Go Muireann na nGael

COPYRIGHT

Element

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HarperCollinsPublishers Limited

First published 2005

Copyright © Carl McColman 2005

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Carl McColman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007193097

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008138417

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

The Path of Approach

The Path of Sovereignty

The Path of the Druid

The Path of Nature

The Path of the Bard

The Path of Mythology

The Path of the Seer

The Path of Neart

The Path of the Saints

The Path of the Fairies

The Path of the Warrior

The Path of the Otherworld

The Path of the Shaman

The Path of the Night

The Path of Meditation

The Path of the Gods

The Path of Hospitality

The Path of Devotion

The Path of the Anamchara

The Path of the Goddesses

The Path of Dreams

The Path of Sacred Sites

The Path of Community

The Path of Sacred Days

The Path of Virtue

The Path of Sacred Animals

The Path of Faith

The Path of Brigit

The Path of the Storyteller

The Path of Magic

The Path of the Three Noble Strains

The Path of the Grail

The Path of Romance

The Path of the Spiral

The Path of Imbas And Awen

The Path of Sacrifice

The Path of the Future

The Path of the Diaspora

The Path of the Ogham

The Path of the Mystic

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

About the Author

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

“IN CONVERSATION THEY SPEAK IN RIDDLES, FOR THE MOST PART HINTING OF THINGS AND LEAVING A GREAT DEAL TO BE UNDERSTOOD.”

Thus did the classical writer Diodorus Siculus describe the druids, the original keepers of Celtic wisdom and lore. What we mostly know about the druids reveals just how much we do not know: we know they did not write down their lore, we know that they were not only spiritual leaders but also scientists/intellectuals; and yet even so we know that they were the ritual priests, the soothsayers, and the interpreters of omens. And apparently, they did it all with a rollicking good humor, and uncanny ability to speak in oblique and mysterious ways.

The Celtic world is a world of poetry before philosophy; of mysticism before theology; of magic before logic. Storytelling matters more than the ability to explain something in dry, step-by-step detail. The Celts are, and always have been, a people with one foot in the otherworld, and thus are governed by the enigmatic conventions and customs of that spiritual realm: where time is meaningless, love is forever, and dancing just might never ever end.

The book you’re holding is written with the spirit of the old druids in mind. Riddles and hints matter more here than direct explanations or matter-of-fact descriptions. This is a book of meditations, but what does that mean? Some of the pages that follow invite you into a world of fairies and goddesses; others sneak significant symbols past you in the guise of a summary description of this or that aspect of the tradition. There are 366 pages of thoughts and ideas and invitations into the inner world—read them a day at a time, or get wild and swallow up a week or even a month at a single sitting. I decided to number the entries, rather than date them—daily meditation books seem so structured and tight, if you read “May 17” on any other day it’s just, well, wrong. That, of course, is an invitation to utter chaos, at least as a riddle-talking Celt sees it. So I decided to circumvent the chaos and give each reader the freedom to explore these 366 “morsels” in whatever way works best for you.

The entire collection is organized in 40 different “paths,” each one consisting of 3, 9, or 21 meditations. No one path is required as a prerequisite for any of the others. Once in a while paths crisscross and you’ll encounter the same figure or event that you bumped into three or four paths back. The Celtic tradition just kind of works that way.

Feel free to jump around between the paths, or even within any one path. Read these pages in order, or not. The choice is yours. 366 pages later, you’ll have covered a nice slice of the Celtic terrain. And you’ll still be an absolute beginner in the world of the Celts. Listen to the druids: they’ll have more riddles to offer you. Some will open up amazing shafts of light that will illuminate and inspire you. Others will leave you scratching your head and wondering, “Huh?” That, too, is part of the territory.

May the blessings of the four directions, the three realms, the two worlds, and the one source fill all your days with laughter and joy.

Carl McColman

Summer Solstice 2004

Note on spelling: The names of Celtic deities and heroes can be spelled many different ways. For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen to conform to the spelling found in MacKillop’s Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford University Press, 1998). Brigit poses a unique problem since both a goddess and a saint bear the same name. Following MacKillop, in this book I have identified the goddess as “Brigit” and the saint as “Brigid.”

