Welcome to the Sidhe Mound. On this page, you can find the current monthly article appearing in The Celtic Connection.

Bright Festival of Beltaine Renews Hope for the World

By C. Austin

The brightest festival of the Celtic year arrives on May eve. Beltaine (pronounced ("bel-ti-nuh") ushers in the fruitful half of the year as the Celtic season turns to summer.

The festival Samhain, on November eve, signals the advent of chaos, of endings and reckoning with outdated ways. A grim psychic and physical reality accompanies that great festival in the form of the Cailleach, the hag of winter.

But where Samhain heralds dissolution, Beltaine brings reaffirmation. Reaffirmation that the fields of nature and the heart will once again bear fruit, that eyes that have seen too much darkness can once again delight in the greening of the world. It is Danu, the Mother, who walks with us now.

At its centre, Beltaine is a celebration of life, and the potential of a bountiful harvest. For those who lived on the land, the month of May did not mark abundance of food and comfort, but rather the potential for it, the changing of conditions such that long awaited hopes and dreams might come to pass. For us, those dreams may have been forged a lifetime ago and it is only now, in this season of life, that the door opens once again.

Fire is essential to the four great festivals of the Celtic year. The great bonfire that blazes from the hilltop and burns through the seasons of the year is the "oculus mundi," the eye of the world through which we see our divinity and that divinity sees us. The "brightness" of Beltaine is not the strength of the sun, but the strength of return, of faith and hope for a new way. No season and no life is brighter than one that has hope.

Beltaine is not for the stingy, it is for those that love. They that love life, its riches, its journey. Welcome Beltaine, may you bless us with abundance.

Divine Message Found in Otherworldly Songs

By C. Austin

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
--Leonardo DaVinci

At twilight not long ago I watched a flock of birds take wing against a brilliant scarlet sky as the sun was setting. In silhouette, their flight took them through and beyond the threading branches of bare trees. A brief but thrilling vision, I could see neither where they came from, nor where they went.

The Greek philosopher Plato thought of the mind as a cage. To him, the birds that flew across the vault of that inner sky represented thoughts. In the Celtic tradition, indeed throughout the world, birds represent transcendence, the freedom of the soul or spirit to rise above and beyond earthly limitations.

The ability of birds to navigate air, land and sea gave them special prominence in Celtic mythology. From the swans of the enchanted children of Lir, to the death-eating crows of the Morrigan, to the robin as Oak King who guarantees the sun's return at winter solstice, the Otherworld teems with divine messengers.

It is said that the early Irish poets understood the language of the birds, even the language of Nature herself. From the wind, from the trees, from the songs of birds came the prophecies, riddles and tales that earned the poet high esteem in Celtic society.

Today the wind yet blows, the trees still whisper, but where are our poets? Who will translate the mysterious murmurings of nature for us, or are we now uniformly deaf to that imaginal world that should be our inheritance?

I recall a balmy morning last spring in an older garden as I sat on a sunny bench with my eyes closed, listening to the birds. Screeches, twitters, birdsong - all blended together in the background around me.

As if in a daytime dream, it occurred to me that it wasn't background, but varying voices speaking more directly to me than if someone had been talking straight to my face.

Each voice was different, as if trying to point out one particular feature of a mystery that was obvious to them and invisible to me. Together they clustered about singing "look here, look here" at this unknowable thing.

The birds, like Plato's thoughts, and the messengers of the Celtic world, mediate the expanse between worlds - between a divine world of potential and an earthly world of being. The actions that result from inspired thoughts render the mythological world visible.

These "messengers" draw our attention to what we cannot know by ourselves - that which is beyond our reach. Like a dream image, they rarely reveal outright, but they gather around that which is unconscious within us to caw, hoot and croon, giving us a chance, if only momentarily, to notice that something is indeed there.

Where do they ceaselessly fly from and where do they roost? You may know them as that "same old feeling" that rises with your awareness every few years to distract or torment you before the awareness and its familiar song blends again into the background of a busy life. The unfinished or unstarted business that is too deep to stir, that is inaccessible on one's own - the birds sing of what wants to be known.

It is the work of the poet to translate the wisdom of Nature. We must become the poets, we must hear what the birds have to say.

Destiny Waits in the Wound of a Thorn

By C. Austin

I like to garden. Many people like to garden. In fact, gardening is the fastest growing hobby in North America. And because I like to garden I was sitting in a classroom last week listening to a fellow talk about shrubs and trees. This was particularly devoted of me given that the last half of the class involved an hour long walk outdoors in sub-zero temperatures.

