Gaelic traditions | contemplativeinquiry

May 2, 2020

DEEP REST AND THE MAGIC OF AWEN

2020 is beginning its journey from Beltane to Midsummer in my neighbourhood, and I am feeling the call of Awen. Hence the pendant. I am also looking at the theme of balance (1). There’s a question for me about balancing the call of Awen with my commitment to the deep rest of contemplation and its nourishing effects.

As a fruit of my contemplative inquiry, I found ‘at-homeness in the flowing moment’. This at-homeness nourishes my life. It is not dependent on belief or circumstance, but on the ultimate acceptance that the experienced moment is what is given. Being alive, having experiences, and being aware that I have experiences is an extraordinary set of gifts. But it has taken me a while to find deep rest in simple experiencing, at will.

When I go home to the flowing moment, I slow down the stream of consciousness without attempting either to halt it or to put it to work. A stillness lives within the flow and finds its place there. I experience ‘now’ as state of presence, rather than a unit of time. A pervasive sense of deep rest emerges from ‘just being’. Immersed in being, I can lose my sense of a boundaried, separate self.

But I am also an embodied human, in a perpetual process of becoming, When I hear the call of Awen, I feel as if a larger life is inviting me to share in the magic of creation as a co-creator. It is likely that humans began calling, chanting and music-making before they developed conceptual speech. Awen is close to source, deeply involved in the emergence and flourishing of our collective and personal voices. Gaelic tradition speaks of the Oran Mor as the great song in which all beings have a part.

In this final, dynamic stage of the rising year, I do feel called in this way. My initial response has been to re-incorporate Awen into my practice both as a three-syllable chant (aah-ooo-wen) and as a two-syllable mantra meditation (aah, on the inbreath; wen, on the outbreath). This is already changing the feel of the practice. When chanting this is through the sound, with its distinctive pulse and vibration, and through a strong felt resonance in my body. In the meditation, the awen mantra seems to enliven my breath, making it very real as the breath of life. It also energises my body as a whole, less dramatically but more subtly than the chant. Overall, I sense myself as enlivened, inspired, and activated. Awen is influencing my experience, and my inquiry. I will see where this magic leads me.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/04/29/beltane-2020/

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March 7, 2018

SWEENEY’S SHAPESHIFT

Two extracts from Sweeney Astray, Seamus Heaney’s version of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne. Reflecting a time of religious change in Ireland, the first beautifully describes a shapeshifting transformation whilst making it the result of a curse. In the second, there is at least a suggestion that it might, rather, have been another route to holiness. Meanwhile Christian priests have taken on Druid powers and roles, – non-canonical forms of cursing and binding, the support of animal allies and directing peace negotiations.

“There was a certain Ronan Finn in Ireland, a holy and distinguished cleric. He was ascetic and pious, an active missionary, a real Christian soldier. He was a real servant of God, one who punished his body for the good of his soul, a shield against vice and the devil’s attacks, a gentle, genial, busy man.

“One time when Sweeney was king of Dal-Arie, Ronan was there marking out a church called Killaney. Sweeney was in a place where he heard the clink of Ronan’s bell as he was marking out the site, so he asked his people what the sound was.

“It is Ronan Finn, the son of Bearach, they said. He is marking out a church in your territory and what you hear is the ringing of his bell.

“Sweeney was suddenly angered and rushed away to hunt the cleric from his church. Eorann, his wife, a daughter of Conn of Ciannacht, tried to hold him back and snatched at the fringe of his crimson cloak, but the sliver cloak-fastener broke at the shoulder and sprang across the room. She got the cloak alright, but Sweeney had bolted, stark naked, and soon landed with Ronan.

“He found the cleric glorifying the King of heaven and earth, in full voice in front of his psalter, a beautiful illuminated book. Sweeney grabbed the book and flung it into the cold depths of a lake nearby, where it sank without trace. Then he took hold of Ronan and was dragging him out through the church when he heard a cry of alarm. The call came from a servant of Congal Claon’s who had come with orders from Congal to summon Sweeney to battle at Moira. He gave a full report of the business and Sweeney went off directly with the servant, leaving the cleric distressed at the loss of his psalter and smarting from such contempt and abuse.

“A day and a night passed and then an otter rose out of the lake with the psalter and brought it to Ronan, completely unharmed. Ronan gave thanks to God for that miracle, and cursed Sweeney.