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THE PATH OF APPROACH

The Celts are the people of the end of the world. Just as the tip of the Cornwall peninsula is called Land’s End, so too has Ireland been regarded since ancient days as the last stop before the mysterious otherworld located over the waters. Today that sense of mystery has been lost by knowledge of global geography—a traveler leaving the British Isles heading west arrives not at Tír na nÓg but rather comes to Boston or New York. But if we insist on approaching Celtic wisdom with a purely materialistic sense of things, then we run the risk of missing out on the glory and grandeur of their mystical sensibility. Britain and Ireland and Brittany may no longer be the ends of the physical earth, but they can still represent for us a final stopping place before that immense and mysterious journey to the spiritual world that lies just beyond the reaches of the senses.

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THE PATH OF APPROACH

Who are the Celts? Are they simply the people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany (with Galicia thrown in for good measure)? Or does the Celtic world include anyone who can trace his or her ancestry back to one of these lands? For that matter, may we suppose that the Celtic experience also embraces anyone who comes to live in a Celtic land, or even anyone (of any ancestry or ethnicity) who feels called to explore the wisdom and spirituality of this ancient family of cultures and languages? Maybe the question needs to be put another way. What makes the Celtic world Celtic? What separates Celt from Saxon, or Roman, or Slav? Ah, but these are not the questions to be asking. Celtic wisdom (and spirituality) invites us to come together, not be separated off from one another. The Celtic way is the way of hospitality and of convivial fellowship—worrying about the impertinent details of life that separate us can wait for another day.

So if we need a definition of the Celtic world, let’s leave it at the world that has its roots in languages such as Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Manx. But although the Celtic experience begins with language, it doesn’t end there. Culture, nature, a sense of place and tradition, and a deep love for Spirit all contribute to forging the Celtic identity.

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THE PATH OF APPROACH

How can we approach Celtic wisdom today? Especially for those of us who live far away from the islands of our ancestors, what does it mean to walk a Celtic path? There is no single or straightforward answer to a question like this. The Celts are not so much philosophers as poets, not so much architects as artists. Celtic lore invites us to discover meaning through myth and symbol and dream; to celebrate life through the crashing of wave on rocks or the whisper of a winter wind. There can be no “Point A to Point B” logic behind following the Celtic way. Surely, we can study the bards and the druids and the saints, learn their stories, and consider how their lives illuminate our own. Indeed, no better way to embrace Celtic wisdom exists, at least as far as I can tell. But keep in mind that you or I can hear the same stories or ponder the same legends and draw quite different conclusions about the heart of the path we are called to walk. This is as it should be. For the Celtic path is not one of corporate standardization, but rather celebrates the same kind of abundant diversity that characterizes the natural world.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

A part-historical, part-legendary Irish hero named Niall is said to have encountered a goddess who called herself Sovereignty. He was in the wilderness hunting with his brothers, and they stumbled across a sacred well attended by an ugly old hag. Thirsty, the oldest brother approached the water, but the crone blocked his way. “You can drink all you desire, young man, but first you must give me a kiss.” Revolted at the mere thought, he backed away. The second oldest stepped forward, but received a similar challenge from the hideous woman. Each brother in turn declined the request for a kiss, until the youngest, Niall, stepped forward and offered the hag a full embrace. Their lips locked, and magic happened. When Niall stepped back, he found that the old crone had transformed herself into a radiant, lovely lady. “I am Sovereignty,” she said, “and since you alone of your brothers has accepted me in my dark aspect, now I accept you as the king.” And so it was that Niall became the king of the land.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Why was it important for Niall—or for any king, actually—to accept the ugly side of Sovereignty as a prerequisite to enjoying her beauty? Perhaps this story contains an ancient truth. Sunlight only shines for half of a day. Light emerges out of darkness, and so to reject darkness means to reject the original state of all things. Niall’s brothers made the mistake of passing judgment on someone they deemed as ugly, repulsive, unattractive. Only the youngest brother could see that a kiss was a small price to pay for the nourishing waters. So what if the old woman wasn’t so much to look at? And of course, by accepting her, he proved himself worthy to see that her decay is only part of her story.

