Mother and Child

Mother and Child

"Despite the bitterness of every sickness,
The strife that's the gift of each living soul;
The child born of one's fair body
That is what lives in the mind."
  ____ Gormilaith, "Trum Anocht Mh'Osnadh"
    in Osborn Bergin, "Irish Bardic Poetry" (trans CM)


    The bond between mother and child, between child and mother, is regarded as a sacred one in most cultures - a bond that is upheld by most legal systems, at least while the child is young. In cultures where women are less respected than men, motherhood can be a potent tool of repression, however. Motherhood has become a sacred cow over which politicians argue and bicker, alternately nodding respectfully and pulling it off the highway as a massive obstruction. Our society is ambivalent about the rights of mothers and their children, especially as the strain on the nuclear family to earn a decent living cuts across child-rearing and child-support issues.

The child-mother bond goes through a series of different phases. After the intimate nurture of babyhood and infancy, the mother becomes the watchdog vigilante - often sharp-voiced and forthright - determined to ensure the safety and well-being of her child. After the child leaves home, the role of mother as caregiver evolves into a variety of different areas, depending on the mother's adaptability. The distance of age and maturity on both sides of the relationship can bring a mutual appreciation of great beauty. Every human being comes from a woman's body, and though mother and child may be unknown to each other after birth, nothing can rend the sacred bond that lies umbilically between them.

"Meditate about the mother-child bond in your own experience."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Right to Be Happy and Sad

The Right to Be Happy and Sad

"Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know;
Safely through the world we go."
   ___ William Blake, "Augries of Innocence"


   Joy and sorrow do not perform accordingly to logical rules and laws; they come unbidden like the clouds, the rain, the sunshine. If we assume that happiness is our sacred right, we tend to warp the all-covering garment of the universal bounty into a selfish cloak of self-appeasement. This cult of happiness can devolve into a pleasure-seeking pilgrimage, that excludes all difficulty and awkwardness. Our dissatisfaction, grief, or disillusion is then projected upon less-fortunate others.
    The gifts of sadness, like the gifts of happiness, come to all conditions and types of people. They provide moments of self-clarification that keep our lives on course. Sadness stems nearly always from some form of exclusion, separation, or rejection. When we are disconnected from life, we yearn for union. Joy connects us strongly with life; like people who plunge into the stream, we enter the swim of life in ecstatic connection. Our going safely through the world is based upon a true regard of both conditions. When we value the gifts both of joy and of sorrow, our taste for life increases. When we accept both happiness and sadness as our moral bequest, we grow as human beings.

"What have you learned from your own sad and happy times?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Divine Powers

Divine Powers

"Three things possible to none but God: to penetrate the eternal without loss of truth; to recreate the new from the old without destruction; to be able to change every shape but remain changeless."
    _____ Welsh triad (trans CM)


   The ability to penetrate the eternal without loss of truth contrasts with our own patchy perception and understanding of the unseen realms. Even though imagination is a faculty of the soul, and it blends the information received by our inner and outer senses together, it can give us only partial understanding.

    Science can now breed other life forms, DNA, or tissue, but not without the death of the donor or loss of integrity to the tissue in question. The issue of genetic research is surrounded by fear and desire. The ability to change every shape and yet remain changeless can be imputed only to those able to live through time and its many evolutions. Only the Divine does this. Although it is believed by many cultures, including the Celtic tradition, that the soul passes into many shapes, subtle change do occur over the flow of time and nature of place. The unchanging nature of the Divine is only reflected in our world, never fully revealed. We truly apprehend only a few potent images suggesting a totality that is forever hidden from us while we live on this side of the worlds.

"How do you perceive divine powers from your own spiritual experience?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Circuit of Births

The Circuit of Births

"Tuirgin is a successive birth that passes from every nature into another...... flowing through all time from beginning to end."
  _____ "Cormac's Glossary"  (trans CM)


   Turigin (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 turigin is the same as reincarnation, but this is not so. In turigin, the soul moves between the otherworld and this world in a series of journeys.

  The 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 of 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.

