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Excerpt From Kindling the Celtic Spirit by
Mara Freeman (Harper SanFrancisco, 2000)
by Mara Freeman
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001
ISBN 0-06-251685-X 400 pages
Introduction: Buried Treasure
“The
old people had runes which they sang to the spirits dwelling in the sea and
in the mountain, in the wind and in the whirlwind, in the lightning and in
the thunder, in the sea and in the moon and in the stars of heaven. I was
naught but a toddling child at the time, but I remember well the ways of the
old people.” -- Carmina Gadelica
In
September 1868, young Jimmy Quin was digging potatoes in a ring-fort near
the village of Ardagh in County Limerick. When he reached the bank close to
a thorn tree he found the surface soft, and when he drove his spade down
between the roots of the thorn, it struck something hard and metallic. He
cleared away the earth and found a beautiful gold and silver cup now known
as the Ardagh Chalice, considered by many to be the finest specimen of
Celtic art ever found.
Like the
Ardagh Chalice, the treasury of Celtic wisdom and lore lies not too far
beneath the topsoil of memory. Digging through layers only a few generations
deep, we can still uncover battered caskets of ancient customs and rituals
that may reveal a shining hoard of story, prayer and song. For the amazing
thing is that despite a relentless tide of invasions, persecutions, and
immigrations, there was enough gold in the storehouse of Celtic wisdom to
survive the centuries of plunder. Over 2,000 years ago, the first people
that we call the Celts were a large group of tribal communities who
inhabited much of the European continent. They were an energetic,
intelligent, flamboyant people, whose passionate natures expressed
themselves in heroic warfare, brilliant craftsmanship, and the worship of
many gods and goddesses who dwelt in the earth below them and the sky above
them. By the 1st
century AD, the Roman army had pushed them far into the northwestern
hinterlands. Only Ireland and the most northern reaches of Scotland escaped
being crushed by the military might of Rome.
In the 5th
century, Christian missionaries arrived in Ireland, and the old polytheistic
religion gave way to the creed of the One God. Ireland became one of the
greatest seats of the new religion in Europe, and host to a golden age of
learning and art, centered around the monastic settlements. In their turn,
the monasteries were sacked by Viking invaders at the end of the 8th
century, the monks were slaughtered, and most of the magnificent books and
holy treasures destroyed. But the flower of this new manifestation of the
Celtic spirit was bitten by the frost of successive invasions, first the
Normans and then the English, and almost withered and died completely in the
19th century when systematic oppression drove thousands to the
immigrant ships or to death by starvation in the Potato Famine. A similar
story of almost total cultural annihilation played itself out in Scotland,
Wales and Cornwall, while, on the continent, Brittany was engulfed by
France.
Yet in the
past thirty or so years, many willing minds and hands have undertaken the
task of rekindling the guttering flame of the Celtic Spirit. Even as the
languages began to die on the lips of a people forbidden to speak in their
own tongue, a new generation has sprung up to reclaim their spiritual and
cultural birthright. As we enter a new millennium, musicians are playing
traditional melodies and songs; poets are writing and reciting in their
mother tongue; while thousands of the descendants of the Celtic diaspora,
chiefly from North America and Australia, are making pilgrimages to the
homes of their great-grandparents and visiting the once-neglected sacred
sites of their ancestral homes in Ireland, Scotland, or Wales.
And,
whether or not we have Celtic ancestry, many of us today are finding
ourselves deeply attracted to Celtic spirituality, living as we do at a time
when the sacred seems so absent from our world. There is a Welsh word,
“hiraeth” which roughly translates in English as a longing for what is
absent, the yearning of the exile for the shores of home. Adrift without a
living tradition today as so many of us are, the many faceted jewel of
Celtic spirituality sparkles like the sun on water, inviting us to set sail
for those longed-for islands of the soul. To step ashore is to discover a
world in which there is no separation between the visible and invisible,
between Spirit and Nature, Heaven and Earth. Here we can embrace an
awareness of the sacred in every moment and within all forms of life….
...For
whether sowing seed, spinning wool or milking cows, these country dwellers
carried out every task in the spirit of prayer, despite the poverty and
hardships of subsistence living. Although they prayed to Christian saints
and angels, these figures thinly veil the pagan gods and goddesses whose
names they once bore. What is more, these invisible protectors were not
merely to be found in church on Sundays, or in a heavenly beyond, but
attended everyday life in kitchen, field and barn.
As poet and mystic George Russell wrote,
During
all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some affinity with the
almighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so evident to the heroic races
who preceded him. His legends and faery tales have connected his soul with
the inner lives of air and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his
heart sweet with hidden influence.
If we put
our ear to the cracks of silence within the roar of 21st century
life, we can still hear the echo of these ancestral voices, and the sound of
footsteps that have not yet quite faded upon the air. If we listen
respectfully, they may teach us the songs and stories that can open the
gates to the Many-Colored Land. If we walk with them along the windy shore,
or up onto the heather-scented moors, we can rediscover our connection with
the natural world, and take our rightful place in the great circle of life.
And if we follow them home, they may invite us into their houses and teach
us how to kindle the flame of Spirit within our hearths and our hearts.
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