There’s a phrase for you: “only part of her story.” Each one of us is a magnificent story, filled with heart, emotion, dreams, and desires. We also have our share of loss, disappointment, and sorrow. Think of when you encounter someone: an angry person standing in line at the post office; a harried mother with rude, bawling children; a government employee who’s not interested in all the reasons why your taxes were paid late. When we encounter such people, we only encounter part of their stories. Sometimes, the parts we see are not to our liking. Perhaps we can take a lesson from Niall, and remember that there’s more to them than meets the eye.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Irish myth tells how when the first Celts came to Ireland with the intention of settling, they met three goddesses—Banba, Fódla, and Ériu—each of whom offered to help the Celts in their quest to conquer the land, if only they would name the land after her. Ériu was the last of the three that they encountered, and they met her at the spiritual center of the land, and she offered the greatest amount of help to the invaders. So they promised her primacy in terms of the land bearing her name. And indeed, to this day Ireland (in Irish, Éire) takes its name from this goddess. The suggestion is clear: the land is divine, and the land is not only named for a goddess, but in a very real way the land embodies the spirit of the goddess. It’s the spirit of Sovereignty, encoded in the very land.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

The crone whom Niall kissed may be the most obvious example of a mythological figure in the Celtic tradition linked with the concept of Sovereignty—after all, she described herself as such. But she is hardly the only figure in the tradition who embodies this powerful spirit. Indeed, many goddesses in Celtic lore have a profound connection with the land, or with the king, or with the relationship between the two. Meadbh, who appears in Irish literature as a mythic queen, may have originally been a goddess linked with Tara, the traditional seat of the high king of the land. Meadbh’s name means “she who intoxicates” and she may be linked with ancient rituals that conferred kingship onto a new leader through ritualized marriage with the goddess. Other Irish goddesses are associated with traditional seats for regional kings: the king of the northern province of Ulster ruled from Emain Macha, a site associated with the goddess Macha; while the royal seat of the western province of Connacht was associated with the Mórrígan, a goddess whose name means “great queen.” Again and again, political authority and the relationship between the king and the land all points back to a profound spirituality—where the freedom of the people is bound up with the spirit of the Feminine Divine.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Why does Celtic spirituality draw this unusual link between the goddesses of the land, and the concept of Sovereignty? Maybe it has something to do with power. A king, after all, is a powerful person. A society can only function if its members are willing to support their leaders. But where does a king derive his power and authority? Most monarchies, at least in the Christian world, have suggested their royal power comes from God. Here, Celtic spirituality offers a radically different perspective. To the Celts, royal authority comes from the goddess: from the spirit of sovereignty, the spirit of the land. This is not meant to undermine belief in God in a traditional or Christian sense. But it does imply that the God of monotheism shares divine power, at least in the Celtic world. He shares power with the goddess, who is as connected to the earth and the land as surely as God is associated with heaven above. So the goddess is Sovereignty as a subtle way of saying that she answers to no one—not even God. She is God’s partner in ordering the universe—not his slave.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

The Irish language does not have a word for the coronation of a king; instead the ceremony by which a new king was installed was called the banais righe, or the wedding-feast of the king. Who was the king marrying? The goddess, of course: Sovereignty herself, in one of her various forms. Ancient annals describe this wedding-feast as involving two elements: the goddess (or a priestess assuming the role of goddess) offering a sacred drink to her new “husband”—perhaps mead, from which the goddess Meadbh takes her name; and then the consummation of the marriage itself, symbolizing a sacred union between the land and the people—land symbolized by the goddess, and people symbolized by their king. So here is a profound clue into the heart of Celtic wisdom: life is lived truly and bountifully out of a harmonious, marriage-like relationship between humanity and nature. Nature is not some inert resource for us to exploit as we wish, but rather is divine, and can be related to as a Divine Feminine: a goddess.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

The Irish word for sovereignty is flaitheas. It is related to flaithiúil, a lovely word that means “generous.” To understand the Celtic concept of sovereignty, consider how generosity can be related to it. The goddess of Sovereignty is, in essence, a generous, abundant, and nurturing spirit. The hag by the well was perfectly willing to share of her water. All she asked in return was one loving kiss.

