In the spring I was diagnosed with cancer. This fall I went through two and half months of radiation ‘therapy’ and am presently recovering from the side effects of the treatment, which include much fatigue.
I had planned to post considerably more about my trip to Ireland, but haven’t had the focus for it. Going to Kildare was a pilgrimage and a journey for healing; I think I got quite a boost there.
Visiting the wells, praying at both the new and old ones, tying clooties and visiting Solas Bhríde, the ecumenical spiritual center established by the Brigidine Sisters were tremendously rewarding. The center was a real highlight with the chance to pray in front of the flame maintained since 1993, the wonderful hospitality and stories of Sister Phil, the walk in the labyrinth and meditation in the willow bothy, and just walking in beautiful grounds that include a rewilding area, full of the radiance of Brigid, Goddess and Saint.
The whole town seemed permeated with the Lady, from the market square in the center of town with its tall acorn lantern (where Mary Robinson, the president of Ireland lit the flame in the 90s), to the functioning Catholic parish church with its acorn sculptures outside. The famous medieval cathedral could only be viewed from outside and the grounds were still closed because of the pandemic (the helpful folks at the Visitor Center thought they were being silly to not open the outdoor area, oh well), so we couldn’t see the fire temple but so much else was experienced.
So here are photos of Kildare, Brigid’s town.
Acorn lantern sculpture in front of Market House (visitor center).Acorn sculpture in front of Catholic parish church. Solas Bhride from the roadside. We walked here from the town center where we stayed. A view of the labyrinth. It was very insightful to walk it. More labyrinth. Her garden is fruitful. Back on the road, we walked on to the ‘old well’.I found the old well so serene and radiant with healing sanctity. We walked on to the ‘new well’ which is a site of popular Catholic devotion. I love this sculpture of the saint. There are at least half a dozen clootie trees there. A timely message appears regarding face masks. My husband and I prayed and tied ribbons onto a tree. A remaining part of the medieval tower rises above the parking lot of the hotel where we stayed. It gives a sense of the ambiance of this medieval pilgrimage town. The woman at the visitor center thinks the site of the oak covered ridgetop where the historical Brigid established her abbey was already sacred before Christian times. New life.
Strange Beauty: Ecocritical Approaches to Early Medieval Landscape by Alfred K. Siewers
There are several intriguing arguments made in this book that made it a worthwhile read, though I am not a Celtic Christian. It is a very dense read, though, and at times a bit of a slog through untrimmed thickets of academic jargon. Strange Beauty is part of a series called The New Middle Ages from Palgrave MacMillan*.
I found Siewers’ geographic and cultural focus on an Irish Sea region interesting, the including of Ireland and western Britain together, and his gathering Irish and Welsh literature through this lens insightful. He uses the term Irish Sea region for Ireland and Wales as a key geographical and cultural zone and also centers ‘archipelagic’ as a key concept. In his view archipelago and otherworld reflect each other in a rich and ever productive way. Siewer’s understanding of the otherworld is as something continuous, multi-form and expressing deeper or normally hidden levels of our daily realities. This would be in contrast to views like that of Patrick Sims Williams who argues for the multiple nature of plural Otherworlds in “Some Celtic Otherworld Terms”.
Siewers is a Christian and he reads the stories he analyzes as always having strong Christian components (anti-nativist, at times annoyingly so to this reader). What I found fascinating with his portrayals of currents of Christianity that would eventually lose out in the later middle ages but that were positive toward this-world as Creation. Perhaps the most interesting chapter was the one on Eriugena, titled “Paradise in the Sea: An Early Geography of Desire” with an extensive analysis of the Periphyseon (De Diusione Naturae) of the 9th century Hiberno-Latin philosopher and theologian. He sees John Scotus Eriugena as celebrating a cosmic participation and of nature being permeated with theophanies of the Creator. Eriugena comes across as a fascinating thinker and theologian of a constrained time and of great interest to pantheists and Christians of a ‘creation spirituality’ emphasis, I would think (but also for this pagan reader). He asserts, somewhat disingenuously I think, that Eriugena was not a Neoplatonist, he sure sounds like this was a major influence on him via the early Christian Neoplatonists and it’s stated his being influenced Pseudo-Dionysius (a 5th/6th century Neoplatonist).
There is an interesting chapter on the colors of the winds where the creates an interesting color wheel with some insightful thoughts on glas (blue-green-gray). He compares its usage to the color of gold used in byzantine icons in which the viewer loses a sense of where background ends and figure begins. Siewers writes that in Dionysian/Eriugenean theology imagined divine energies “in nature as a relational experience entwined language and color”. Glas as color melds sea and sky.
A chapter called the “Cosmic Imaginarium” has some interesting perspectives on topography and both textual and visual style found in early Irish contexts which he calls ‘inverse perspective’, analyzing the Tain. Truth is searched for via multiple perspectives, and multiplex images are exteriorized between the art and the reader (he calls this exteriorized dialogic and notes its use in Byzantine icons). The narrative style through using variations deflects interiorization of the reader into the image, as does the content of the stylized dual nature of the landscape—otherworldly and thisworldly, implicitly Christian and explicitly pagan—“all related to actual topography. Theories of perception expressed in such effects were taken seriously as life practices in that era.” These become mysteries not be ‘penetrated’ as in modern landscape but to be engaged with. Even Cuchullain’s warp spasms are interpreted in this multi-perspectival way, a fluidity of body, which he also sees in the figures in the Book of Kells. Compared to the Coptic and Byzantine works of the time the Irish has the archipelagic emphasis on landscape and engagement with nature, the immersiveness of sea and sky.
The last chapter “Archipelago and Empire” contains insightful material on the different takes between the Celtic archipelagic landscape orientation and the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish one which took on the dominant role in western Christianity. The ‘Archipelagic’ form was one of multiple temporalities intersecting, of the divine penetrating nature and in the fluidity of the Otherworld whereas in the imperial, ecclesiastical one the Other anchored a firmly delineated individual (male) upon a landscape. He gives Beowulf as an example in his dive into the swamp where he slays Grendel’s Mother; Siewers sees this in terms of the psychological theory of Julia Kristeva, where in the dominant western paradigm identity is formed by opposition to the Other (my thoughts were a very significant change had occurred from the era when the numen of the mere would have received gifts or sacrifice instead of being visualized as slaughtered). “Bede’s temporality would come to be figured dominant. But the landscape of the Mabinogi, and those of the early Irish Sea zone generally, remain obscured yet still activated tropes of iconographic resistance to the Western tendency to reform nature into interiorized virtual reality.” This triumphal attitude he then relates to colonialism and empire. Siewers finds the tradition of participatory relationship and interpenetration with the other to be a rich resource for ecological relations now. There is so much more in this packed book from which I learned a lot, including about earth-friendly currents of early Christianity that were historically overwhelmed. A worthwhile read for those who want to know more about the early Christian era of Ireland and western Britain, the era when the literature was shaped.
*These are very over-priced books but can be purchased once a year in the huge Palgrave sale (or obtained via InterLibraryLoan).
Finnchuill's Mast 