Light in Darkness

Light in Darkness

"There are three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature, and knowledge."

   Truth has been the mirror and shield of all seekers since life began. The primal integrity of all beings shines out like the light of a diamond, sharp and clear; but when truth is hidden, we are aware only of a dimness and obscurity that cloaks our perception. Our unique sensitivity of soul to truth is inbred. It tells us what is good, well-aligned, and perfect. If we return to recognizing truth in ourselves, our actions, our speech and our thoughts, we relate to ourselves and to the universe with better respect.
   Nature is the shining garment in which all life is clothed. The vigor, strength and power of life are nature's gifts. We experience nature through our physical senses, and this experience is often  ecstatic. We tend these days to rhapsodize nature, after a long era of neglect and abuse. We are each part of nature: if we abuse it, we abuse ourselves and those we love. If we observe and learn from nature's beautiful and balancing continuum, we live lives of harmony and justice.
    Knowledge is the glory that arises when truth and nature are properly welcomed and respected. It cannot be given to another; it can only arise when Mother Nature and Father Truth conjoin in union. Knowledge is the glorious child stored in every cell of the universe. If we search for glory in our thoughts, motivations and experiences, we align ourselves with knowledge. But neither truth, nature nor knowledge can be owned: this is why they are the eternal candles. Let us always be on guard, therefore, for anyone who attempts to trade these three, for such action heralds the approach of absolute darkness. But with the three candles of truth, nature, and knowledge to light our way, we need never be in darkness.

"How do these three candles illuminate your own darkness?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Brighid, Mother of Memory

Brighid, Mother of Memory

"Brighid of the mantle, encompass us;
Lady of the Lambs, protect us;
Keeper of the hearth, kindle us;
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory."

   The festival of Imbolc is under the protection of Brighid. The ancient goddess, daughter of the Dagda - or Good God of the Gaelic gods, the Tuatha de Danaan (TOO'a-ha day DAH'nan) - is the matron of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. In the fifth century, her namesake St. Brigit of Kildare took over many of the goddess's qualities and aspects.
    The extraordinary fusion of goddess and saint demonstrates how important Brighid is to the Celtic people. So great was her power that even the coming of Christianity could not diminish her influence: Brighid was immediately promoted within Irish Christianity to the role of the Virgin's midwife and Christ's foster-mother, and remains the secondary patron of Ireland to this day.
    The mantle of Brighid is continually invoked in Celtic prayer, to powerfully encompass all and protect from harm.  As the keeper of the hearth, Brighid and her power are present in the hearth-fire that radiates its welcoming glow throughout the household. Poets and craftspeople look to her as their inspirer, householders beseech her to encompass their homes and flocks, and the sick pray to her to cast her mantle over them and bring them again to health.
     Brighid is the mother of memory, the one who reminds us of the original divine, protective motherhood that promotes the individuality of our power and fans its flames to quickening life.

"Make your invocation to Brighid to ask for the incompassment and protection of your household, including all that is dear to you."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Transforming Our Rage

Transforming Our Rage

"It is in bringing the rage of what hurts you personally into the world that you have the power to bring neart, this active spirituality, out into the world."
    ___from a speech by Nuala Ahern, Irish member of the European Parliament

   The Irish word neart (NYART) is one for which there is no English equivalent. It means 'strength' or 'power' in the sense of 'the energy of life'. This sacred energy is the source of all movement in the universe. People who have been disconnected from the health and harmony of their neart for any length of time, lose contact with their essential power. In people who have been disconnected from their neart, rage is often a positive sign of returning life and power. People who are totally downtrodden and powerless do not have the energy to be angry. But what do we do with our rage once it is awakened? The transformative aspect of rage is found in reconnection with our neart: instead of being stuck in victimhood and persecution, we step out powerfully and acknowledge our strength. Rage can be destructive if it remains in a mentality of victimhood, for it never properly connects with the primal power of life. However, it can become a revolutionary force that rights many abuses when victims decide to band together, to blow the whistle and ensure that others do not suffer in like manner.
    But rage can be an important gauge of distress and neglecting its warning is dangerous. If rage flares out of self-protection or warning and we ignore it, we begin to lose our neart, we give it away to others and let them walk all over us. The life-power that courses through us is a gift to be protected and guarded; it cannot be taken from us unless we allow that to happen. If righteous rage arises, listen to its warning voice and act to protect your precious gift.

What kinds of things enrage you? Correlate your findings with the boundaries of your own neart.
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Selling Our Souls

Selling Our Souls

"Very early in the life of every youth there will be ....the question of how far he ought to sell his soul for the sake of his life."
    ___ John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture


   How can we be true to our vocation in situations that call us to sell our souls? We must remember that there are two criteria in the workplace: we work in order to gain a livelihood, and we work in order to honor our soul's potential. It is becoming rare for workers to be able to meet both criteria. Many people who feel that their talents have been used for unspeakable ends have found more satisfaction in menial work well done than in their chosen profession. But to maintain this kind of professional honor is to take the high moral ground, a stance that may not support a home and family.
    For many people, work is a compromise between livelihood and soul's honor. They cannot be without work, but they can search out ethical employers and forms of work that do not exploit their skills without proper return. This return is not only monetary, however: there must also be respect for the worker and his rights and a proper appreciation of the work done. When the return is absent, we feel cheated, short-changed.
    When we prostitute our talents to purely exploitative ends, we risk divorcing ourselves from our primal vision. Such a divorce is a separation from the greater reality of which we are a part, and a selling of our souls to those who will wring out every last essential drop of our vocational skills.