As most people understand it today, sovereignty is not so much a topic related to generosity, but rather has to do with dominion (lordship). The sovereign is the lord, the one who gets to make all the rules and tell everyone else what to do. But that is hardly a Celtic understanding of the concept. Sovereignty in the Celtic world is the spirit of authentic freedom, which extends not only to the political freedom that an independent state enjoys, but also the empowered ability to relate to others out of a profound inner-directed liberty. This includes, of course, the power to be giving (generous) as circumstances dictate. The goddess can only be giving because she is free. This is a point well worth considering. Perhaps we can only be free to the extent that we are generous.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

The fact that sovereignty is related to generosity contributes to one of the most powerful themes of Celtic wisdom: the importance of hospitality as a social virtue. Hospitality is basically the generosity shown to strangers and guests in our midst. Mythology abounds with stories that suggest a king rules well when his court is filled with hospitality—that a visitor must eat till satisfied before even beginning to discuss whatever business brought him to the royal hall. By contrast, kings who do not practice hospitality are satirized, the land goes barren under their rule, and ultimately they are forced to abandon the throne. Sovereignty is not only related to generosity, but to a specific type of generosity: hospitality, through which any and all may benefit from the land’s abundance and the king’s largesse. From this we can get a clear sense that, to the ancient Celts, the goddess is more than just a kind of female version of the Almighty—she is a powerful presence who stands for the spirit of charity, generosity, and care for others, qualities that lead in turn to the blessings of abundance and prosperity from the land.

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THE PATH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Why does the link between the goddess, the concept of sovereignty, and the concepts of generosity and hospitality matter to us today? After all, no society today (Celtic or otherwise) inaugurates its leaders by performing a symbolic sacred union with the goddess! But the importance of these concepts resides not so much in their political implications, as in their spiritual relevance to each of us as individual persons. After all, I may never be the leader of a nation, but I have “sovereignty” over my own life. As a follower of Celtic wisdom, I can see that my personal freedom is related to how I choose to relate to my environment—to the land on which I live. I can also see that I am only truly free if I can freely choose to be generous and practice the virtue of hospitality. In other words: in today’s world, each one of us can be called to the role of “king”—to enter into intimate relations with the goddess of the land, and find in her spirit of Sovereignty the power to foster a life that is spiritually meaningful and rewarding; in other words, a life of generosity and hospitality.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

If there’s one word firmly associated with Celtic mysticism, it is “druid.” And yet probably no other concept connected with the spirituality of the Celts is less understood, or more frequently consigned to the mists of fantasy. We have only a handful of written records from ancient times (when the original druids were still active in the Celtic lands, prior to the coming of Christianity), and the druids themselves wrote none of these. Instead, Greek and Roman authors like Julius Caesar and Pliny have given us what little information we have about the earliest druids—and when you consider how some of these classical authors were biased against the Celts, it’s easy to see how this source material is not only scanty, but unreliable.

We’re not even entirely sure what the word druid means, although the popular notion that it has to do with “oak wisdom” is as good a theory as any. Seen this way, a druid is a natural philosopher, one who discerns the innate wisdom of the earth and interprets it for the good of the community. So when modern folks dismiss the druids as “tree huggers,” they’re probably not too far from the truth. But a druid would reply in an ironic tone of voice, “You say that like it’s a bad thing?”

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

The ancient writers who comment on the druids say that they were the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the Celtic world, and that their function in society included not only presiding at religious ceremonies, but also serving as scientists, philosophers, counselors, mediators, and seers. In other words, they were not just otherworldly dreamers, but collectively served as the “think tank” of the ancient Celtic world. In the modern world, it’s easy to forget the intellectual/scientific dimension of the druids, but in ancient times such mental skill would have been an essential part of a druid’s life. The druids were not driven by intuition or psychic hunches (attending to those kinds of stimuli would have been the job of the seer, another specific function in Celtic society), but by knowledge, reason, and wisdom. That this mental agility was embedded in spiritual activity would not have been considered odd, for throughout the ancient world, science and religion had not yet undergone the divorce that would separate them at the dawn of the modern world. In the world of the druids, true wisdom meant being knowledgable about inner matters and external realities in a holistic and integrated way.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

Much of what the classical writers had to say about the druids smacks of propaganda that would have been useful to Roman generals seeking support for their military excursions in the Celtic world. After all, if the druids are really so barbaric as to perform massive human sacrifices where dozens of hapless victims are burned alive, wouldn’t it be a service to civilization to put them out of business?

