Kildare Reflections

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.

Waters of the Boyne

I’ve recently returned from a richly inspiring trip to Ireland and will be posting pictures and thoughts. Here’s the first.

Through a screen of leaves—ash and hazel and alder and others, including berries whose name I don’t know—I peer out at Brúgh na Bóinne.

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Newgrange seen through the foliage.

The waters flow along in this river that transcends time, taking us back millennia to when early farmers first settled here and raised huge passage tombs and mounds and woodhenges. The leaves whisper of even earlier peoples, the hunter-gatherer-fishers of the Mesolithic who found rich forage here when the valley was all forested. As I gaze the waters meander onward toward the sea past the nearby town of Drogheda where we are staying. Into an uncertain future.

In the lore Waters take us into the liminal. By the water is a place of revelation, of eicse, which can mean inspiration, divination or the art and science of poetry. As Nede demonstrates in the beginning of The Colloquy of the Two Sages (Immacallam in dá Thúarad) when he goes to the shore and learns of his father’s death from the waves.

The sound of the waters do their liminal work—there seems to be a rapid just upstream, I think it’s probably a weir. A feminine voice gives a healing message in this spot of healing plants and ancient spirits. Is this Bóinn (or Boann), her waters ever flowing? She is the Boyne, right? Maybe she is a deep ancestor of this land, of this river valley, but one who flows in the sky too.

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The presence of Nechtan also resounds, the waters mythologically flow from his well far upstream near the present day village of Carbury. Of course this was the well where his wife Bóinn transgressed walking tuathal, against the sun, violating the taboo of its only being able to be approached by her husband and his cupbearers. Bóinn, the river itself, and the river in the sky, the Milky Way. The lore tells us in this creation of the river, she was carried out to sea with her small lapdog, named Dabilla. Dabilla was turned into a rock off the coast, the small islets known today as Rockabill.

Below is a mythologically interesting (if not aesthetically) painting in the Millmount museum in Drogheda.

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…and what’s with the bike?

Was Bóinn already a goddess (presumably with a different name) long before the Celts when the great monuments were raised here? For a very insightful take on this and Bóinn in general there is Anthony Murphy’s (he of Mythical Ireland) book Bóinn: the Goddess of the River Boyne and the Milky Way. https://mythicalireland.com/purchase/mythical-ireland-monograph-no2-binn-goddess-of-the-boyne-and-milky-way/

He states, “The intent of this monograph is to present a comprehensive portrayal of Bóinn from all the manuscript sources about her, and to depict her as a deity in her own right who has immense significance to the early mythological history of the Boyne valley.” I think he succeeds—a recommended read.

The waters flow on, a beautiful music, flowing for millennia with its salmon and trout hopefully far into the future.

Appropriation of Celtic Symbols by Racists

There are a lot of words pouring out about the attempted coup yesterday in the US Capitol, which focus on the ‘Q Shaman’, a man from Arizona whose image is quite a concoction of appropriated Native American (Plains) bull horn headdress, the Norse Valknut and Thor’s Hammer tattoos, makeup of the US flag on his face, and another tattoo of a tree, which some sources have said is Yggdrassil, Norse tree of life.

For instance here: https://wildhunt.org/2021/01/heathens-respond-to-q-shaman-and-norse-imagery-in-capitol-riot.html

But it looks very much like the Celtic Tree image of the lovely Welsh artist, Jen Delyth to me, a representation of the bile, the sacred tree under which Irish chieftains were once inaugurated. I once had a t-shirt similar to this, which I wore to pieces:

I show this to emphasize that it is not only Norse pagans that have this problem. Celtic spiritualties are being appropriated and associated with the rampant white supremacist move in the US. This is also a problem with Druidism, Celtic paganisms/polytheisms in general. We need to be vigilant about these appropriations (and of course the people doing it).

The Q Shaman apparently had a mashup of beliefs, Christian, Odinist, Native American, etc. Stirred into a toxic brew of white nationalism and Q-anon conspiracy theory.

These are very frightening times in this country. I hope readers are well and safe.

A Formal Prayer to Nechtan

I wrote this a while ago, but as the pandemic continues to rage and the political situation in the United States plunges into chaos I think it is a good prayer to share.

 

O Nechtan,

husband of Boann,

son of Labraid Loingsech,

hear our prayer:

 

May the power of your originating waters,

your pool,

your spring,

your well,

energize our lustrations,

our purifications,

our washings.

May this virus be washed away, back to

the infernal depths, where great heat

can take it apart, back to the primal sea

to recycle its constituent dismantled parts.

 

As we bathe in your vitalizing waters,

may proportion and knowledge thereof

return to our lands desecrated by ignorance

and malevolence as much as virulence.

 

May the pestilence that afflicts our world be washed away.

