Tasks of a Bard

Tasks of a Bard

"The three chief endeavors of a bard: to learn and collect knowledge; to teach; to make peace and put an end to all injury.
To act contrary to these things is not usual or fitting to a bard."
    ___ ancient British triad

   How can these bardic tasks become part of our own spiritual path today?  How can they be integrated into our culture? Each society needs knowledge that informs and is appropriate for its members: it does not want to hear about bygone lore. This means that every would-be bard should indeed research to the very roots of knowledge the thing she wishes to convey, but she must also seek out the relevance and practical wisdom of that topic.
   The ancient bards could inspire, encourage, enchant their listeners.
The modern bard must learn the old art of oral performance rather than of written exposition. These skills may be learned from our spiritual allies, who are the true teachers of the bardic knowledge, as well as from situations in which the solution to difficulty is imparted by spontaneous, synaptic inspiration: where knowledge, problem, and answer line up.
   This leads to the making of peace and the cessation of injury - skills that we need very badly in our own time. The bardic performance can bring the end to hostility, especially if music is part of the picture.  In the presence of music, all people are brought into harmony and understanding as its universal language speaks to the soul. We may bring an end to injury and offense through the offices of a modern bard in times not so far distant from our own.

"Meditate upon the bardic teachers of your ancestry. Make a soul-flight to one of their schools and ask to meed with a bard who will teach you the skills necessary for bringing peace to our world."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Marriage Blessing

Marriage Blessing

"Length of life and sunny days, and may your souls not go
homeward till your own child falls in love!"
    ____ traditional Irish blessing (trans CM)


    For most people entering marriage today, such thoughts are far from their heads.  Indeed, many disillusional wedding guests sit and discuss - even they toast the happy couple - how long this marriage will last. Though the statistics show that many marriages now end in divorce, there are still a number of long-term relationships that continue - especially if the partners are supported by well-wishing and encouraging friends.
   When we celebrate a marriage, we are essentially celebrating the continuance of life: a factor that is now often subsumed in the mutual satisfaction of the couple, who may indeed chosen to have no children. Yet the heart of the marriage blessing enshrines the possibility of life's continuance: the birth of children and the perpetuation of humankind. The best-laid plans to defer a family until a more convenient time are often overturned by nature, which finds a way for life to flourish. In the eyes of new parents, the marriage blessing often seem to be a rather dubious or double-edged one, cutting short personal pleasures and dampening mutual delights.
    But the privilege of parenthood, the feeling of blessedness, is also experienced as children grow, change and surprise us. The true fruit of our partnership, they will grow up to marry and have children of their own, so that when our souls go homeward, our offspring will have the happiness, love, and initiation into parenthood in their turn.

"Make your own marriage blessing for those celebrating the beginning of their partnership today. Draw upon the fortunate elements of your own relationships."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Intellectual Stimulus

Intellectual Stimulus

"Too many men and women spend their time between an office and a home in a state of intellectual stupor." 
   ___ Llewelyn Powys, "Earth Memories"


    Among the bards and druids, the training of the mind and memory was of paramount importance; the continual use of memory kept open the neural pathways, making response quick and incisive. Speed of mind meant speed of tongue: the swifter-than-thought pronouncement of judgment or pithy and apposite verse was expected of bards and druids. While there are many professions today that use training methods to sharpen the intellect, most of us do not exercise our minds to any great degree. Instead of thinking deeply about a thing, we often summon up our sensations, emotions and instincts and create an opinion woven of these strands. Although the intellect needs stimulus and training, it still has its place in the scheme of things.
    In the wintertime, the air is clearer and crisper, the brain seems to work just that little bit more quickly than it does in the summer. Those of us who are intellectually flabby may find that now is a good time to exercise our intellect, to stretch it further than it is accustomed to. The process of learning something is one way to engage the intellect; if there is no time for that, however, engaging in deep discussion about a topic important to you with friends or reading something that stretches your conceptual apparatus is also beneficial. There are no set boundaries on the limits of human intellect: see how far we each can go!

"Exercise your mind in a new or different way: a new language, a different way of looking at the universe. Choose something that intrigues you and see how it connects with what you know."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Wisdom of the Word

    The use of words was one of the central aspects of ancient Celtic culture. Not only did words represent the medium of communication, they also formed the focus of spirituality and a repository for sacred wisdom. The Celtic culture had an almost exclusively oral tradition; this was the sole means by which the culture expressed its identity, its sense of history and continuity. The spoken words was used both to preserve Celtic mythology and for storytelling, including poetry and song. There were also a variety of lesser spoken forms, such as proverbs, sayings, riddles, prayers and blessings. The timeless treasures that survive from this tradition still have much to offer us today - as a means of gaining wisdom, rediscovering our native spirituality , and dealing with the challenges that modern living presents.