Truth be told, it does appear that druids performed human sacrifice, although evidence is not widespread and so such practices may have been considered an extreme measure, at times of severe famine or imminent invasion. And it seems a bit disingenuous that representatives of a society that entertained itself with gladiators would dismiss the druids as barbaric!

So at the end of the day, we really know very little about the ancient druids, their beliefs, and their rituals. Later folklore and mythology of the Celtic world offers some ideas as to what these ancient philosopher-priests (and -priestesses) would have been like, but these sources date from a time when druidism had already been extinct for centuries. Meanwhile, a colorful assortment of “revivals” of druidism over the last 250 years tell us more about modern spirituality (and romanticism) than about the ancient wisdom they are supposedly reconstructing.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

The Roman historian Pliny provides us with one of the most memorable of images associated with the druids—the collecting of mistletoe. On the sixth day after the new moon, the druid would climb into an oak tree and cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle, dropping it onto a white cloak held by others on the ground—it was unlucky for the mistletoe to touch the ground. It would then be prepared and used as a healing herb. Meanwhile, the ceremony would culminate with the sacrifice of two white bulls. This unusual ritual has become one of the most popular images of ancient druidry, and I know of at least one organization of modern druids that duly performs a “Mistletoe Rite” every month on the sixth night of the moon. But no one other than Pliny discusses the ceremony, leading some to question whether it had any grounding in reality. Perhaps it was a one-time event that Pliny witnessed, or for that matter, perhaps he (or his source) fabricated the entire affair. The take-away: we never know how others will view us. We never know how accurate our perception of others really is. These are points worth keeping in mind.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

The ancient druids were said to believe in reincarnation. They were soothsayers and diviners, and were as necessary for the performing of ancient Celtic sacrifices as a Catholic priest is to the consecration of the Eucharistic host. They were knowledgable about the planets, and the natural world, and moral philosophy, and yet they taught by the use of riddles and enigmas. If all of this is beginning to sound like a hodgepodge, well, it is. So little information is available to truly shed light on the earliest Celtic priests. In her book Druid Shaman Priest, scholar Leslie Ellen Jones suggests that succeeding generations have reinvented the ways we think about the druids, in ways that make this mysterious order of magical intellectuals relevant to our modern world.

There’s a lesson in there. It’s not only the druids that we constantly reinvent. We reinvent God (such as the notion of the Divine Feminine—the Goddess). We reinvent our understanding of what it means to be Celtic, or to be spiritual, or to be wise. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this—but it seems like it would be a good idea to remember that such processes of revising how we understand our world and ourselves are perpetually going on.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

Beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, antiquarians and amateur archaeologists began to explore theories about the prehistoric stone circles and other ancient monuments in the British Isles. Their pet theory? That such sites were originally the temples of the druids. Today we can easily dismiss the inaccuracies of such speculation—we know that Celtic culture only arrived in the British Isles around 500 BCE, centuries after sites like Stonehenge and Newgrange were constructed. But within the framework of the world-view of three centuries ago, such ideas were electrifying. Western society was moving out of the middle ages and into the modern world; nations were being formed and the soul of the modern, secular, scientific age was being born. In this epochal age, people sought their roots, and a vision of druids constructing or using the megalithic sites seemed as good an entry as any into the dreams of the past.