***

I find working with Nechtan that it is ideal to find a local place that resonates with his well, in addition to keeping a shrine with water on it. This can be a good start to doing journeywork.

A Brigid Prayer

O daughter of the Dagda

O mother of the three gods of skill

O goddess of the poets,

May your fiery waters

Offer healing, may

Your rays falling from

Your bright countenance

Burn away this pestilence,

May your hammer break it up,

May your words inspire us to keep safe, and

May your cloak protect and shield us,

From injustice and abuse of the powerful,

Brigid, most kind and fierce!

Art attributed to Miranda Gray and Courtney Davis.

Fires of Justice

One of the things that I love about the Celtic traditions is the focus on justice, with deities from Brigid to Nuadha (just thinking of Irish) coming to mind. In different eras concepts on (in)justice will be different but in today’s world and certainly in the country whose passport I bear, justice is so much about race. Americans, especially white ones, have to understand how deeply racism lies in the DNA of the United States right back to how the country was shaped and structured from its beginning; this lives on in the force of those White Supremacist institutions today such as the Electoral College, the police whose origins were the slave patrols, etc. And let’s remember slavery still remains in the US prison system, literally. At this time for Celtic pagans of all varieties and stripes it is so important to say Black Lives Matter. And that people of all origins, ethnicities and races should be very welcome in our Celtic polytheist and Druidic worship. Hospitality is one of our primary virtues. I think we can all do well to think of ways to make our doings more hospitable.

 

However, If we’re honest we can see there are a lot of racists among Celtic pagans; in social media the slightest criticism can bring out the racists. Some even scream that politics need to be separated from religion/spirituality—as if that is a possibility. Often people like to point the fingers at the Heathens but it is very much around (and has long been) in Celtic milieus. One group recently got a lot of attention that was full on fascist (I will not mention the name). One common aggression is the asking POC why aren’t they going for their own ancestral traditions (the assumptions are great).

 

I lead small druid rites (in a practice that comes from an offshoot of ADF) on the fire festivals. The people who participate other than myself are POC. The gods do NOT care about ancestry, race or anything like that. It is humans who hold these abusive modern views. We need to be aware of the coding and dog whistles people use who may come to our groups, our gatherings, our virtual spaces. We need to ward against them. And for those of us who are white this means increasing our own awareness, an ongoing project*

 

 

 

May the compassion of Brigid and the cosmic fairness and measure of Nuadha come to our very troubled land. May the criminal injustice system be transformed into a justice system.

 

 

• For those interested in furthering their understanding of white racism here are a few books I’ve found helpful:
• Race Matters by Cornell West
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks

Some New Publications

I’ve got an essay on filidecht “The Well, the Sea, the Dead: the Poet in Irish Lore” in the latest issue of Air n-Aithesc, Volume 4, Issue 2. http://ciannai2.wixsite.com/air-n-aithesc

And a poem: “Fleet as Deer” for Flidais.

 

I’ve also got some poems in the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina book,

Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus:

“A Grammar for Aphrodite”, “Venus and Felix Roma”, “Eros Unloosed”, and Hermes’ and Aphrodite’s Child”.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Roses-Devotional-Aphrodite-Venus/dp/1973810816/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501828200&sr=1-3&keywords=Blood+and+Roses

 

 

 

And a new post over at paganbloggers: Slipping Out Into the Mythic:

http://paganbloggers.com/blog/2017/07/29/slipping-out-into-the-mythic-by-finnchuill/

 

 

 

And happy Lughnasadh–and Imbolc for southern readers!

May Update

Another post at paganbloggers:

I’m sitting on a bench, happy that the stream that has been dry lately, except for a few diminishing pools, the last hideout for the frogs, has water again.

I met this stream last year, just about a year ago, and since walk along the ‘streamside trail’ frequently. Walking is a druidic practice for me. The land by the stream slowly opens itself to me. Small naio trees form an open grove about me.

http://paganbloggers.com/blog/2017/05/16/the-stream-by-finnchuill/

 

And a few photos form Bealtaine:

Filidecht Resources

Here are some useful resources.

Breatnach, Liam. “The Caldron of Poesy”. Eriu 32. 1981.

Calder, George. Auraicept na n-Eces: the Scholar’s Primer.https://archive.org/details/auraiceptnancess00calder

Carey, John. “The Waters of Vision and the Gods of Skill”. Art and the Sacred Kairos and the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture. 23 March, 1991. Santa Fe.

Carney, James. Medieval Irish Lyrics with The Irish Bardic Poet.

Chadwick, Nora. Poetry and Prophecy. Good worldwide survey form 1952 (but does contain some racist/colonialist attitudes prevalent in that era).

—, Chadwick. “Imbas forosnai”. Scottish Gaelic Studies, 1935.

Corkery, Daniel. The Hidden Ireland.

Ford, Patrick. “The Blind, the Dumb, and the Ugly”. Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 19.