….

“After that, Ronan came to Moira to make peace between Donal, so of Aodh, and Congal Claon, son of Scannlan, but he did not succeed. Nevertheless, the cleric’s presence was taken as a seal and guarantee of the rules of battle; they made agreements that no killing would be allowed except between those hours they had set for beginning and ending the fight each day. Sweeney, however, would continually violate every peace and truce which the cleric had ratified, slaying a man each day before the sides were engaged and slaying another each evening when the combat was finished. Then, on the day fixed for the great battle, Sweeney was in the field before everyone else.

“He was dressed like this:

next his white skin, the shimmer of silk;

and his satin girdle around him;

and his tunic, that reward of service

and gift of fealty from Congal,

was like this –

crimson, close-woven,

bordered in gemstones and gold,

a rustle of sashes and loops,

the studded silver gleaming,

the slashed hem embroidered in points.

He had an iron-shod spear in his hand,

a shield of mottled horn on his back,

a gold-hilted sword at his side.

“He marched out like that until he encountered Ronan with eight psalmists from his community. They were blessing the armies, sprinkling them with holy water, and they sprinkled Sweeney with the rest. Sweeney thought they had done it just to mock him, so he lifted one of his spears, hurled it, and killed one of Ronan’s psalmists in a single cast. He made another throw with the second spear at the cleric himself, so that it pierced the bell that hung from his neck, and the shaft sprang off into the air. Ronan burst out:

“My curse fall on Sweeney

for his great offence.

His smooth spear profaned

my bell’s holiness,

cracked bell hoarding grace

since the first saint rang it –

it will curse you to the trees,

bird-brain among branches.

Just as the spear shaft broke

and sprang into the air

may the mad spasms strike

you, Sweeney, forever.

….

“There were great shouts as the herded armies clashed and roared out their war cries like stags. When Sweeney heard these howls and echoes assumed into the travelling clouds and amplified through the vaults of space, he looked up and he was possessed by a dark rending energy.

“His brain convulsed,

his mind split open.

Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings

and launchings came over him,

he staggered and flapped desperately,

he was revolted by the thought of known places

and dreamed strange migrations.

His fingers stiffened,

his feet scuffled and flurried,

his heart was startled,

his senses were mesmerized,

his sight was bent,

the weapons fell from his hands

and he levitated in a frantic cumbersome motion

like a bird of the air.

And Ronan’s curse was fulfilled.

“His feet skimmed over the grasses so lightly he never unsettled a dewdrop and all that day he was a hurtling visitant of plain and field, bare mountain and bog, thicket and marshland, and there was no hill and hollow, no plantation or forest in Ireland that he did not appear in that day; until he reached Ros Bearaigh in Glen Arkin, where he hid in a yew tree in the glen.”

The second extract, where the Church is represented by the friendlier Moling, describes the end of Sweeney’s life – still as a wandering bird.

“At last Sweeney arrived where Moling lived, the place that is known as St. Mullin’s. Just then Moling was addressing himself to Kevin’s psalter and reading from it to his students. Sweeney presented himself at the brink of the well and began to eat watercress.

“‘Aren’t you the early bird?’ said the cleric, and continued, with Sweeney answering, afterwards.

Moling: So, you would steal a march on us, up and breakfasting so early!

Sweeney: Not so very early, priest. Terce has come in Rome already.

Moling: And what knowledge has a fool about the hour of terce in Rome?

Sweeney: The Lord makes me His oracle, from sunrise till sun’s going down.

Moling: Then speak to us of hidden things. Give us tidings of the Lord.

Sweeney: Not I. But if you are Moling, you are gifted with the Word.

Moling: Mad as you are, you are sharp-witted. How do you know my face and name?

Sweeney: In my days astray, I ested in this enclosure many a time

…..

Moling: Look at this leaf of Kevin’s book, the coilings on this psalter’s page.

Sweeney: The yew leaf coils round my nook in Glen Bolcain’s foliage.

Moling: This churchyard, this colour, is there no pleasure here for you?

Sweeney: My pleasure is great and other: the hosting that day at Moira.

Moling: I will sing Mass, make a hush of high celebration.

Sweeney: Leaping an ivy bush is a higher calling even.

Moling: My ministry is only toil, the weak and the strong both exhaust me.