Are earlier notions of who the druids were mere folly and fantasy? Yes, perhaps. But if we learn one thing from the errors of the past, let it be this: we have no more of a lock on the “truth” about the druids today than the antiquarians of the seventeenth century had in their time. Perhaps our image of the shamanistic nature-loving priests will someday be just as quaint as the druids-as-stone-age-engineers.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

A legendary meeting of druids is said to have taken place at a London tavern in 1717, attended by delegates of druidic and bardic orders from throughout the Celtic world. Scholars today doubt that such a meeting ever really occurred, but it lives on as a myth in the traditions of several modern druid groups—and what a singularly appropriate myth, seeing the rebirth of druidry not in a stone circle or sacred grove, but at a pub! Some sixty-four years later, a secret society called the Ancient Order of Druids was founded, and this marks the reliable history of druidism reborn (and yes, this order’s organizational meeting took place in a pub). For almost two hundred years, druidism was a blend of fraternal organization and national identity (especially in Wales, where bardic competitions became popular beginning in the nineteenth century). Many of the stereotypes that dog druidism today arose from the fraternal druid orders, which consisted of English gentlemen, wearing white robes and performing ceremonies in London parks as well as more traditionally sacred sites like Glastonbury or Stonehenge. For these druids, the Celtic wisdom-keepers of old were revered not so much for their religious beliefs or intellectual function as for their symbolic value as the cultural forefathers of the land.

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

Just as the eighteenth century druid revival began in a pub, another humorous chapter in the history of the druids dates to 1960s North America. At Carleton College in Minnesota, students were required to attend chapel regularly—unless they were participants in the regular religious ceremonies of a non-Christian religion. So in 1963 a group of clever students organized a “druid grove,” mainly so that they could skip chapel and hang out in the woods. The college, perhaps sensitive to the satirical nature of this assembly, dropped the chapel requirements shortly thereafter—but the druids found that their organization thrived, no longer as a form of ironic protest but as a genuine (if somewhat anarchic) spiritual movement. This organization, known as the Reformed Druids of North America, eventually inspired other, more earnest druid groups, such as the Henge of Keltria or Ár nDraíocht Féin. Meanwhile, across the ocean, British druids were undergoing a similar process of transformation from the secular fraternal groups of old, to younger, hipper, more pagan-identified communities that characterize the new face of druidry for tomorrow.

And so the druids continue their process of reinvention. What will the future hold?

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THE PATH OF THE DRUID

Neopagan (“new pagan”) druidry is a creative spiritual force, combining knowledge of myth and folklore with a body of ritual designed to honor the earth and celebrate community. Leaders of neopagan druids speculate on the spirituality of polytheism and pantheism for today, and consider the implications of deep, nature mysticism for today’s urbanized society. Of course, not everyone with an interest in Celtic matters will embrace the new druidism, if for no other reason than the ongoing vitality of the Christian faith, especially in Ireland and North America. In some ways, the druids of old really are lost—druidism has not been an independent and socially influential intellectual or philosophical movement for at least 1500 years. But the attempts at reviving druidism, even as a minority cultural or spiritual movement, speak to the ongoing need for Celtic wisdom—even if its influence is marginal rather than mainstream.

In thinking about druidism for today and tomorrow, bear in mind what the word druid probably means: “oak wisdom.” Whether you see druids as a long-lost priesthood, or a symbol for Celtic shamanism, or a doorway into a nature-based spirituality, keep wisdom in mind as the essential element for the druids. You don’t have to join a druid group, wear a white robe, or collect mistletoe in order to celebrate the spirit of the druids. All that is required is a commitment to wisdom.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

Perhaps the single most attractive element of Celtic wisdom and spirituality is its link with nature. Celtic mysticism is the mysticism of the earth. This crosses religious lines—Christians embrace the Celtic love of nature as fully as do neopagans. From the windswept islands of the Hebrides, to the lush verdant fields in Ireland, to the panoramic coastlines of Cornwall, the Celtic world is brimming with the majesty of nature—and this has, from the beginning, shaped the Celtic soul.

The sense of nature as divine or holy is hardly unique to the Celts. Native American wisdom is clear in its respect for Mother Nature and insistence that a balanced life means walking in harmony with the environment. Similar themes may be found throughout primal and shamanistic cultures worldwide. For that matter, the Jewish tradition has a strong history of insisting that the earth be cared for—the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not just a religious directive, but also implies that society needs to refrain from over-working the land.

