Mysteries

Mysteries

"The three things which surpass understanding; the work '
of the bees, the mind of women, and the flow and ebb of the tide."  ancient Irish triad

    Much of our world is mysterious to us. However much science explains to us about our surroundings, there remain many mysteries that still evoke wonder. Though the beekeeper is close to the work of the hive, for example, she remains essentially an outsider, able only to exploit the bees and their honey-making skill. The thought processes of women, totally congruent to the feminine understanding, as mysterious to men. The ebb and flow of the tide can be reckoned by mariners and the Coast Guard, but they are mysteries to those who have not observed them.
    These unhappy terrains of mystery do not yield themselves easily to us; they are not apprehensible or quantifiable after short study. Only by observing the movement of migrating birds over many seasons, for example, do bird-watchers understand a little of that process which is natural yet deeply mysterious to the causal observer. Even our own mysterious processes are graspable only when we give time and meaningful attention to them. This means long, patient observation and notation of our dreams, our intentions, our relationship to the world. When we become more sensitive to the subtle messages that are clearly transmitted to us, we come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place within the world.

"What intrigues you about your life?  Begin to gather information by observing and tracking your inner workings; then meditate upon your findings."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Underground River of Creation

The Underground River of Creation

"Apart from sleep where the creative act seems involuntary and instantaneous, it does appear  that a creative process goes on all the time beneath the level of conscious thought."
____ Neil Gunn, The Atom of Delight


    The underground river of creation curves on beneath the surface of life, its inspiring waters ever available to refresh and bring sparkle to daily life. People who feel that they are uncreative often complain that they do not know how to get access to these waters. Surely, these people assert, creative waters run through particularly gifted people only.
    The way to find the ever-flowing creative river is to dig an artesian well by means of engaging actively and consciously with our creativity.  By so doing, we allow the water to rise swiftly. The moment of creative conception happens in the dark, in sleep, in moments of forgetfulness, in lapses of concentration when we have been beavering to bring something wonderful to fruition - but to no avail.
As we continue to work, suddenly our project starts taking shape, though progress is still gradual, inching forward day by day. The creative process cannot be hurried without loss or miscarriage of our project. However much we want it to manifest, it has to have organic space and time. It has to rest, like the dough of good bread 'proving' in a warm place to double in size. The frenzy of kneading and pummeling will not hasten its arrival. The moment of manifestatio, when we share our creation with others, is only one among many moments of deep satisfaction, wherein we have drunk of the sweet waters that flow deeply through us.

"What are the processes of the plan you currently foster? At what stage are you at the moment?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Colors of the Winds

The Colors of the Wind

"\North European wind-lore teaches that the quality of the wind at the moment of the first breath determines the character of that life."  ____Nigel Pennick, Celtic Sacred Landscape

     In every land, the winds have different folklore associated with them; even within the same land mass, winds bring different gifts and messages. In inland areas, for example, the wind has a different quality to that which blows along the coast. Certain winds are thought of as bringing luck, health, sickness, disquiet, and so on, because they blow from a direction associated with those qualities. But there is no fixed lore on this matter. We can discover the qualities and gifts of the winds wherever we live in the world, seeking out their regional meanings from our own observation rather than relying upon findings and traditions from other lands and cultures - findings that have little relevance to our own situation.
   The weather vane of our own emotions and moods is very much attuned to the winds. Even in places where seasonal variation is less differentiated, the subtle changes in wind speed and direction, the change of tides and other subtle indicators have an effect upon us. Our living breath is seen as pertaining to the nature of the winds that prevailed when we were born: our first breath gave our bodies their initial contact with the greater world around us when we emerged from the womb. No matter how the winds blow thereafter, our bodies will have memory of that moment and carry certain predispositions of character.

"Make a point of checking the direction of the wind against your own prevailing mood each day. Stand where you can feel the breeze flow. Note your findings and record the weather that each wind brings with it. Use this as a compass of your own behavioral swings."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Confederate with Eternity

Confederate with Eternity

"If through the channels of our homely senses we learn to envisage with imagination the movement and murmur of life in our moment of time, we become confederate with eternity."
   ___ Llewelyn Powys, Earth Memories

    The many branches of science that observe the physical world and its relationship to the cosmos are profoundly privileged in that they bring their exponents into a close relationship with the teeming varieties of life. Since the Age of Reason, it has been customary for science to remain separate from what it studies and to ignore the spiritual connections between life on either side of the veil between the worlds. Fortunately, many scientists have discovered that the patterns revealed within the universe show an intelligent consistency and order that is both beautiful and implicit.
    We do not have to be forever open to unseen reality or credulous of every wonder to appreciate the implicit order of the greater universe. This is revealed every day through our ordinary physical senses. When we keep the vision of nature's revelation before our eyes and imaginations, each moment becomes loaded with eternal potential. To be confederate with eternity, we need the practice of life that gives us a special cynosure through which to view the whole universe in every precious instant.