Nonetheless, the discussion veered onto the topic of roses. I like to look at roses. I like to smell roses. But I don't like roses in my garden. Why? Thorns, of course. Why in the world do people purposely put plant material in their garden that hurts them? Roses and other prickly sorts of plants are not to be blamed, however, because as we know, thorns were developed by plants as defensive mechanisms.

This got me to thinking about "prickly" sorts of people. Thoughtless, bitter, even nasty individuals whose world view extends only to the tip of their nose. We all know them, and some of us purposely plant them in our lives. Some people marry thorns - repeatedly. Some people wear thorns to reveal their pain. Some have a great stiff bramble rooted in their hand, foot or heart and they simply need help pulling it out. And some people, like the rose, develop thorns to avoid being eaten up entirely.

And then there are "thorny" situations, those uncomfortable settings that we all steer clear of - when we can. No one in their right mind would dive into a sticker bush (or plant one in their yard), but sometimes we don't realize it until we're sitting there pulling out thorns. But in these circumstances, thorns can be enlightening. Thorns, like demons, can make excellent guidance counselors.

The rose, the fairy hawthorn, the gorse - all beauties with a stinging touch. But energy waits in the thorn bushes of life. Sometimes there is a bite attached to the beautiful things we long for most. History tells us of a young boy kidnapped into Irish slavery. He lived to become a missionary, the patron saint of this month. His thorn held his calling.

Abuse, accident or illness - all are painful thorns that signal destiny is afoot. Surviving the wound of the thorn enables one to help others survive the same - to make use of the unintended gift that the thorn gave when it pierced your life.

As our class concluded, our quite frozen group came upon a small hawthorn tree, its buds just beginning to swell with the splendor of the coming spring. The instructor reached up to point out its rather hefty thorns and noted that there would soon be hawthorn trees bred without thorns. What a shame.

Celtic Spring Stirs in the Ashes of Time

By C. Austin

Out my window I see white. A wintry white sky fuses with the pallid earth in the field beyond my home. It is broken only by the dull, dirty outlines of houses and the grey reaching of trees. Even the evergreens seem dreary and burdened. The world feels ashen.

To those who appreciate the diverse tribes of peoples that came to be known as "Celts," fire is a vital element. In October, at year's end, the great Samhain bonfire burned beyond the pale, blending seasons and years, the living and the dead, that which we see, and that which we resist seeing.

The fire blazed brightly, consuming the debris of our lives until it slowly died, leaving embers that were stingy with their heat until they too went cold, giving up only ashes.

As ashes can no longer burn, they are free from anxiety and passion. Taking themselves lightly, ashes are slight and mobile -- but they are empty and at an end.

Some who have suffered a great conflagration take comfort in the ashes, it is a relief not to feel. Others live in ashes and never notice they were hollowed, "burned out", some years before. The ashes are a fine location to endlessly rue circumstance, but they are a place and a season that is winter cold.

The Samhain fire that left this footprint of ash also lifted prayers upward in its smoke. Prayers for continuance, for help and for hope. From the ash now stirs the answer to those prayers in the form of the fire-carrying underworld goddess Brigit.

Brigit, muse of poet, healer and artisan, ascends from her underworld forge to our world on February 1. We call that day "Imbolg," and it marks the first day of the Celtic spring.

A maiden goddess, Brigit brings the energy of a world to come -- inspiring us to create each of our days anew. A tireless goddess, she works the ashes of the world into rich, black soil, allowing seed and soul to take root. An enduring goddess, Bright spans history as St. Brigid, remaining as constant for us as she did for those who toiled the land before the Celts.

Rising from the underworld, Brigit is a goddess of soot -- of the dark residue of life. She is the protector of the everyday hearth, of those who sift ashes. Unlike the crone Cailleach who ushers the world into darkness, Brigit shepherds us out of the winter and into the light of a life that has once again changed, for good and forever.

May Brigit give blessing
To the souls that are here

Soul's Quest Found in the Light of Winter Solstice

By C. Austin

Uncle, what ails thee?
-- Parzival to the Grail King, Anfortas

From the darkest of days comes a dawn. With the winter solstice at 4:23 PM PST on December 21, the sun leaves off its southern journey to return north, reborn again to our thoughts and to our landscape.

With the shifting tide of December comes the season of festivals, most of which owe their origin to the winter solstice. Our cultural imprint lays heavily on most this season. Elevated expectations are oftentimes accompanied by deeper disappointments. Even amidst the packaging, loneliness and alienation are harder to hide during the holiday season. Though it tis' the season, compassion is too often in short order.

