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.

Emerald Cove

The recent disclosure of vast amounts of (25,000 or so) barrels of leaking DDT filled barrels in the deep waters off the southern California coast, was, well, disturbing to say the least. During my childhood my family often spent summer weekends at Santa Catalina island with its seemingly pristine reefs and kelp forests. The toxic barrels were secretively dumped in those far off years and recently discovered.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/27/up-to-25000-barrels-found-at-suspected-ddt-dump-off-california-say-scientists

This poem is a response.

Emerald Cove

We swam, diving in lucid waters

among the kelp forest on the reef

stared at by red saddled sheephead *

fish who munched on sea urchins and

lit by the golden globes of garibaldi**.

Innocence unaware that

eight miles offshore of the island

barrels of DDT sludge were being

dumped in the thousands upon thousands

on the  continental shelf

in the murk, the barrels slowly

leached all these years dichlorodi-

phenyltrichloroethane.

We knew the pelicans with their

great beaks and fishing prowess

had disappeared unable to hatch

their eggs without breaking them,

and the eagles were long gone.

That we knew but not the sinister

presence in 3000 feet of water,

lurking to this day now revealed

in the deep, half a century

after the chemical’s banning

in the US though its maker

Montrose continued for years

exporting to other lands.

The ocean was infinite in those

mid-century years: dump anything into it

and forever gone except

in the monster movies where

the deep would erupt but that

was mostly left to Japan.

Sinister the tens of thousands of barrels

waiting all these years, waiting, waiting

leaking and corroding in the pressures

of the deep ocean, waiting, your truths

now revealed to the cameras.

emerald cove your water so clear

the abalone and the lobsters

on the rocks the sculpin and bass

swimming among the fronds—

experience held in memory,

caught in the traps of loss.

• The California sheephead, Semicossyphus pulcher is a species of wrasse. They have the interesting habit of being able to change sexes but start out as females. Good to eat too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_sheephead

Wikipedia

**A species of orange damselfish, Hipsypops rubicundus, sometimes called California goldfish.

The Strange Beauty of the Archipelago: A Review

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 9^th 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 5^th/6^th 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).

Rosc

I recently took a class called Introduction to Rosc Poetry through the Irish Pagan School. It’s taught by Irish poet, Geraldine Moorkens Byrne and it is highly informative and inspiring.

The rosc is an ancient poetry form, magical, often political, sometimes prophetic. The Morrigan’s Prophecies are examples as are Amergin’s famous invocations of Ireland.

Here’s my homework. As readers of this blog are likely to know I am an ally of the Protectors of the sacred mountain Maunakea and the efforts to keep it free of a proposed observatory project called TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope).

False Tower

 

A false tower not built

the TMT, 18 story observatory

–like at Dowth

in darkness remain

only a plan, a bad plan

a troubling dream

vapors vanish in morning breeze

 

mammoth mountain rising from depths of sea

Maunakea

umbilicus of heaven and earth

red cinder and snow

even in tropic latitude

towering rampart

silver sworded

glacier scarred

summit above this world

 

you rise

majestic giant

Your Protectors undeterred

a great host

anchored in truth and ritual

victorious under sun and southern cross

highest mountain defeats

the Thirty Meter Telescope.

—Bressal’s* tower the spell was broken

Here too, this tower, it is not built

the spell is broken, the desecrators driven

far away over the vast oceans.

 

*King Bressal was noted in Irish place lore as having attempted to build a tower to reach heaven in the vicinity of Dowth (which means Darkness) with the help of his sister’s spellwork, which made an unending day for the laborers. But the king raped his sister and the spell was broken and the tower not completed. See Anthony Murphy’s Mythical Ireland for insightful elaboration. This king and sister have been in the news lately with the discovery of incest in remains at the Brugh. Perhaps a distant folk memory.

Check out course offerings from the Irish Pagan School here:

https://irishpaganschool.com/courses

Some Call Dream

I have a poem over at Gods & Radicals. Check it out.