Sweeney: I toil to a bed on the chill steeps of Benevenagh

Moling: When your death comes, will it be death by water, in holy ground?

Sweeney: It will be early when I die. One of your herds will make the wound.

“You are more than welcome here, Sweeney, said Moling, for you are fated to live and die here. You shall leave the history of your adventures with us and receive a Christian burial in a churchyard. Therefore, said Moling, no matter how far you range over Ireland, day by day, I bind you to return to me every evening so that I may record your story.”

When Sweeney is indeed mortally wounded by one of the communities’ herdsmen, the rest of the community feel anger and grief.

“Enna McBracken was ringing the bell for prime at the door of the churchyard and saw what had happened. He spoke this poem:

“This is sad, herd, this was deliberate,

Outrageous, sickening and sinful.

Whoever struck here will live to regret

Killing the king, the saint, the holy fool.

…..

My heart is breaking with pity for him.

He was a man of fame and high birth.

He was a king, he was a madman.

His grave will be a hallowing of earth.”

Sweeney lives long enough to confess and take the sacrament. “He received Christ’s body and thanked God for having received it and after that was anointed by the clerics”. Moling who “with holy viaticum” has “limed him for the Holy Ghost”, also expresses affection for Sweeney and reveals that he, too, has learned something.

“The man who is buried here was cherished indeed, said Moling. How happy we were when we walked and talked along his path. And how I loved to watch him yonder at the well. It is called the Madman’s Well because he would often eat its watercress and drink its water, and so it is named after him. And every other place he used to haunt will be cherished too.

…

“Because Sweeney loved Glen Bolcain

I learned to love it, too. He’ll miss

The fresh streams tumbling down,

The green beds of watercress.

He would drink his sup of water from

The well yonder we have called

The Madman’s Well; now his name

Keeps brimming in its sandy cold”.

Seamus Heaney Sweeney Astray London: Faber & Faber, 1983

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February 26, 2018

ENCOUNTERING THE ORAN MOR

Wonderfully evocative post by Tadhg Jonathan on the experiencing the Oran Mor, the Great Song of Celtic Tradition.

Tadhg Talks...

20180226 ENCOUNTERING THE ORAN MOR I’m sitting cross-legged, in a darkened room. Dark, save for one, small candle with its gentle flickering light projecting barely-seen shadows on the wall. It’s peaceful. I’m at rest.

Tonight my meditation is kataphatic – that is I’m going to use thoughts and ‘pictures’ from my imagination to be my ‘silent teachers’, and then in an unstructured way – that is non-directed, and I aim to be open to the Awen (pronounced by some as ar-wen; though I like the three syllable pronunciation, ah-(w)oo-ern), that Spirit of creativity known to ancient (and latter-day) Celts and Druids, and others (and known by various other names).

As I sit here, eyes closed, there is no sound except for the sound of the wind, outside. I’m back in London, and my small apartment is one of a few, that, like most modern architecture can be prone to ‘funnel’ the wind and create a…

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November 26, 2016

FULLNESS

Yesterday I spent 90 minutes watching trees, their branches now bare, against a steadily darkening sky. I forgot myself in the scene, feeling filled with it. The core experience was fullness.

I suppose that this is what I mean by the ‘sacrament of the present moment’ – though this experience was of the flowing present, extended over time, noticing and enjoying change in nature. On later reflection, I was less reminded of mystics and meditators than of poets, particularly John Keats and his ‘negative capability’. He contrasted this with another type of response, which he called “the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime”. Negative capability is “everything and nothing – it has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet”. (1)

‘Everything and nothing’ can be experienced as empty or full. I’m increasingly finding fullness. This has the effect of holding me in nature and time, in my unique human life soon enough to be over. This is where I want to be, with the important qualification that ‘fullness’ gives me a additional sense of being resourced by a larger well-spring of life than I might otherwise recognise. Experienced fullness doesn’t come simply from trees and sky. It comes also from the receptive openness I access when my senses are attuned. I find myself feeling a stillness underneath and within all movement; hearing a silence underneath and within all sound; seeing a soft luminescence underneath and within all colour and form, and in darkness too. These are the keys to fullness – a fullness where everything stills and slows down yet doesn’t stop.