In the late 1100's, a French poet by the name of Chretien de Troyes set a story to paper. Part legend, parts fairy-tale and romance, it chronicles the quest for a mystical wonder object, much like the Philosophers Stone, that can heal a king and his kingdom that has been laid to waste. The story was called Perceval, the Story of the Grail.

Chretien adapted his poem from a document given to him by his patron Philip, Count of Flanders. Chretien passed away before finishing his text and numerous adaptations of the story were written in the years following, including Parzival by Wolfram Von Eschenbach. Chretian himself stated the Grail legend was the "best of tales," told at court. The poem is a Christianized narrative with influences that include Celtic and Welsh mythology, Eastern symbolism and ritual as well as archaic vegetative cult practices.

Much like a Celtic sojourn into the Otherworld, the Grail legend tells of adventure, peril and opportunity missed. It has the quality of a dream about it. Characters and oddities come to the fore and recede. Quizzical apparitions appear to beg recognition and are disclaimed. At the heart of it is the challenge to Perceval, a knight of "conspicuous excellence," to ask a particular question when he meets the Grail king.

Like other Celtic kings, the Grail king is symbolically married to the feminine image of the land. It is through union of the masculine spirit with the feminine landscape, or matter, that fertility of the land is assured. In this story, the old Grail king is maimed - masculine spirit has failed. The feminine landscape, thus abandoned, lies in devastation.

Enter the young hero Perceval. Perceval brings sun-consciousness, the bright masculine spirit that quests. Although he is surrounded by suffering, on his first encounter with the Grail and the maimed Grail king, he fails to ask what is wrong. Like so many, he sees the pain of another, but cannot respond to it. He is turned away from the castle and the suffering continues.

On his second encounter in the Grail castle, Perceval personifies a mature sense of discernment. He witnesses the painful situation before him and asks what ails the Grail king. In that single ripe moment, Perceval is able to make conscious the silent suffering that surrounds him. When he takes the anguish of another to heart, his voice gives form to the right question.

The compassionate question witnesses the wound and renders the king whole. As the Grail king's suffering becomes visible, the king is once again enspirited and disembodied meaning finds its home. The maimed king springs up healed.

It is not just the king who heals - the landscape is green once again. The king's spirit is revived and reunion with the landscape is possible. Perceval's empathetic question returns vigor to the wintry wasteland, sun consciousness brings rebirth - at the same moment that the winter solstice renews the promise of the coming spring.

It is destiny that the old king, the aged solar year steps aside. The young sun hero Perceval steps up to take his place as the guardian of the Grail. But in some versions of the Grail legend, there is one task remaining for Perceval.

Perceval has a half-brother, Feirefiz, who is strangely coloured black and white. Before Perceval may take up the kingship of the waxing year he must fight the heathen Feirefiz. Feirefiz's colouring of black and white marks this as a dual of the dark half of the year with the light half.

And indeed Perceval, the ascending Oak King, victors over Feirefiz, the Holly King, ruler of the dark waning year. But Perceval does not subjugate his brother, he establishes a relationship with him. Thus, opposites are held in a fruitful relationship, their energies fueling the turning of the year's wheel.

The Grail story is a legend of return, of the inner journey and the birth of light from dark nature. The quest lives on. The Grail is not an artifact of church or community but the rich container of each person's destiny. It still calls to individuals of true heart.

We can each be a hero, in this or any other season. When you sense the suffering of another, or when someone has made a mistake - bring their suffering to light, not to accuse, but to witness, to share and to thoughtfully ask "what ails you?"

Chaos of Samhain Transforms the Celtic Soul

By C. Austin

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
-- Nietzsche

With November come the shadows. From October's eroding edge we have descended into the season of Samhain, the realm of chaos, the darkness at the beginning.

Before darkness was consigned to hell, it was fertile. In many creation myths and in the worldview of the Celts, darkness is the original form. It is rich, unbounded chaos that gives birth to order. Recognizing that darkness begets light, the Celts began their day at twilight and their year in November with winter preceding summer.

In our era, light trumps darkness. We pour such light into the dark that the stars fade and creatures of the night lose their bearings. We have no season or festival that recognizes darkness, only winter, when nature goes to "sleep." Chaos is for those without goals, money, the proper citizenship, or enough sense. But chaos, like nature, does not simply go to sleep, it goes underground.

The underground is an interesting place, although virtually no one willingly goes there. It is the place where things rot, putrefy and, of course, crap flows downhill, so you have that as well. We are clean people. We have white teeth and pure souls, so our soiled thoughts and checkered secrets have to crumble their way down too.

Few of us deal with the large secrets of our lives during daylight. The large secrets are the things you couldn't help, they just happened. History created a wound so deep that your life, almost imperceptibly, orbits slowly around it year after year.