So the Celtic tradition of venerating nature is not alone. Which is another way of saying that the profound earth mysticism of the Celts is, ultimately, of universal importance.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

Why is Celtic nature mysticism so attractive? To begin with, the culture of the West—which traces its roots back to the Roman Empire and its reliance on centralized, urban government—seems to have lost its way regarding nature. The political and business climate throughout Europe, America, and increasingly the rest of the world, regards the environment as a resource, and efforts at conservation or environmental protection are chiefly designed to preserve those resources for long-term usage. Rarely is a sense of nature as divine, as sacred, as valuable in itself, seriously considered. And yet this is the heart of the Celtic understanding of nature. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the link between the goddess, the land, and sovereignty. A king does not assume the right to manage the land, or exploit, or utilize its resources. Rather he marries the land, in the persona of the sovereign goddess. Goddess and king are partners—what we know of pre-Roman Celtic law suggests that marriage was often seen as a joining of equals. What would our world look like today, if we could begin to see the environment as our partner, rather than our resource?

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THE PATH OF NATURE

The connection between humankind and nature was, to the ancient Celts, an essentially moral relationship. If a king ruled with wisdom and justice, the land responded with abundance and prosperity—cows gave plentiful milk, the land yielded bountiful harvests, and the trees were laden with fruit. But under a king whose reign was unjust or inhospitable, the land withdrew her blessings. Crop failure, drought, and meager harvests were linked not to the arbitrary whims of capricious nature, but rather to the failings of a king (and, by extension, to the people he governed). Mythically speaking, the remedy of such a problem was to find a new king—symbolic of establishing a new, and healthier, relationship with the sacred land. Simply put, when nature is encountered relationally, then nature has a claim on how she is treated. It matters what we do in regard to our environment. This is the heart of Celtic mysticism.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

For many people, Celtic nature spirituality is mostly a romanticized kind of thing. We can travel to Tintagel or Glendalough or Iona and be enraptured by the many faces of the goddess—lush or austere, majestic or severe. We can find peace by a holy well or ponder the mysteries in a ring of standing stones. Our imaginations can be beguiled by stories of the fairy folk—never mind the ominous or dangerous edge to the fairy faith; we’ll just enjoy the idea of spirits inhabiting our gardens. It’s all lovely, poetic, and beautiful. But does it really make a difference in our lives? How does Celtic nature spirituality matter?

The question is a subtle pun. For “matter” comes from the same Latin root as does “matrix” (womb) and “mother.” To make something matter—anything, not just nature mysticism—means to imbue it with relationship, meaning, purpose, as symbolized by the most primal and powerful of all relationships, that between mother and child. Catholic Ireland is full of imagery of the madonna and child, but this is far more than just religious artwork. It’s truly an icon of the most profound relationship of all, that between the earth and her children. So how do we find, in our sentimental love for the glorious beauty of nature, a genuine relationship between humanity and the environment? As we answer that question, we will be taking an important step toward making the Celtic tradition come alive in our midst.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

Saying that the ancient Celts were pagan is kind of like saying that they were Celts: we’re using a word to describe them that did not originate with them. It was the Greeks who named the Celts, and the Roman Christians who coined the religious meaning for the word pagani, which originally suggested civilian or country-dweller. But the country-dweller sense of the word means that it is not entirely inappropriate—after all, the Celts had no cities until the Romans or Vikings or Normans came along and built them. As a rural people, they naturally found their spiritual compass in the waters of the sea, the whispers of the wind, the fertility of the land. Their faith certainly was not “pagan” in the later pejorative sense of amoral or superstitious, but rather embodied a profound sense of being held in the embrace of the wild earth, her raging seas, and her abundant life. The pre-Christian Celts were likely animistic—regarding everything as imbued with spiritual presence. This survived after the arrival of Christianity, where heaven and the presence of God were seen not as removed from the natural world, but intimately interwoven within it. Nature was seen not just as an image of beauty—she truly embodied Divine love and grace.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

The pagan spirituality of the Celts has been a significant inspiration to the neopagan (“new pagan”) movement that began in England in the mid-twentieth century and has since spread throughout the English-speaking world, as well as Europe and beyond. Although much of the modern pagan movement is undermined by an uncritical overemphasis on magic and psychic phenomena, the heart of the new paganism reflects a sincere effort to re-sacralize nature, to awaken the sleeping goddess of the land and restore a sense of humanity as living in relationship with her. Since this is such an integral, if not always conscious, part of the Celtic world, neopagans have embraced many elements of Celtic wisdom, from the myths, to the gods and goddesses, to Gaelic folk holidays and ceremonial customs. Some modern pagans carefully seek to integrate Celtic culture into their spirituality in respectful and considerate ways; others simply treat the Celtic tradition as a consumable resource (ironic, given how its greatest strength may be in the way it can teach us alternatives to the consumer lifestyle).

