. Then the realization that we are not the source of help, grace, or service becomes clear to us: we are truly cooperating with the spiritual source of our life and made mediators and of healing.

  The Grail is a lamp of light, life  and love that brings its solace only when someone is willing to serve. When we align our heart with need and honor, the heart itself becomes a lamp at which light is kindled. When the heart is alight with service, the flame can pass freely from heart to heart.

"What is the nature of your service within the universe? What are the terms of the contract between your service and the spiritual source whom you serve?"[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Unrequited Love

Unrequited Love

"To luve unluvit is ane pain."
    ____ Alexander Scott, "To Luve Unluvit"


    Unrequited love is painful to both the lover and the putative beloved. It is an urging that comes unbidden and makes a wasteland of the heart. The lover's longing for reciprocation and union is met with the beloved's disdain and separation. All offers of affection are distasteful, all gifts are returned. Nothing can change the heart that is not pledged.

    Unrequited love, though overwhelminly powerful, usually is of finite duration simply because the beloved does not respond. The one who attempts to persuade the beloved to attend, who goes beyond the normal limits of trial, courtship, and persuasion, merely makes himself a nuisance.

   When someone with whom we have had a long-standing relationship leaves us suddenly, there is little time to retract love: one side of the bridge of partnership is just no longer standing one day, but the old traffic of love does not suddenly come to a halt. The lyrics of songs of unrequited love now have a dimension of their own, as love enters the twilight zone of bereavement.

"Send greetings of affection to your beoved. If your relationship has come to a sudden end, expressyour love and sorrow in nverse or song."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Cosmos of the Soul

The Cosmos of the Soul

"One soul in the immensity of its intelligence, is greater and more excellent than the whole world. The ocean is but the drop of a bucket to it, the heavens but a centre, the sun obscurity and all ages but as one day."  
   ____ Thomas Traherne, "Centures"


    The druids believed that the soul encompassed the far extents of time and space, uncircumscribed by temporal dimensions. For the Celtic peoples, the physical world was nseen to be made up of three elemental dimensions: the depths of the sea, the breadth of the earth, and the airy regions of the heavens. Fusing these three dimensions together was the fiery sun, whose diurnal circuit maintained the life of the apparent world. Each ensouled body lived within the dispensation of these dimensions. But the soul was regarded as yet greater than these, able to move through water, earth, and air and fire but also to travel beyond these modes into the wider domain of the unseen world. For the soul, the passage of ages is but a day in cosmic time; there is no sense of time passing, only an eternal present to soul-travelers who enter the otherworld.

    When we begin to pay attention to our soul, rather than ignoring its needs and urgings, we experience a sense of inclusion within the universe. If we learn to pass beyond the limits of our body as soul-travelers, we discover that the constellations and planets that spin within the soul are qualities, intelligences, and allies we have always loinged for.

"Look into the depths of your soul, as into the immensity of inner space. How is the cosmos reflected within your soul? What constellations and planets are featured therein? Within the solar system of your soul, what major features do your recognize?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Finding Our True Song

Finding Our True Song

"Only when I gave
my fame to the Hazel shade
did the true song come."
    ___ Paul Matthews - "The Hazel Shade"


    Finding our true song is about relinquishing the burden of ego and the false choruses that it sings. Self-importance causes us to dance to strange tunes that our feet find unnatural. When we act out of self-importance, we trip ourselves up, make Freudian slips, inadvertently revealing to ourselves and others how far we are from our soul's circuit.

   The false songs that we sing out of tune with our soul; they are merely the responses we have adopted from others, not utterances from our own deep core. Our uncertainty and lack of conviction echo in them. The solution to these false songs is to forget ourselves and concentrate upon what we are doing, refusing to engage with fear and self-disclosure. It is not that we should ignore ourselves, but rather that we should attempt to step out of own way. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats noticed this for himself: he discovered that whenever he went out of his way to create something purposefully beautiful, he sabotaged his poem.

   The same is true of our own deep song, which is forever singing its beautiful melody beyond the reach of our ears. When we act sincerely, when we speak from the heart, when our passion is engaged, the true song is heard in all its glory.

"Meditate upon who you truly are - not upon what you have achieved, nor upon your background and antecedents, nor upon your social status or reputation. Where is your true self allowed to express itself in your life? If you do not like what you find, do not suppress your realizations; invite your true self to sing its own song and help the false persona step out of the way."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

A Life Deferred

A Life Deferred

"Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart."
    ___ W. B. Yeats, "For Anne Gregory"


   We all know someone who has put her own life on hold for the benefit of another person or for a project. This is a fine thing if there is eventually a turning back to the heart's desire and one's own way of life, but too often this does not happen.

   Deferred life inevitably means lost opportunity. We can stand only so much of this. To refrain from action, from personal engagement, from practicing skills and talents, from the formation of satisfying relationships is to marginalize our power. Never being attuned to our power, never being able to cooperate with it, sends a message of despair to our soul.