Perhaps you weren't heard, or weren't held, and thus life became a sifting for words, for pieces of soul and a safe place to put them. Perhaps you were never seen, which caused you to grow big and colourful to hide your invisibility. Or the damage was so hot and loud that you still seek its embrace later in life. Decorated loneliness, carrying water in a sieve - it is your essence, for better or worse. It is authentic and it is dark.

The alchemists called this essence the "prima materia," the original material. Alchemy is a system for observing substances and their differences as well as their relationships with each other. Aristotle called the prima materia, "something that isn't there," because it is unrefined and because its potential lies within itself, to emerge rather than be imposed. The shadowy prima materia is also known as the radix ipsius or the "root of itself" for the same reason - its form lies within and requires a growth process to develop it.

Though arcane, alchemy yielded invaluable insights into scientific and psychological processes. Alchemists such as Sir Isaac Newton had an enormous influence on science and the arts. Of all alchemical ideas though, none is more famous than that of the "lapis philosophorum" or the Philosopher's Stone.

Enigmatic and known by many names, the Philosopher's Stone can "dispel all corruption, heal all disease and bestow youth and wisdom." It is a "stone that is not a stone," and it can be as treacherous as it is miraculous. The Philosopher's Stone is brilliant, exalted and divine and it can only be fashioned from that very dark stuff, the prima materia.

Like the Celts, alchemists believe in darkness at the beginning. They call it "nigredo," the black chaos in which the "old, outmoded state of being is killed and dissolved into the original substance of creation, the prima materia." Nature can only restore itself after first dying away and we are no different.

Depression, alcoholism, job loss, illness, divorce - these are all disturbingly common harbingers of nigredo. Like the winds of November, tossing off what leaves remain, chaos supplies the disorder needed to break down our defenses. And that is what is needed - a dissolution of order - of the old rules and deceptions that keep us, again and again, from seeing our original wound. Psychologist Carl Jung noted "All error in the art arises because men do not begin with the proper substance."

Nigredo carries with it the opportunity to understand that disarray and our own vulnerability are at least as valuable as order. But in its role as the universal solvent, chaos also brings seemingly unending pain, fear and bitterest disappointment. It is the "nox profunda," the profound night, and from it, the prima materia begins to take form.

To the alchemists, the prima materia is both a physical and psychological substance. It is the matter from which everything is created. The first forms to rise from the prima materia are the four elements, water, fire, air and earth. Each of these carries an alchemical property of another element within it. For example, both air and fire can share heat.

Like factions of the human mind, the four elements are eternally warring with each other, overcoming, taking priority and then receding. But it is the fifth element, the prima materia, that flows through them all. That part of ourselves we seek to conceal, to forget and that we cast into darkness - the piece that we must navigate chaos to recover - is the very part that can turn our grey, leaden lives into gold.

In the heat and pressure of the alchemical process, the elements, like our most cherished misconceptions, begin to lose their identity. Upon release from their rigid form, they sense the similarities among themselves and rotate to take on the attributes of those elements to which they were formerly most opposed. That which is reviled is loved, that which is trapped is finally released.

In Alchemic, Buddhist, Celtic and other belief systems, the point where four territories unite is the area of divine chaos. It is a churning wheel where original material is ceaselessly being reborn, burned away and born again. It is the Tao, the course of things and perpetual change. It is universality - the lowly prima materia transformed into the Philosopher's Stone, a vast nothing that is everything, "a stone that is not a stone."

On a hill called Uisneach in County Westmeath, Ireland, lays another stone. It is a limestone boulder called Aill na Mireann, the "Stone of Divisions," named so because it marks the mythological centre where the four divided provinces of Ireland unite.

From our world into the next Aill na Mireann stands at the door. Where some find chaos, others find grace. The darkness of November reestablishes order. To the Celts, who so richly understood the joys and sorrows of life and the value of that renewing darkness, it is the end and the beginning.

I now know that in the beginning, chaos was ignited by an immense burst of laughter.
-- Rene Daumal

Lines of Everyday Life Dissolve in the Season of Samhain

By C. Austin

It occurs to me that a scream is an echo, a sliver from the abyss. Its sound fractures lines into thin air. It is not only the sound, but the lines that terrify us, reminding us the borderland of chaos is not as far away as we might like.

There are lines that alarm and lines that don't and both are ubiquitous in our world. Lines between boxes on medical history forms, lines at the gas station, lines on an aging face and lines between friends that are better not to cross.

There are larger lines too, boundaries between night and day, the living and the dead, the past, the present and beyond. Even now we approach the boundary between this year and the next, the Celtic festival of Samhain on October 31.