"Meditate upon your vocational vision, even if you are not actively performing or fulfilling at this time. What qualities and features characterize it? How have these been employed, recognized and acknowledged in your life to date? How and why are you dissatisfied with the work you currently do? Are there remedies for the dissatisfaction?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Clearing the Way

Clearing  the Way

"The plow must go five times over the site of a wood before it can become a field."
   ___ traditional Welsh saying (trans CM)

   The sun has returned and the light is growing, but the plans we have been brooding upon may show little signs of  progress. Now is a good time of the year to prepare the ground for the projects whose unfinished important to us. Make a list of plans and projects whose unfinished rubble clutters your forward. These may include long, ongoing plans that are not going anywhere fast, and short-term projects that are unfinished due to a lack of resources or energy. Look down your list: Which irritates you the most? Which nags at you as unfinished? Which did not work out according to plan, and why? Do not be surprised if you access deep emotion, and do not be afraid of what you feel.
    Go through this list, creating questions that challenge and uncover the roots of the problem. Has your vision for each of the plans changed?  Are your projects still workable as they stand? Evaluate long-term projects for significant progress and assess which approaches might loosen things up. Do you perhaps need to break down long-term plans into shorter achievable components, for example?  Are there associations with partners or friends that are impeding your progress? If someone else is involved, what contribution has that person made? Finally, go through your list item by item and mark projects for eradication, rethinking or fresh effort.
    This procedure requires hard mental effort, but it can help dig up the soil of our potentiality and prepare it to receive new growth.

"Set aside time to clear your way and root out outworn strategies and failed plans."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Spiritual Navigation

Spiritual Navigation
"O where will I get a gude sailor,
To take my helm in hand,
Till I get up to the tall top-mast,
To see if I can spy land?"
   ____ 'The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, ' Scots folk song


  The art of spiritual navigation is one that few are taught in our era. If we are fortunate enough to have a spiritual director or advisor as companion along our way, then we receive expert guidance when difficulties arise. A sensitive adviser does not attempt to solve our problems but makes suggestions and give resourceful clues.
    The chief aid to our personal exploration is our own spiritual practice. In our meditation, in our prayerful listening, in our silent attunement, we derive a good deal of navigation information. Most of this is likely to go unnoticed if we do not record and correlate it. Like any explorer to an unknown realm, we need to know the contours of the land, its flora and fauna, its friendly and hostile inhabitants. The mapping of our spiritual progress will certainly not be straightforward or easy to record. We will have to be alert to subtle changes and correspondences between what we experience and what seems to be true for us. Like the navigator who steers his ship through the fog, we have to sound the waters ahead of us and proceed slowly, always acknowledging that though we cannot see the stars, they still shine above us.
    We each have an in-built aid to spiritual navigation in our dreams. In those nocturnal journeys, we visit new zones, and landscapes, encounter archetypal and mythic beings who speak directly to us, often in pun-laden language. Our mapping of the otherworldly shore is based on a set of sequential explorations and recognitions that grow in confidence and trust as we take our spiritual voyage.

"Begin to note and map your spiritual navigation journey using a diary, chart, and/or set of pictures which you can refer and add regularly."
[From: The Celtic Spirit  by Caitlin Matthews]

Mediating the Primal

Mediating the Primal

A culture that doesn't have ... a shaman, that doesn't therefore have access to the potencies of the beginning, is in trouble,
    ____John Moriarty, Turtle Was Gone a Long Time


   The ability to access the primal powers of life, to connect with them and mediate them, is the task of the shaman. Today most of us have forgotten to honor (or even recognize) the primal powers of life. Life is merely the stream of existence in which each of swims. We move along this stream largely unaware of the larger reality to which we are involved.
   The shaman stands at the threshold between the worlds with the duty of honoring the powers of both apparent and unseen worlds. On the druid path, this role is fulfilled by the ovate: the vision-seer who walks between the worlds in order to bring the apparent world into harmony with the unseen world.
    Without such mediators, who are aware of the primal otherworld, our own world can become disconnected from the larger harmony. A shaman's work is primarily healing the fractures that separate our world from the other so that power can once more flow; this task is performed for people, animals, plants and places.
    The potent primal world of beginnings is potentially accessible to all of us by virtue of the life within our veins. The spiral ladder of DNA is itself a pathway of life, a circuit of power connected to the primal source of life from which we can consciously draw the healing that we need. But we still need our shamans - our mediators and healers - who can pass beyond physical boundaries to effect the work of reconnection; we need them to maintain an embassy at the threshold of the worlds so that the ways of negotiating remain open.

"Meditate upon the source of primal life. How are your body and soul connected to this source? By what evidence do know this?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]