The wound of the border.

 

https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2019/2/5/some-call-dream

Fire & Water

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus here, I admit, but I plan on getting back to this blog. A lots been going on in the last few months including an inspiring trip to the Philippines. Here on the island the eruption of Kilauea has been much in the news and continues to be (in case you were wondering, we’re safe and lucky to have a nearly 14,000 foot mountain between us and the eruption). Here, instead, it’s been very wet for the last couple months. Fire and water (hmm, fire in water is quite the Brigidine theme, right?).

The goddess Pele continues to expel sulfur dioxide gas, lava bombs, and splinters of volcanic glass causing even shutting down a geothermal plant on the other side of the island in a reminder of who’s boss.

(Halema’uma’u, home of Pele. photo credit: CFHT)

Meanwhile, recent study reveals that chickens and other poultry make up 70% of all birds on the planet at this time and 60% of mammals are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs. 36% are humans. 4% are wild. The ubiquitous distribution of domestic chicken bones across the planet is now considered a mark or the ‘Anthropocene’.

I recoil from this, there is something disgusting here. Yeah, chicken McNuggets come from birds (along with 37 other ingredients), kids, really. There is a certain irony in that the Hawai’ian islands are overrun with feral chickens, even supermarket parking lots.

In fact, since the dawn of civilization, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study

 

An animist can easily succumb to despair in these times. But then Pele shows herself with greater force. And in very intriguing timing an idol of the Hawai’ian war god Ku, under whom King Kamehameha I united the archipelago, was returned to Hawaii just a week before the start of the most recent eruption. Estimated to be around 200 years old, it came up for auction in Paris and was purchased for over $7 million dollars by the Salesforce CEO who has an estate in Hawai’i. He returned it to Hawai’i, giving it to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu (not often such a commendable act by a tech tycoon). Coincidence? Ku and Pele taking notice?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Benioff-pays-7M-to-return-rare-Hawaiian-war-god-12938915.php

 

To see such interactions of holy forces/agencies, including elemental ones can be recharging (even though I have compassion for those who have lost homes to them). Wherever we are, we need to work hard to build stronger relationships with the spirits and gods of the wild, to build on the fury of the boar and the wolf, to call on the dead who would aid us. There is so much that needs to be (re)moved.

Who is your local spirit(s) of the wild?

One of mine is the stream that runs below our hidden place. I made it an offering the other night. From what I hear it has been known to take a human. These are (holy) powers. Part of civilization’s problem is how it has forgotten this most basic knowledge.

 

 

Meeting New Spirits

It’s been over four months since we moved up here on the north coast of the island (how did the time go by so quickly?). Settling in a very rural place where the soundscape is punctuated with the calls of roosters, frogs (invasive coquis from Puerto Rico) among other things. An intermittent stream runs below our house, often just pools in rocks, but it flowed whitewater and fierce for a couple weeks from Thanksgiving on—we had 10 days of almost non-stop rain. The strongest presence here whose music has delighted my heart. Obviously this Nie-nie has many moods, often reticent, sometimes exuberant, and from what I hear even ferocious at times, having taken a woman a few years back, who carelessly thought she could cross it during full cascade.

 

In a time of endless bad news and seemingly ever-increasing chaos in the world, being in such an isolated place has its advantages. We had a great mac nut harvest from the trees behind the house but the sweet potatoes were taken, tuber, stem and leaf by the wild pigs who know the place well!

 

We’re upslope, some 1700 or 1800 feet on the north shore, and the nights have recently grown chilly, a welcomed hint of winter. I know some of you year for more sun in your northern locations, but I year for more darkness. I’ve always found darkness deeply nurturing.

 

It’s challenge to live in such a different environment than I’m used to from the west coast of North America, but slowly making acquaintance with the local spirits is an ongoing and rewarding process.

Water flowing by ginger plants.