There is an alchemical dictum that reads in part, "All that is above, Also is below." So it is between the parallel lines of nature and the human psyche. Above, the bright growing season fades and the year and the leaves grow restless, knowing as they do that change must occur. Below, our ideas, our relationships and our societal confidence fade and we grow restless, knowing as we do that change must occur.

Finding connectedness within ourselves and the world around us is the art of finding and feeling the lines. Deep within the living earth change is omnipresent. Slow pressure and movement alter the subterranean earth over great geologic time. Much like human consciousness, motion is unseen from above until the tension from below is too great and cracks onto the surface in a fault line.

According to Celtic tradition, the ability to discern where seemingly unrelated factors meet - where the lines are drawn - is the gift of the seer. And the lines of the greatest interest are always those with no width, the thin ones, where the water meets the shore, where one year ends and another begins or where a disagreement becomes so entrenched that there is not a hair's breadth for movement.

These are the "spaceless places" of Celtic myth where incursions from the vital, yet volatile, energy of the Otherworld are most likely to occur. To be "on the brink" or "over the edge" is to risk meeting the Other, for it is on the edges that much of the vivid movement of life takes place.

Even in the quiet moments, with the decisions that form the outline of our daily lives, change does not usually come until a certain unease has been felt, when lines become visible and a choice must be made. We are, in general, creatures of response.

Each Celtic season divides not only the calendar year, but cycles of human existence. At Imbolg we return, at Beltaine we grow, at Lughnasadh we descend and at Samhain, we transform.

At Samhain, the united tension of the passing season sweeps in the night of a new year - a feral reminder of the necessity of change. It rips at the edges of our most secret and sometimes disturbing thoughts. The distinct lines between possible and impossible dim and the view of our orderly lives and selves becomes unsettled in the growing darkness.

Along the edges we traipse, above the abyss in our thin coated lines. As above, so below, was it a scream you heard or a song?

Spirit of the Growing Year Goes to Ground

By C. Austin

It starts in August, sometimes late July. Something in the atmosphere changes and you comment to the store clerk "It felt like Fall today." It could have been a cool breeze, it might have been a particular clarity in the air. But almost everyone intuitively understands when it "feels like Fall."

The Celtic autumn began at Lughnasadh on August 1. Our autumnal season is marked by the equinox on September 23, this year at 9:04 PM PDT. Summer is drifting into memory. Time is returning us once more to ground, to the element from which we rise and upon which we fall - earth.

The elements of water, air and fire exhibit changeable qualities such as fluidity, creative inspiration and divine mediation. But the earth is substantive, it is matter. Because we too, are physically made of matter, our relationship with this element is intimate in several ways.

Of the traditional elements, earth is the most tangible and immediate. It is the soil, the planet upon which we live, where we make our homes and where we turn for resources.

Earth is also a profound symbol. It is the terrain of original divinity and it is the external arena of the psyche. It runs a seamless path through our consciousness that few notice in the day-to-day.

For the better part of history, humans lived in close relationship with the earth. From the time of early humans, the Great Mother was the living landscape. Her bones were the stones, her lifeblood the rivers, her form found in the hills and mountains. She gave and nurtured all life. In her dark aspect she guided that life to its conclusion, returning the soul safely to her underworld womb to be born again.

As tribes spread across her face, she multiplied and was known by many names. Earth goddesses are chthonic, they revel in the organic details of existence - of food, fertility, birth and death. Reflected in the waxing, full and waning moon, she was venerated by ancient societies.

By the Bronze Age and the advent of solar-worshipping peoples, the earth goddesses who had walked the earth for millennia were in decline. With the patriarchy came the ascent of divinity out of matter, from deep in the earth up into the air. Detached and transcendent gods came to live high on mountain tops. Later male deities, disposing of their physicality, rose even higher into the atmosphere, into "heaven" and the depths of the earth, once fertile and welcoming, became known as "hell."

This flight from an ensouled world brought about a split between spirit and matter. Masculine spirit became lofty, brilliant and objective, while feminine matter - the stuff of soul - became dark, subterranean and subjective. The natural balance and easy correspondence between the two was diminished. As a result, instead of an equal partner, earth - the feminine principle - was depersonalized, forced into servitude, and exploited.

In the imaginal world of the Celts, this essence of the landscape was never vanquished. In Ireland, a history of invasions and the arrival of foreign divinities did not weaken the reverence held for the soul of the place, the "anima-loci."

Divinity lives on in the many remaining Irish place-names - divinity that is emanant, residing in the stones, the hills and the rivers. Otherwordly beings still inhabit their brilliantly lit sidhe mounds deep in the earth. In a living landscape humans can find their nature - both within and without.