Defending the Country

Defending the Country

"They are passionately devoted to their freedom
and to the defense of their country, for theses
they fight, for these they suffer hardships."
____ Gerald of Wales, "Journey Through Wales"


    Love of freedom and the rights of free speech and free congregation are at the heart of the British character, and the response today is just as mutinous as in medieval times, when these words were written, if anyone attempts to overturn these ancient, druidic freedoms.
    The defense of one's country has become an issue of uneasy contemplation these days. Our minds stray to nuclear armaments and the unpleasant ironmongery that wreaks so much pain and destruction. We shy away from the consideration of national service, conscription, and other military preparations for defensive war. Yet if we look deeply at the defense of country, we discover that it requires something more worthy of us than naive back-stabbing of other nations, cultures, and religions. The essential freedoms and privileges that we enjoy are enshrined in our laws and statutes for all to read, but there are also more profound and subtle freedoms that we are all called upon to defend.
   The enemy to these freedoms is not always so obvious as a foreign power but is all about us, within our own society. It is our own disregard for the authentic loyalties of life that is the enemy attacking our country. We who live in our land are its defenders by our very way of life, by our attitudes, by our actions, by our intentions, by the integrity, joy, and engagement we bring to our country's life. To become a defender rather than an enemy, we must be in turn with our country in a deeply spiritual way.

"Commune with the spirit of the country in which you live. Ask it what are the freedoms and privileges that it guards. Ask how these freedoms are to be defended and what is the greatest threat to them at this time."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit5" by Caitlin Matthews]

Integrity in Work

Integrity in Work

"He should be constitutionally and habitually devotional, so that
blessing of God may be upon him, and what he does, and what he
may be conscientious to do what is right and beneficial in the
practice of his art."  
___ "The Herbal Remedies of the Physicians of Myddfai"


    Whether we work for an employer or are self-employed, whether we have retired or are taking a sabbatical from work, the integrity of our actions contributes to the universal web of life. If an employer begins to bend the rules for his own benefit, then his staff may be tempted to follow his example. One person's actions may affect the company in such a way that certain positions or products are canceled - for who robs one, robs all. Occupations that strip the earth of its resources or leave it polluted are easy to target as culpable of gross theft and planetary vandalism, yet the actions of everyone living enable such results to some degree.
   To be in right relationship to our universe, a certain integrity and code of practice in our work and actions is necessary. Most of us have no explicit code by which to steer, but what we value is revealed when we consider why and for whom we are conscientious in our work and actions. Surely it is not only our employer or fellow workers who inspire us to do well but whose who consume or use what we make, or our families who are supported by our work.
    Hands that work are the partners in manifestation of the unseen world wherein Spirit (by whatever form or forms we recognize it) is the keeper, maker and inspirer of all that is. Any code of practice must first apply to the sacred source of spiritual inspiration to keep its actions pure, to operate from the highest of motives, to irrigate all work from the wellspring of integrity.

"Draw up a short, realistic personal code of practice both for your occupation and for your actions in general."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Month of December - the shoe is covered with dirt;
Heavy the land, flagging the sun;
Bare are the trees, still is the muscle.

December sees the winter solstice and the return of gradually longer days. The themes of this month include the nature of work, revenge and forgiveness, gifts and blessings, belief and disbelief, and practicing being human.

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 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 celebrate their return by germination 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 as 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 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 away all that 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 spiraling inwards."
____ from a speech by Nuala Ahern,
   Irish Member of the European Parliament


    The word turas (TU'ras), which means 'journey,' 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 customary in the nothern hemisphere; it 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 with 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 attunes 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]

The Passing of Time

    The passage of time was a crucial aspect of ancient Celtic beliefs. Indeed, measuring and marking it was a mater of survival because the Celts lived close to the land and seasonal activities such as sowing and planting had to be carried out at the right time.  To the Celts, the cycles of the natural world and the celestial bodies had spiritual significance, and therefore exerted a powerful influence on humanity. The Celtic year is split into two parts: the dark half and the light half, reflecting the recurring cycle of birth, growth and death, followed by renewal and rebirth.All life, whether plant or animal, begins in darkness, and all outer actions begin with inner preparation, so Celtic cycles begin with the dark segment. Thus the Celtic year begins with the first onset of winter.