Largely this is what I now mean (for myself) by a ‘contemplative’ state. Its development reflects a magpie approach to learning and my felt sense of what is right for me. I discovered the stillness through Buddhist breath meditation (movement of the breath as the belly rises and falls; yet stillness within). But I am not a Buddhist. I learned the silence through listening to the Oran Mor (Song of the World), though I don’t currently work within Gaelic traditions. I discovered (what should I call it?) primordial luminescence within the Headless Way (2). But I’m not continuing with the Headless path, because the headless trope itself now feels tedious and I don’t entirely share the Harding world view. Fullness has a link to Sophian Gnosticism, of all these traditions the closest to my heart, under the Greek name Pleroma. But my ‘fullness’ has come out of direct experience and I’m being careful to keep it that way. I like the resonance of the English word fullness, and it helps to maintain a degree of separation from the ancient view. Yet even whilst maintaining my inner authority, I am grateful for these inputs from the world’s spiritual heritage. I remain indebted whilst crafting my own path.

I’m not Keats and, for me, negative capacity for fullness tends to come as an alloy. It is generally interspersed with a certain amount of egotistical sublime, in my case as an upgraded stream of consciousness or monkey mind narrative. In my universe, that’s fine too, and all part of the fullness. I would like more skill in switching between the two modes at will, and I believe this to be achievable. At another level, it doesn’t really matter.

(1) Keats selected poems and letters Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1995 (Selected by Robert Gittings; edited by Sandra Anstey)

(2) http://www.headless.org

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September 3, 2016

SOPHIA THE CATALYST

bcf2c26ec7720ed734fccc2b13534310 In my universe, Sophia primarily acts as a catalyst for what Cynthia Bourgeault (1) calls ‘singleness’ – the spacious mind of non-dual awareness. I find that gazing into the eyes of my icon (2), or at the image as a whole, triggers me into the Seeing state that I first fully entered with Headless Way (3) exercises. I make a slight shift into what they call the ‘one eye’ perspective, and there I am.

Of course this isn’t dependent on the icon, but the timeless, momentary, gaze in this instance connects with the imaginal realm where I find feelings and intuition to be most present, with a diminished foregrounding of the sensations and thoughts that predominate in other exercises. The experience is the same, yet the feeling-tone is different.

I am still clear awake space, and capacity for the world. I remain grounded in silent stillness. But the passing content, or form, which the changeless emptiness also is and interweaves, is different. A different constellation of human characteristics is brought into the cosmic play. I value and cherish this. The archaic Gaelic tradition spoke of the Oran Mor (Great Song, or Song of the World). I’ve always thought of a Silence being key, holding the Song, and giving it – in a sense – shape; preventing it from being just noise. Yet the distinctions between individual notes also matter – small and transient though they may be. The Song depends on them, too, for its coherence.

At the human level, I have an abiding sense that my true individual note in the Song is Sophian. I do not experience Sophia as simply an abstract Wisdom figure. Nor am I a conventional believing theist (whether unitarian, trinitarian or polytheist) – yet to a degree I am a Sophian devotee, under the tutelage of a psychopomp.

Overall, I associate the Sophian note with a modern Gnosticism, “based in an affirmation of nature and the world and a positive relation to embodiment, not the classical Gnosticism of world denial and pure transcendentalism. It is a gnosis based on bringing the world fully to life, while also enjoying the state of embodiment and sensual pleasure, without excess or obsessive appetite. This affirmation of the world also requires an affirmation of the World-Soul in all its vast complexity as the primary ground of a living and animate nature. This also includes higher orders of perception and awareness leading to more mystical states of unity and participation in the creative founding of human experience” (4).

Through Seeing, I have learned that the “higher orders of perception” are more accessible than usually suggested, hidden by their obviousness and simplicity, yet entering into empty awareness, recognised as original nature or divine ground. This is why it has become my primary practice. I think there is something of this in earlier Sophian tradition. In the ancient Jewish text The Wisdom of Solomon (5), characteristics of clear and empty awareness are at least intimated, and are linked to Her name.

She is the mobility of all movement;

She is the transparent nothing that pervades all things.

She is the breath of God,

A clear emanation of Divine Glory.

No impurity can stain Her.

She is God’s spotless mirror

Reflecting eternal light

And the image of divine goodness.

Although She is one,

She does all things.

Without leaving Herself

She renews all things.”