   If our life's purpose is not to curdle within us after a deferment, we must set to fostering it again and learning how to move from the place of imprisonment into a wider place. This may mean relinquishing our service to another, or delegating or sharing it. It may mean a total change, a turning of the back upon the service in question, the opening of a new door.

   Before the heart becomes a stone, we must seek out the cause of our joy and integrate it fully into our lives, or else discover the joys within the way of service.

"What is the joy of your life? How are you serving it? If you are not, where has the joy gone?
Take steps to engage with it."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Innocence Abused

Innocence Abused

"Who is it that laments in this house of stone? ... It is Mabon, the son of Modron who is here....and no imprisonment was ever so grievous as mine."
    _____ Culhwch and Olwen, from "The Mabinogian"

    In the story of Culhwach and Olwen, Mabon, son of Modron, is a primal being of innocence, abducted from his mother's side when he only three nights old. No one knows whether he is alive or dead, as the young hero Culhwch (KIL'ook) discovers when he goes to liberate the Child of Light from his long imprisonment.

    The gifts of innocence are eagerly sought by those who have lost their own. Those who nhave spilled and wasted in hideous ways the hope, freshness, vigor, openness, directness, and joy of youth seek to replenish their stores, and so the cycle of the abused preying upon the innocent goes round.

   How can the cycle of abuse be short-circuited in our society? Only when each of us decides to break the circle that keeps imprisoned as victim, in fear of the predator. It is only by liberating the Mabon of our innocent selves that we can find the strength to overcome abuse and violence: we need the primal help of our innocent, lost, and imprisoned soul-fragment, which was overshelmed in childhood.

"How has your innocence been abused or lost? Over a period of time, begin to create the components of your quest for the Mabon of your own lost soul-fragment. Where does the crying come from? In what circumstances do you access the memories and pathways? Follow these until you find the place in dream, meditation, and soul-flight. Envisage the innocent becoming the strong liberator."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Mabon, The Divine Child

     Mabon is the Divine Child who becomes the Divine Youth. He is the eternally young Celtic god of music and harmonym, liberation and unity. He was kidnapped from his mother when he was three days old, and was held in a dungeon in Gloucester, England, until freed by the heroes Kai and Gwrhyr. (In the Welsh tradition Mabon was detained in Annwn, the Otherworld, and his liberator was Culhwch.) Mabon represents imprisonment of the spirit and release from captivity, and symbolizes rebirth or reincarnation in his re-emergence from Annwn.

   Mabon is always charming, eloquent and musically skilled - a fine and trustworthy companion. He acts as mediator between the gods and humanity, when needed.

    Mabon's attributes are intercession, negotiation, persuasion, and the ability to soothe anger. His symbol is the four-spoked wheel, representing the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, the turning of the year and the treasures that the changing seasons bring. The image combines the fluid, curling lines of the triskle and the solidity of Daghdha's shield knot, demonstrating Mabon's versatility and adaptability.

In the book "The Book of Celtic Symbols" by Joules Taylor, there is a bit of information about Mabon's relationship to the Wheel of the Year.  Sometimes the Celtic year is divided into two segements, Light or Bright Year - from Beltaine (May1) to Samhain (November 1) - and Dark Year - Samhain to Beltaine.  The Light Year is roughly equivalent to summer, the Dark Year to winter. One of the symbols for this is the double spiral:

Most of the work of the community took place during the Light Year, while the Dark Year was a time for surviving the harshness of the cold months.  The double spiral symbolizes balance; the two halves of the year, representing the sun increasing in warmth and brightness during the Light Year and decreasing during the Dark Year.

A more complex way of dividing the year is into the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. As always in nature, everything flows. There are no sharply dividing lines where one season becomes another. However, the year can be divided into four in two different ways, using the quarter days or the cross-quarter days.  The four-spoked solar wheel shos the sun  dividing the year into four seasons. This also symbolizes Mabon, the Divine Child.

Traditionally, the quarter days were the Solstices and the Equinoxes - the longest and shortest nights and the two days in the year when the length of day and night were equal.

   Yule and Midsummer mark the Solstices - usually December 22 and June 21 respectively, although the dates can vary by a day or two from year to year. The Midsummer Solstice has no well-known associated with it, although Litha has been suggested (the name comes from writings of the Venerable Bede and refers to the Anglo-Saxon names for the months of June and July).

    The Spring Equinox, usually March 20, is generally considered to be the feast of Eostre (Ostara), the goddess of the spring and new growth. Hares, and eggs are her symbols, remembered today in the Easter Rabbit and Easter Eggs.

   The original name for the Autumn Equinox remains undiscovered. Neo-Pagans have named it Mabon, although the association of the Divine Youth with the cooling weather, shorter days, and the bounty of the harvest seems misplaced. Modron (the all-providing Mother Goddess) or Rosmerta  (the 'Good Provider') would be far more appropraite.

     The cross-quarter days fall between the quarter days, and comprise the ancient Celtic festivals of Imbolc (February 1), Beltaine (May Day), Lughnasadh (August 1) and Samhain (November 1). These are the Fire Festivals, celebrations of human life and its connection to the earth - and the Otherworld, in the case of Beltaine and Samhain.