As an element, earth is enduring and stable, unlike the others that are more mecurial. It waits to take in what air, rain and fire can bring it and transforms those nutrients into new matter. Earth is the only element that can give birth. No wonder that the modern term for nature is "Mother Earth." Unlike the more variable attitudes of the other elements, such as the sanguine nature of air, earth is melancholic, its influence settles into deep memory.

But as an untended fire can be destructive, so also can too much elemental earth be stifling. Earth and air have a native equilibrium. Air (or spirit) prevents earth from being too weighty. Earth (or soul) prevents air from flying completely off. Each needs the qualities of the other. In a person or in a society that is predisposed to flightiness, to evasion, to detachment and logic without thoughtful meaning, there is too much spirit and not enough earth.

When earth and soul lose connection with spirit, they go underground, into shadow. Earth has a tendency to pull down, to sink life into matter. But when divided from spirit, matter slips into unconsciousness - too much earth and one can no longer feel the organic details of life. We cannot feel our motives or the pain in ourselves and others - soul is buried alive.

When we are thus "stuck," instead of tending to the "matter," we often attempt escape into the experience of air - elevation and distraction from our troubles - looking outward or upward to others for the remedy. We perpetuate the split between spirit and soul by believing that we can evade matter by detaching and ascending - much like the transcendent deities of two thousand years ago.

Far from the earth goddesses are we. Much of the food we eat is industrially produced, we have test tubes when needed for conception, the profound experience of giving birth is commonly drugged and even in death we flee from earthiness - burying our dead in chemicals and boxes guaranteed not to rust for eons.

To uncover soul one must sink spirit into matter. Matter is rich in texture and breathes slowly. Feel the weightiness and stability that come from being "grounded." Like the earth, we are made of matter - matter in which we joyfully reside or from which we seek to escape. The choice is ours.

As spiritual gardeners we must cultivate the earth on which we live and from which we draw sustenance - in our hearts, our communities and beyond on this small blue planet. We must dare to sink again, to return from the clouds and reenter the landscape. Exchange wild, disconnected neediness for meaningful hope and go to ground.

It is autumn. Let restlessness be the domain of the leaves. They fly off like our best ideas unfulfilled - bright, colourful and taken by the wind. With each year we sink deeper, to lie among the detritus - the mulch of the year, the decaying leaves that bring nutrient to the living earth.

Looking for Soul in a Peerless Summer Sky

By C. Austin

On a glorious summer day, I recently had the opportunity to visit a sculpture park. On my meander I came upon a contemporary bronze piece entitled "Column of the Free Spirit," by sculptor Richard Hunt. While the setting was lovely, I was struck by a particular view of the piece, set almost parallel with a receiving tower some distance away.

While I doubt that the receiving tower registered with many visitors, the space between the two figures spoke volumes to me. I suppose that is the way it is with art, and with sunny days, there it was. But then again, perhaps it wasn't.

The use of columns is as old as mankind itself. Phallic in nature, columns represent ascendancy, of vaulting spirit and divine logos. In the Neolithic era, vast primeval forests clothed the land. Thrusting upward to touch the heavens, these living columns offered shelter, food and inspiration to early humans. The post-holes of ceremonial sites from thousands of years ago offer up evidence of the ritual use of wooden columns before the use of hewn stone.

The Maypole tradition and its Solstice counterpart, the candy cane, are both rooted in the phallic column. Beyond the implications as a bringer-of-fertility, the column of the maypole is also the Tree of Life, whose broad branches spread as high and wide in our world as its roots spread below it. As the branches ever reach above, so they collect and synthesize light to feed the tree. As the roots ever spread in the darkness below, so also they provide stability to keep the tree balanced. Our world requires both.

Some early European monuments consisted simply of a column surmounted with a phallus. Called "hermai," they were named for Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods. Hermes, though forever depicted as a young, able man, was much older than the Greek pantheon of gods. Originally a god of the land, he (like the archaic Irish deity Crom Drubh) traveled both above and below ground, ensuring richness, not of pocket, but of herds and fertility.

The Roman counterpart to the Greek Hermes is the god Mercury. The Gaulish Mercury was virtually identical to the hero of the Tuatha De Danann, Lugh. Celebrated "inventor of all arts," patron of travelers and guardian of the roads, it is no wonder that early columns to Lugh/Mercury were found at crossroads and intersections, places - like the world tree - where upper, lower and middle worlds meet. Even today, Lugh, the bright god, is honored at the great harvest festival of Lughnasadh on August 1.