Wisdom of Solomon 7: 24-27

Cynthia Bourgeault comments: “This remarkable passage envisions Wisdom as the primordial reflective principle, simultaneously creating and created in a seamless dance of divine becoming. There is a goddess aspect to her portrayal, to be sure – the hint of a divine co-creator – but the important thing to keep in mind is that Sophia/wisdom is presented not as a divinity to be worshipped but as a transformational force to be actualized … Wisdom is about transformation and transformation is about creativity; the three form an unbroken circle.”

Moving forward into the early days of Christianity, Bourgeault says: “The logos (Word) of St. John’s Gospel is merely the grammatically masculine synonym for exactly the same job description as has already been ascribed to Sophia in The Wisdom of Solomon; or, in other words, it is wisdom minus the feminine personification. Functionally, the terms are equivalent, and the gospel text could just as easily have begun, ‘In the beginning was the Wisdom, and the Wisdom was with God, and the Wisdom was God … and the Wisdom became flesh and dwelled among us’. In so doing, it might better have conveyed the context and mystical lineage out of which this insight actually emerges. There is no ‘male’ ordering principle counterbalancing a ‘female’ ordering principle – only grammatically masculine and feminine synonyms for a single ordering principle.”

Sophian teaching stands for the transcendence of polarities, as made clear by the Jesus of the St. Thomas Gospel. “When you are able to make the two become one, the inside like the outside, the higher like the lower, so that a man is no longer male and a woman female, but male and female become a single whole … then you will enter in” (6).

Likewise, the Gospel of St. Philip says: “the embrace of opposites occurs in this world: masculine and feminine, strength and weakness. In the Great Age – the Aion – something similar to what we call embrace occurs as well, but though we use the same name for it, forms of union there transcend what can be described here. For in that place … Reality is One and Whole” (6).

‘This world’ and ‘that world’ are not different places – but the same one seen in different ways. In a similar way, Sophia can be described as “the transparent nothing that pervades all things” and also presented anthropomorphically and mythically, as in my icon. Both understandings have value to me. The world of ‘normal’ perception: embodied, of the earth – albeit ‘re-enchanted’ as we say in Druidry, and the setting for a nature mysticism (7); the world of what S. T. Coleridge called the ‘primary imagination’, and of Sophia as image of the divine (8); and the world of Seeing are the same world seen through three different lenses: all to be savoured, all to be enjoyed, all to be known as One.

(1) Cynthia Bourgeault The meaning of Mary Magdalene: discovering the woman at the heart of Christianity Boston & London: Shambala, 2010

(2) Artist Hrana Janto at http://hranajanto.com/ (This image is used with her permission.)

(3) http://www.headless.org/

(4) Lee Brown Gnostic tarot: mandalas for spiritual transformation York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1998

(5) Rami Shapiro (translator) in The divine feminine in biblical wisdom literature Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths, 2005 (The Wisdom of Solomon was originally written in Greek, probably by a Jewish sage writing in Alexandria during the intertestamental era.)

(6) Lynn Bauman, Ward Bauman & Cynthia Bourgeault The luminous gospels Telephone, TX: Praxis Institute Publishing, 2008

(7) http://www.druidry.org/

(8) S. T. Coleridge Biographia Literaria London: Everyman’s Library, 1956 (First published 1817)

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June 21, 2016

METHODS IN CONTEMPLATIVE INQUIRY: PART 1

This post is about methods in contemplative inquiry. It is the second in a series looking at what forms of inquiry best serve our times. The first (1) concerned values. This is the first of three addressing methods. A final post will be about issues of interpretation. My focus below is on the ritual container for my early morning Temple of Sophia practice, and how it enacts the values discussed on 16 June.

I inaugurated the Temple on 22 March of this year, and described it at the time (2) as a “magical space”. As my inquiry has developed, I have tended to let go of words like ‘magic’, ‘mysticism’, ‘gnosis’ and ‘enlightenment’ as too imprecise and in a way too theatrical for my current purpose. Yet I stand by what I said at the time. In particular, I continue to understand myself as using “a set of methods for arranging awareness according to patterns”, the definition of magic I used in March. I use all five of the specific methods I listed: concentration, meditation, visualization, ritual patterning and mediation. I particularly want to re-emphasize a key point about replacing a deliberate, effortful style of concentration with one based on interest and excitement like the concentration of children at play. (If it doesn’t work, do something else). But the last of the five methods above is now reframed. Instead of ‘mediation’ I would talk about the state of empty awareness and its influence. In the Headless Way (3) the phrase “clear awake space, and capacity for the world” is often used to describe the state as both experience and resource.