   Turigin 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 turigin is about fusion - not the refining of the soul 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]

Tasting the Ground

Tasting the Ground

"The druid Bicne bequeathed to his successor the duty that, whenever he was unable to decide upon some obscure question..... that he should first consume some of Ireland's fruit, corn, fish, milk or chestnuts." 
    ____ "The Metrical Dindshenchas," ed. Edward Gwynn (trans CM)


    In ancient Celtic tradition, the druids are often shown literally tasting the ground in a practical sense, seeking an augury from the land and its fruits before uttering a judgment or answer. In all earth traditions there is an understanding that the land is a witness to truth, that its very molecules do not lie, that its constituent fabric and all life forms that naturally grow upon it are wise in ways that humans rarely match. The blind druid Bicne is able to divine answers to uncertain matters by eating the produce of the earth - a skill that he teaches to his successors.

    Keeping a sense of deep discernment and taste is very difficult when there are so many different criteria to consider. In multicultural and pluralist societies, both our physical and subtle senses of taste are under pressure to determine issues and things in ways that are right for us, our families, and our communities. One thing is certain: whoever lives upon a land with respect is welcomed by that land in ways deeper than we can imagine - a fact that we should bear in mind when issues of race and culture are raised. For those who are true to the land shall find that the land keeps faith with them. With our ability to move about the earth and settle at will, we do well to first consult the region where we are thinking of living, going straight to the land and speaking with its spirit, so that we can live with discrimination, truth and respect.

"Wherever you are living, go and stand on bare, umconcreted earth and commune with the spirit of the land. Return to your home and in soul-flight go back to the site you visited and ask for a better sense of discrimination."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Metaphor as Life

Metaphor as Life

"My eye is my verse,
My art is my whole vision."
   ___Dallan Forgaill, "Amra Senan" (trans CM)


   When spiritual darkness falls and we lose our sense of place and progress in life, the ability to see our way through our lives by way of metaphor can come to the rescue and give us a sense of restoration. We do not have to be poets to accomplish this. As living human beings, we all have the ability to tune in to our inner guidance system and gain perspective in our present circumstances, by asking the following questions:

• How do I describe myself in my present circumstances? What do I feel like? (For example, 'powerless, like a car with a dead battery'; unheard, like someone singing in a hail storm'; 'over-burdened, like a head of state.' )
• How would I describe my normal sense of spiritual connection? (For example, 'like receiving Morse code in a foreign language'; 'nurturing and strong, like bathing in a hot pool')
• What is the nature of help that my spiritual allies can bring to me now? What do I need? (For example, 'space and time'; 'a beautiful and deserted beach in the sun')
• How do I envisage my return to a place of clear understanding? (Draw upon the images and metaphors that you graphically describe in your earlier response4s. Meditate upon the help you need right now. Let your own metaphors give you guidance and support.)

Diagnose your present condition by using the inner guidance system of metaphor, as suggested above."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Cernunnos

Cernunnos

"The suppression of Cernunnos was and is one [the] greatest psychological calamities. Had we continued to be religiously hospitable to him, he might have evolved into a gracious theranthropic, divine Patron of integration."
   ____ John Moriarty, "Turtle Was Gone a Long Time"


   Cernunnos (Ker-NUN'nos) is an antlered god surrounded by beasts and vibrant summer leaves like a shamanic, Celtic Orp0heus, lord of the animals and master of life. Neither quite deer nor entirely man, his theranthropic animal-human nature crosses a bridge that few divine manifestations achieve in our own time. Because he is horned and holds a snake, he was expressly demonized by early Christianity, although medieval Europe could not entirely shake off his abiding figure who also mediates between the two natures.
    In many depictions, Cernunnos holds the torc or neck-ring of human achievement in his right (conscious) hand; he grasps the ram-headed serpent of animal wisdom in his left (or unconscious) hand. His eyes are closed in an inward-looking attitude of meditation or ecstasy. For the Celtic world, this was the image of the guardian of life: not a macho or retributive deity, but one of quiet strength, an icon who protected the vital power of all living beings and mediated the powers of spiritual insight and enlightened knowledge. Cernunnos may have been excluded from mainstream religion, but he remains a wellspring of dynamic mediation among those who follow the old ways. He enables us to appreciate and be obedient to our dual nature: as human beings with the power of the mind, and as evolved animals with the power of the body. He stands between the worlds, visible at forest's edge and twilight, tide-turn and dawn, as a patient and protective figure in the borderlands of consciousness.

"Meditate upon your human and animals powers."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]