Contemplative Inquiry

Physically I am in a familiar place. Imaginally I am at a threshold. The early morning mist, where the water adjusts it’s course, gives me a sense of mystery and the unknown.

This sense is compounded by the presence of swans. A family of four are sitting near the entrance to a water margin woodland. It feels as though they are protecting a liminal space.

The pictures above were taken on Sunday 1 November, the morning after the ancient festival of Samhain, also known as Halloween (Hallows Eve). In the Christian calendar, 1 November is All Hallows Day, a remebrance of saints and martyrs. 2 November is All Souls Day, a wider remembrance of the dead. In both Pagan and Christian traditions, the veil between the worlds is thin.

The ancient Irish tale The Dream of Oenghus, tells of a beautiful British Celtic girl, Caer Ibormeith (Yewberry) changing into a swan every other year at the time of Samhain. To win her, Oengus, the god of love, becomes a swan too and they both fly to his house – Brugh na Boyne, now known as New Grange. According to The Druid Animal Oracle (1), the swan (Eala) “brings us the qualities of soul – of love and depth, grace and beauty. Being associated with the Druid festival of Samhain, the swan is also a bird of the threshold, and represents that part of us that can travel into the Underworld”.

Contemplating the images of misty winding waters and swans at the edge of the woods, I feel the call of the imaginal realm, the realm of what is traditionally called soul. For me, the Underworld/Otherworld (experienced primarily as depth not height) is a dimension of available experience rather than a separate place.

‘Love and depth, grace and beauty’ feel to me like enabling descriptions of this realm. Being open to wonder and ready to embrace enchantment are my ways in, grounded in an cultivated  willingness to recognise different realities in one space. This seems to be the main fruit of my personal contemplatve inquiy, now exactly 15 years old. In an apparent world that seems to be getting worse, I am held up and sustained.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Animal Oracle: Working with the Sacred Animals of the Druid Tradition Simon Schuster (Fireside Book), 1994. Illustrated by Bill Worthington