On arrival in my Temple space, I stand in what will be the centre of my circle, facing East where the image of Sophia gazes back at me. I begin with words inherited from my Druid practice, because I strive for continuity and integration wherever possible. The words are from Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition, alternatively known at St. Patrick’s Prayer and the Cry of the Deer. They are a means of bringing in and expressing the humility and reverence I discussed as values in my last post, and are best declaimed slowly and spaciously.

I arise today through the strength of heaven, light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth and firmness of rock.

I continue – again following modern Druid tradition – by calling for peace in the directions, and aligning myself to them: May there be peace in the 7 directions – East, West, North, South, Below, Above, Within. May I be present in this space.

Then I circle sunwise, spinning slowly at the centre of the circle, extending my left arm at chest level, index finger pointing down and saying: I cast this circle in the Temple of Sophia. I continue to move sunwise round the circle, speaking as I reach the appropriate cardinal points: I thank the Source for Land (North), Life (East), Light (South), and Love (West). May they continue to nourish me. My I continue to honour them. May the harmony of this circle and of my life be complete. When facing East again, I say: I open my heart to the Wisdom of Sophia. I do not use ‘Source’ and ‘Sophia’ as theological terms. They are a way of expressing gratitude and connection. The way we are made, the very social way in which our capacity for language has developed, create a yearning for I-Thou rather than I-It forms of relationship with the Cosmos and whatever we met here, without or within. It seems to me to be a first person need, and I notice that it doesn’t seem to require literal reciprocation.

This opens my Temple, and a mirroring reverse process closes it at the end. For me these processes are an important ritual patterning in themselves, setting the note of my day overall, and not just markers for the Temple space. Before I begin to close the circle and exit the Temple space, I perform a ‘blessings’ practice, which has some resemblance to Buddhist loving-kindness practice whilst not being the same. Here I extend my circle of care from the centre outwards, until it becomes universal. Again I have to say that OBOD Druidry has a culture of commitment to blessings and the energy of blessing, and I continue to hold to that culture. Elaine, named below, is my wife.

I say: A blessing on my life. May I be free from harm; may I be healthy; may I be happy; may I live with ease – repeating the sequence for Elaine’s life, the lives of our kin, the lives of our companions, all lives I touch and am touched by and all beings throughout the Cosmos. A blessing on our lives (arms raised); a blessing on the work (hands over heart); a blessing on the land (touching the ground).

I am not, after some hesitation on the matter, working within a set of formalized ethics. Rather, the culture of practice seeks to generate a patterning of awareness that supports choice-making based on a view of love and wisdom. Methods enact values, which are then taken out of the Temple precincts and into the wider world.

I will talk about my physical/energetic and contemplative work within the circle in a dedicated post. This will include a look at why I do the entire practice standing or moving, and also why and how stresses and pathologies are given their space and voice.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/values-in-contemplative-inquiry

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/sophian-magic-101

(3) http://www.headless.org

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October 13, 2015

ANAM CARA

This post is about the anam cara, or spiritual friend in Gaelic tradition, and about the use of language. Recently I wrote about allowing more space and using fewer words. This wasn’t a renunciate view of language, which I value highly. My hope was that “more space” would allow “something new to emerge”, and that my words, though fewer, would be better chosen.

I am starting to see some fruits from this strategy. I’ve also recently said that I experienced Sophia “as a psychopomp or inner guru”. Now I would say, “anam cara”. This term is known from the early days of Christian monasticism in Ireland and is in current use within the Scottish-based Celie De – see http://www.ceilede.co.uk/

It is a mentoring relationship, not a peer one, but it includes the sense of a real personal connection, not just a role. People speculate about whether it is an inheritance from indigenous Druidry. Subjectively, my relation with Sophia feels like this: much more than psychopomp or inner guru. In my understanding ‘anam cara’ is gentler, subtler and less formal.