"Go out in nature and be present to another life form. Using each of your physical senses, observe that life form. Now try being present to it with your subtle senses. What different kinds of understanding do have? What differences are there between you and it? What stimilarties do you share?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Therapy of Nature

The Therapy of Nature

"Common experience tells us that solitary walk by
the river or ocean, a few calm hours in the woods restore the spirit and may produce more insight....than the best labours of the professional analyst."  ____ Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth, cited in Paul Devereus, Revisioning the Earth

   Now that the light is growing stronger and the first signs of spring are becoming apparent, it is good to explore the countryside and see its beauty with our own eyes. Nature is the best therapist for putting things into perspective. When we go purposefully outdoors, we enter our true, living context, becoming once more part of a world that is always there but whose gifts excluded when we live entirely within walls, under a roof. Early Irish poetry speaks again and again of Spirit as the thatcher who roofs the sky with stars and keeps all things under divine protection. When we exchange a tiled roof for the roof of the heavens, our soul has more room to expand.
    The ancients understood about taking problems for a walk: the measure pace of walking, the juxtaposition of the problem against natural surroundings, the submersion or abolition of worry in the face of the beauties and wonders of nature - all these factors enable us to discover a new perspective. Being under the mantle of nature, we receive a truer reflection of help, a more tolerant understanding, a more profound solution that encompasses not only our labyrinthine mental confrontations but our physical discomforts and our emotional longings.

"Take your own problems for a walk and be open to wider solutions and perspectives."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Desire of the Eyes

Desire of the Eyes

"What is it that will not stand lock nor chain? ___ The
eye of a person in the company of a friend: it will not
abide shutting nor restraint, but only looking upon."
   ____ from the riddle contest between Fionn  and
       Grainne, Scots Gaelic lore (trans CM)

   The riddling courtship of the aging Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhail and the young and lovely Grainne (FINN mak KOOL, and GRAWN'ya, respectively) comes to nothing when Grainne sets eyes on FIonn's best companion, Diarmuid.  Instead of marrying Fionn, Grainne runs away with Diarmuid. The desire of the eyes that they both feel cannot be tamed; they are helplessly bound to each other and have to retreat from Fionn's sight or suffer in a terrible eternal triangle.
   Desire of the eyes is an affliction from which we have all suffered whether the desire be for a person or an object. In any love affair, desire of the eyes is the first signal to those close to the couple that something is sparking, for they cannot tear their eyes away from each other.  The desire that links two people together in a mutual bond is a beautiful and potent force that other people do well to avoid: it has its own attractive energy with the power to short-circuit any interference.  But the unreciprocated desire of one person for an unwilling one is an unhappy bondage that sometimes leads to a series of possessive interferences: stalking, interception, even soul-theft or rape.  The doting parent who gazes u sparingly upon the apple of her eye with more pride than discretion inflicts the desire of the eyes upon her child; the lonely man who yearns after a woman who is ignorant of his existence inflicts unwanted attentions upon her.  Despite these potential distortions, desire of the eyes sometimes leads to a great love that (if it is mutual) no one may sunder to the world's ending.

"How does desire of the eyes affect your life? Is the attraction mutual or unreciprocated?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Harp

The Harp

"Healer of each wounded warrior,
Comforter of each fine woman,
Guiding refrain over the blue water,
Image-laden, sweet-sounding music!"
   ___"The Book of the O'Connor Don," Irish text (trans CM)


    The harp is one of the most characteristic instruments of the Celtic tradition. The harp of the Dagda (the Good God of the Gaelic gods) was magical. In it the Dagda had burned melodies that would not sound until he summoned them. It had three properties of 'strains' that all harpers in ancient times used in their music, each property having a different effect. It had the suantraigh (SWON'atree) or 'sleep strain,' which lulled people to sleep. It had the geantraigh (GEON'tree) or 'joy strain,' which caused people to laugh.  It had the goiltraigh (GOYL'tree) or 'sorrow strain' which caused people to weep. 
    These three harp strains are still the property of harp music today - music that can lull us into a restful state, bring tears of beauty to our eyes, or enliven us and set the foot tapping. With these three strains, harp music affects the soul: it pours comfort, balm, and rest into the soul laden with cares, burdens and anxieties, giving it rest with the sleep strain; it plumbs the depths of sorrow and grief, of loneliness and bereavement, with the sorrow strain; it reconnects those who are lost, stressed and humorless with the primal joy of life with the joy strain. The playing of the harps confers a special privilege upon all harpers: the ability to unlock the doors of the soul.

"Choose three pieces of music that represent for the three musical strains outlined above. Play them when your soul needs rest, relief or uplift."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

March

Month of March -- great is the forwardness of the birds;

Severe is the cold wind upon the headlands; 

Serene weather will be longer, than the crops.

  ___anon Welsh poem

 

March gives us proof that spring has really arrived. The themes this

month include observation and sensitivity to subtle messages, spring

cleaning and restoring, tribal and individual consciousness, constancy

and change, power and its abuses, creation and increase, public

service, creative fire.