 

Over at paganbloggers I have some mythic thoughts you may want to read: http://paganbloggers.com/finnchuillstrack/2017/11/30/plastic-abyss/

The Passage of Time and a King

 

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s well over a year that I’ve been on this island. But it has. The holiday of King Kamehameha the Great came around again last weekend, and we went back to the little town of Kapa’au for the parade, festival, and to see the leis and offerings at his statue. Cycling. It’s beautiful to see the indigenous Hawaiian spirituality in operation here in this festivity open to all. I really enjoy this holiday–I have found the king helps me to connect to the powers of the island. Here are a few photos.

 

 

Also I have a new post over at paganbloggers about the trap of people thinking their spirituality  is based on genetics, something that’s become unfortunately commonplace.

http://paganbloggers.com/finnchuillstrack/2017/06/10/haplogroup-identities-and-pagans/

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:

Extinction Remembrance Day

November 30^th is Remembrance Day for Lost Species. I believe commemorations like this can be channels for the grief that any authentic living in this time must confront. Definitely a good day to mark for those with an animist bent.

More information can be found at this website.

https://www.lostspeciesday.org/

I’ve also found valuable thoughts from Lo (Keen) on extinction on this blog: https://rotwork.wordpress.com/

I’ve written a couple of poems and tributes to the lost birds of the Big Island of Hawai’i for this day.

A distinctively human consciousness arose in Paleolithic

linguistics and painted its wrestle with abyssal animal mind,

staving guilt of hunt and anxiety separation

with ritual’s diplomacy:

ochre and feathers

and sorcerers dancing on the edge of worlds,

occasionally falling off into the pit of bones.

now centuries of the rites cast aside,

suppressed volcanoes of grief wait unaddressed

and sedimentary layers of numbness press on our continents—

a society looks for the forgotten

who peek occasionally from sedated dreams,

in pixar and pokemon-alert smartphones

(the children were out in August—I hadn’t known there were any,

but there they’d gathered near where the stream gushes by the supermarket unseen)

while outside barely known

the Sixth Extinction rages on.

We the truly lost species as tectonic plates grind on.

Here on the island of Hawai’i there are at least ten species of bird that have gone extinct since the arrival of whites in the late 18^th century. There are many more if the entire archipelago is included. Hawaii has suffered more extinctions and more endangered species than any other US state. The majority of these lost species are of a group of birds called Hawaiian honeycreepers that underwent diverse speciation as they adapted to a multitude of island environments much like the finches that led Darwin to theorizing evolution. In many cases their habitat was destroyed by sugar plantations and cattle ranching; also the introduction of rats, mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit (there were none before the Europeans came), mongooses and cats have led to the demise of others.

The Hawaii mamo, Drepanis pacifica, last seen in 1898.

The greater Koa finch, Rhodocanthis palmeri. Last confirmed sighting in 1896.

The lesser Koa finch, R. flaviceps, 1891.

The Kona grosbeak, Chloridops kona. 1894.

The Hawai’i o’o, Moho nobilis, last seen in 1934.

The ula-‘ai-hawene, Ciridops anna, extinct at the latest by 1937.

The greater ‘amakini, Viridonia sagittirostris, last seen in1901. Lost to sugar plantations destroying its habitat.

The lesser ‘akialoa, Akialoa obscura. Last seen in 1940.

The Hawaiian rail, Porzana sandwichensis. 1884 or maybe 1893.

The kioea, Chaetoptila angustipluma, 1859.

All images Wikipedia, public domain.

 

An Elegy

before the cattle, before the sugar,

before the mosquitoes and rats

brought by whalers’ ships,

before the plantations

how much richer the island life—

when the lost birds could be heard cracking

the naio fruits, flitting in gold epaulettes and black dress

among the ohia trees,

opening the seed pods in the koa groves,

sheltering from fierce noon sun and plundering

nectar with long curved beaks. Your flights

haunt, a lost net of sorrow.

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