The Sophia I experience is not a rhetorical device (personification) or a glove puppet arbitrarily selected by me. She is also not – in my sense of things – a mind independent celestial being. Rather she is the felt presence, the voice, and at times the image of a deeper nature – and my inner link with the Oran Mor (the song of what is). From a personality perspective, this deeper nature is ‘not me’ and not owned and controlled by ‘me’, so I have to work at relationship.

From the perspective of deeper nature, the separation doesn’t exist. At times Sophia can point beyond herself and then I may enter the subjectivity of deeper nature and experience the world differently. The little ‘I’ and the anam cara are as one, beyond separation and immersed in the song. But most of the time that’s not how it is in my subjective life world, and a link to that fuller reality is provided by Sophia and her nudgings and promptings.

I don’t make any fundamental distinction between nature and spirit. All, for me, is contained in the word nature (or terms like the Oran Mor). Nothing is lost. Cosmos, relationship and practice remain the same. But the use of a nature language is truer to my experience.

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April 17, 2015

BRIGHID AND THE ORAN MOR

Truly inspiring! I am greatly moved by Joanna’s eloquent and powerful piece. It’s great when someone else in in the current of a similar yet distinct inspiration.

Down the Forest Path

This is a reblog from my latest blog post at Moon Books. I hope you enjoy it, and do let me know if you’ve had similar experiences. 🙂

I had meditated and tranced for nearly an hour before my altar, to the sounds of the birds outside and Heloise Pilkington on my cd player. http://www.heloisepilkington.com/index.htm My cats joined me, sleeping in their respective spots, their purrs vibrating along my spine. As the incense burned out, I came back to myself, having danced with my goddess, diving in her mysteries and those of my own soul.

I was ready now. Time to go out, to seek her, to seek the awen. I packed a small bag with more incense and some water and made my way out of the house and onto the heath. Taking my time, walking slowly, I feel more graceful after my time spent at my altar…

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April 10, 2015

ORAN MOR THE MAGIC OF SKYPE

Last night (my time) I had a Skype conversation with a group of people mostly in Nova Scotia (their early evening) and a person from Washington State, USA (early afternoon). I had been invited by Alix Sandra Huntley-Speirs of Alba Nuadh: the Druid Arts of Nova Scotia, a group which can be found on http://www.albanuadh.com

The topic was the Oran Mor, including its relationship to the contemplative thread in Druidry. As it happens I’ve been quite recently re-alerted to the Oran Mor, and it wasn’t a topic within my book Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential which we also discussed a little bit. Additionally, the Nova Scotia group are wanting to incorporate their sense of the Oran Mor into their work together. So this made for a dynamic and flowing conversation. From my point of view I certainly needed to respond and think and talk on the spot. So I believe did everyone else.

I felt that I had been privileged to enter an authentic space of co-creation. I had a certainty that something of significance will come of this, both for the group and also for those of us who were in (literally) different places. I can’t ‘know’ that of course, yet I feel it strongly. Speaking for myself, I moved on in an important way. I moved from a space in which I was focused on early meanings and subsequent interpretations of Oran Mor, and how they might guide me, to one where my inquiry has become more visceral. How will The Oran Mor live through me, in my body, heart and mind. How will it shift my experience, my life world?

I appreciate all the people who made this conversation happen, including myself, and to the technology. I know that Alba Nuadh want to continue the practice of Skype conversations and I recommend others to experiment with this medium for Druid conversations.

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April 2, 2015

REBLOG: Q AND A: WHAT IS THE SONG OF THE WORLD?

This is a reblog of a reblog, with Joanna van der Hoeven’s Down the Forest Path blog as the intermediary. I too find the Oran Mor a very resonant image. Great that’s it’s getting more attention.

Down the Forest Path

A brilliant blog post by Alison Leigh Lily, which has sparked something very special in my path through the forest!

The latest issue of the Alternative Religions Educational Network’s newsletter just came out this past weekend, and I was excited to be included as one of those featured in an interview with the editor, Christopher Blackwell. We chatted about my background being raised in a liberal Catholic tradition flavored by my father’s Irish heritage, and how that shaped my spiritual journey towards Druidry as I live and practice it today. It was great fun! One thing we touched on was the Oran Mór, or the Song of the World. Chris asked me to talk a little bit more about how this cosmological concept is reflected in my Druidry. You can read the excerpt here, or check out the whole interview.

via Q&A: What is the Song of the World?.

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Tag: Gaelic traditions