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THE PATH OF NATURE

The great achievement of Christianity in the Celtic world came not from how it triumphed over the pagan spirituality that existed prior to its arrival, but—on the contrary—how it more or less seamlessly integrated the earth-honoring traditions of the pagan Celts into its singular vision of faith. Celtic Christianity is nature Christianity. Nowhere is this more clearly set forth than in the Lorica of Saint Patrick, a poem-prayer that invokes Divine protection:

I bind unto myself today

The virtues of the star-lit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea

Around the old eternal rocks.

(Translated by Cecil F. H. Alexander)

The entire poem is primarily about protection in Christ (as befits a Christian poem). But as the above stanza clearly shows, the grace of Celtic Christianity is mediated as fully through nature as through church or word or sacrament.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

In the Carmina Gadelica, an anthology of Scottish folk prayers and poems collected in the late-nineteenth century, we see how Celtic Christianity carried its nature-positive spirituality into the modern world. The ordinary Christian folk of Gaelic-speaking Scotland offered prayers and the poetry of praise at every moment of the day, and in every setting—from rising out of bed, to stoking the fire, to milking the cow, to traveling or fishing or spinning thread. “Nature” in this rich spiritual tradition means more than just the environment. Arising out of the essential truth that all things are part of nature—including humanity and the culture of the world we’ve created—the Carmina Gadelica sings of the natural presence of God and Mary and all the saints (with the occasional pagan god or goddess thrown in) throughout the daily rhythm of life. There is no separation between nature and grace, or between nature and humanity—or between nature and the divine. All is interwoven. And that tapestry is held together in the language of devotion and praise.

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THE PATH OF NATURE

Relating to nature as a Sacred Other, not as an exploitable resource … allowing nature to function as a means of grace in our lives … recognizing that nature means more than just the unspoiled wilderness, but in a deeper and more real sense encompasses all aspects of the material world—these are but a few of the treasures revealed to us by the simple yet richly-textured tradition of Celtic nature mysticism. And as we conclude this path within the Celtic tradition, bear this in mind: just as you are not separate from God, or not separate from nature, or not separate from grace, so too are you not separate from the rich tradition of Celtic wisdom. Whether you are a Celt by ancestry or by the stirrings of your heart, if you embrace the Celtic tradition, you are part of it. Which means that the choices you make, the poems you write, the decisions you come to in your life to honor the natural world, are all part of the ongoing symphony of Celtic mysticism. Celtic spirituality is not a museum installation; it is a living path of insight and illumination. Consider how you can honor the goddess of the land and allow the grace of nature to flow in your life. Then you will become a living conduit of the Celtic way.

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THE PATH OF THE BARD

The tale is told that long ago, with the transition from oral tradition to the preservation of lore in medieval manuscripts, somehow the great Irish epic The Tain (the Cattle-Raid of Cooley) had been lost. Sadly, no one survived who knew the tale. Like a language that had died, the rich stories and myths surrounding the tale of the war in Ulster had disappeared, seemingly forever.

But not so fast. Around the year 600 CE, a great Irish bard named Senchán Torpéist attempted to gather the missing strands of the story together, so that it might be remembered and handed down to future generations. He consulted with various bards and poets and scribes, all of whom knew part of the story, none of whom knew the entire narrative. When it seemed futile and he was on the verge of giving up, the bard received a vision. In it he was visited by Fergus mac Róich, one of the great mythic kings and heroes of Ulster, and a tutor to the young hero, Cúchulainn. In the vision, Fergus carefully recounted every detail of The Tain to Senchán Torpéist, and so the story was saved. The bard saw to it that it was written down, and so the epic survives to this very day.

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