The cell tower, a paean to Mercury, speeds messages like winged Hermes through the air. Higher and higher reach the towers. Vast, lofty testaments to the human need to connect, to be free of space where one is solitary. Freedom to talk to anyone almost anytime. More words, higher ambitions, external grasping -- can you hear me? Is anyone there??

Columns once rose to celebrate, to venerate those gods who would guide our steps and thoughts, carry us through life richly. Those monuments once expressed the ascendancy of spirit, spirit that was well grounded in soul. Soul that is the Matter of life. Truly then, art did mimic nature.

Is the cell tower art? Does art, and thus now life, mimic technology? With little grounding, the sky-scraping tower requires guy wires to enable it to withstand the buffeting of life. It has the potential to carry more words, ever more meaningless, through the atmosphere. But who are we really trying to connect with, that is, before the battery goes dead?

Out, out and beyond, disconnected, spinning further from an ensouled life. The way out is in, of course, but that is the harder, less traveled road. Easier to blame someone else, go to sleep or make just one more phone call...

And the "Column of the Free Spirit?" It felt weighty to me, grounded in enormity but without lift. The "free spirit" atop the column seemed ragged, unable to take flight or whatever freedom it was actually being offered. But that might have just been me, on a sunny, eternal summer day.

Nature of the Soul Reflected in the Eyes of the World

By C. Austin

Do you ever look up? Not just a glance to decide about the umbrella, but a real look. What do you see? A treeline? Power lines, rooftops, birds, sun, sky? What about clouds -- will they bring rain or fine weather and do you even care?

The natural world and its many moods have always been of concern to humans. Throughout the world there were and remain rituals and practices that attempt to control the rain, sun and wind. Regular account was made of the solar cycle, including the observation of events such as the summer solstice in mid-June. People and objects that were considered to have influence over the weather were held in high esteem -- as the weather itself held the key to feast or famine.

Years ago, a farmer in northern Europe might have cast a practiced eye across the landscape to note the development of "squall of softness" and then prepare for poor weather. The puffy white cumulus clouds that tiptoe across the sky in spring provided the portent of fair weather for planting. Intuition and experience were the means by which the natural world was translated to those who lived close to the land.

Today, we know that the summer solstice will occur on June 21 at precisely 5:27 AM PDT (12:27 UT). If you're keen on the weather, you can consult a television radar map or weather broadcast. There are even weather radios that provide forecasts and statistics 24 hours a day. Satellites and technology have taken the place of the practiced eye and the consideration of the daily weather is, at most, the unremembered side note to another busy day. In our modern world - what of the intuition no longer needed? What can a cloudy sky mean to those who no longer live by the rain?

I do not yearn for a return to simpler "days of old." Life was harsh and to view those days sentimentally is a disservice to those who toiled endlessly to feed and protect their families and themselves. By living on the land, earlier people lived close to the abundance provided and the death meted out by their environment. Nature was reflected in their very existence. In Ireland, June, July and August were known as the "hungry" months as food was scarce before the crops came in.

Our lives are more complex, we generally do not live off the land. The landscape provides a pretty view, the scenery is part of a real estate package. Though a sunset may be beautiful we do not regularly take it to heart. But because our lives are not directly dependent on the rainfall, perhaps we have lost a gift that belongs to those whose lives are. "As without, so within" -- the nature that we do not know outside of ourselves is reflected in the nature that we do not know within ourselves.

So what of those clouds? What, besides releasing life-giving rain, can they do for you? Did you ever feel a grey sky echoed how you felt about life? That the sky cried when you did? That there just might be a fresh start for you on the horizon? Like time, the clouds in the sky are continually changing. There are very high, wispy clouds that curl into graceful patterns that seem to exist to dance. Middle clouds can signal a coming instability, things are not always what they seem. And low clouds can be both fair and entertaining or disguise and distort your landscape completely with vaporous fog. Life is like that.

In our daily lives and in the news, we regularly witness disregard for human nature. "As within, so without" -- the nature that we abuse within ourselves is reflected in the nature we abuse outside of ourselves. Studies suggest that pollution-driven global warming is causing ocean temperatures to rise, creating more intense tropical storms and hurricanes.

It is a long way from ancient rainmaking rituals to Irish farmers to hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. But the water that made up the clouds that filled the skies when dinosaurs were eating plants on the ground that became your front yard is the same water that is making up the clouds floating directly above your head at this moment. Nature, within and without is connected, across both time and space. To look beyond the hard grip of reality and see that connection is a gift and a responsibility that belongs to everyone.