Guyonvarc’h, Christian J. The Making of a Druid: The Hidden Teachings from The Colloquy of Two Sages (the text with annotations).

Heaney, Seamus. Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. Irish poet’s translation of        Suibhne Geilt, the poetry of “mad Sweeney’, a glimpse into the world of a geilt, outsider poet living in the woods.

Henry, P. L. “The Caldron of Poesy”. Studia Celtica 14/15. 1979/80.

Jones, Mary. Jones Celtic Encyclopedia. 1998-2015. Web.

Laurie, Erynn Rowan. The Well of Five Streams (contains her Cauldron of Poesy article).

Minahane, John. The Christian Druids: on the filid or philosopher-poets of Ireland.

Nagy, Nagy, Joseph Falaky. The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1985. The Fenian outsider warriors were poets too.

Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí The Sacred Isle. A crucial book for understanding pre-Christian practices and believes in Ireland by an Irish Celticist.

Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí. Myth, Legend and Romance: An Encyclopaedia of Irish Folk Tradition. London: Ryan, 1990.

Ó Tuathail, Sean. The Excellence of Ancient Word: Druid Rhetorics from Ancient Irish Tales. Idiosyncratic modern practitioner’s take is worth a read.

Patterson, Nerys. Cattle Lords and Clansmen: The Social Structure of Early Ireland. The historical background.

Skelton, Robin. Samhain and other poems in Irish Metres of the Eighth to the Sixteenth Centuries. Contains an appendix with the different traditional meters.

Thompson, Christopher Scott. A God Who Makes Fire: the Bardic Mysticism of Amergin. A recommended practitioner’s handbook.

Above the Clouds

It’s been quiet around here (it seems with the gloom of the US political situation, prepping for a new job, and my mom being hospitalized my ability to write has been stopped up), but before the newness of the year is gone I want to spill out a few words here. The old year sputtered out with an occasional remaining fit of coughing and spewing. A new one has come in with the energy of a careening freight train, will the rails hold, or if not what might be down there at the end of the line? Some will say years are arbitrary but they are astronomical realities. Sure, it’s a cultural thing where they’re said to start and to end and begin again but we are symbolic animals and psyche is as real as soma.

 

For many in the northern hemisphere it’s winter, but here in the tropics day and night are the antinomies, but the nights have at least cooled off. At the end of the year I had the opportunity to journey up to a high summit (just under 14,000 feet) where winter is reigning. Plenty of snow on the amazing mountain of Maunakea. The effects of high altitude, of low oxygen can easily induce light trance-like states, and the otherworld can more easily communicate with this one at these heights, I have found. Whether via literal heights or those we can reach in our imagination, in “interesting times” it is important to get above the clouds from time to time, above the light pollution of the media (including social media). Of course, one can go underneath too, but that is a different journey.

 

I do have a few announcements to make:

 

I will be at PantheaCon in San Jose in February and presenting a class on filidecht practice on Feb. 17^th, “Cauldron Work: The Cauldron of Poesy” (9PM). Here’s from the program:

 

The Three Cauldrons are discussed in the medieval Irish text: “The Cauldron of Poesy”, attributed to the mythical vision poet (fili) Amergin. We will talk about the nature of the whirlpool-like cauldrons and their turning in this wisdom tradition, the importance of our emotions in this tradition (which can turn the cauldrons), and techniques to scan for personal knowledge. To turn the cauldron of wisdom upright, even if momentarily, brings mystical insight. We will discuss the key technique of incubation as well; poetry, art, song, knowledge, wisdom are fruit of this work.

 

The devotional book The Dark Ones, published late last year by Neosalexandria has my poem for the Cailleach, along with a lot of familiar voices. Ordering info here:

https://neosalexandria.org/bibliotheca-alexandrina/current-titles/fiction-anthologies/the-dark-ones-tales-and-poems-of-the-shadow-gods/

 

The new issue of A Beautiful Resistance is available for pre-order and will be out next month. I have an essay there about the left-hand sacred, an important understanding of the sacred earlier developed by Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille and very relevant for 21^st century pagans/polytheists. https://godsandradicals.org/2017/01/01/left-sacred-presale/

Here’s a lovely meme with a quote from the essay made by Rhyd Wildermuth:

Finally, a quote from an inspiring essay by William Hawes:

“Each of us must find the strength to light their own flame, find their own inner strength and sacred fire, and use their passion and creativity to change the world. By using our collective brilliance, a new space could be opened up for a new kind of Earth. Reviving our communities one-by-one gives us our only chance to confront and defeat the many tentacle monster of international capitalism and US imperialism. There is an alternative: but you won’t find it by watching your TV, or playing on your smartphone.”

https://godsandradicals.org/2017/01/16/lighting-a-flame-in-dark-times/

Imbolc is coming! May Brigid’s flame inspire us.