Today I looked up and saw cumulus and stratus clouds -- a mixed sky. The sky seems as undecided as I feel. Life is like that. Fair but indecisive weather on the way, sweeping me and the seasons with it, like so many clouds across the sky.

Triplism Fuels Turning of Celtic Wheel to Beltaine

By C. Austin

And so I sit to tell a tale -- of three and three and three
How above, below and in between
Can come to mean just One.

On one particularly fine Beltaine morning many years ago, I slipped into this world. The sun was just rising and the magical dew of the first morn of May glistened in the grass as I took my first breath of air. With that breath I gained life, lost union and began my journey, as we all do, into a world of separateness and division.

Birth is the first of our three physical passages being followed by life and death. Within the human experience, we eventually recognize our body, our soul and our spirit. In our world, we reflect upon the cosmos, the earth and the waters. And, all the while, we try to remember (or forget) the past, live in the present and look forward to (or fear) the future. It is hard not to notice how often the aspect of three rises in our everyday lives.

This tendency of three, or triplism, was marked long ago by primitive mankind. Observation of the moon brought the earliest identifications with three. The moon could be seen growing, at full, and dying. When it did "die," it was invisible for approximately three days before reappearing. These phases came to represent the eternal cycle of renewal -- creation, preservation and conclusion.

Lunar observations are likely the origin of the first ideas about rebirth following death and the inclination in stories of descent for the goddess or god to disappear into the underworld for approximately three days (such as Jesus Christ).

In the moon we also find the source of the triple deities that populate the world's great mythologies and the early association with three as an Otherworldly or supernatural number. The first great triple deity was the Goddess herself, seen in the waxing of the moon as a maiden, at full as mother and waning into the crone, who dies to be reborn a maiden.

From these early beginnings, triplism flowered into mythology and folklore, taking its place in the Hindu trinity, the Buddhist Triratna, Celtic and later, Christian mythology among many others.

The Celtic tradition is rich with the multiplicity of three. The oral tradition of the Celts made use of the triad as a mnemonic device and its mythology is replete with triune deities such as the Dagda, Brigid, the Morrigna, Lug and Erui herself. The Celtic Mother Goddess shepherds the seasons of the year in her guises as Brigid, Danu and the Cailleach. Triplism is found in symbols such as the triskele, the pre-Celtic triple spiral as well as imagery and sculpture depicting three heads and sometimes three phalluses.

On the Hill of Tara in Ireland, the former kings of that time were required to wed the Goddess of the land before they ruled the realm. By creating relationship between Goddess, land and man, the fertility of the land was felt assured.

Perhaps one of the reasons the depiction or use of three (the triad, the triangle or triplism) was important was the actual image itself, other than what it visually represented. That is, simply by "being," the triple motif notified the viewer that they were entering ritual space or hearing a sacred story -- a symbolic road map for all cultures to follow. The power was held in the image itself, a cosmic "take notice here."

In our day, we tend to identify triplism with the number three. Looking only at folklore it is easy to find the value of accumulation -- three wishes, three princesses, three brothers, three horses of different colours, three fairies, three attempts, the three Fates and on and on. But it would be insufficient to consider the value of three as contained only in the effect of increase.

If one looks at characters from folklore, such as three brothers, or the depiction of a triple-headed deity, there is often a difference between each subject. That is, they are not three of the same thing. They exist in relationship to each other.

One brother may be crafty, another lazy, but the third will be the naŽïve, good-hearted fellow willing to take the counsel of insignificant creatures. Of three sculpted heads, one may look forward, one back, but one will probably look right at you.

While it is easy to identify with the "good" brother, or the forward looking head, perhaps part of the magic of three is its ability to shift. If there is a main aspect and two ciphers, perhaps the identity of the "main" character depends on which aspect our attention rests, representing its relationship to us in that single moment of our lives, before our perspective changes.

Embedded in the dynamic ability of three is also the ability of the third to reconcile. Creation, manifestation and dissolution are all features of the third. How many princes kissed their princesses without the intervention of an evil stepmother or a dark magician?

When was the last time life was going well for you (or so you thought) and along came a period of tension -- a difficult coworker, a lost job, difficulty at home or an injury that, in the end, actually turned your life in a better direction? Those "silver linings" and "blessings in disguise" are the third -- a reconciling function that transcends two seeming opposites, creating a middle ground where a new, more fitting attitude can be experienced. Exactly how long does anyone think the Garden of Eden would have been interesting without the snake?

The fabled Greek mathematician Pythagoras considered three as the "perfect" number, because it is All -- beginning, middle and end. While today we consider numbers as presenting quantitative data, early peoples also considered the qualities of numbers, that is, their archetypal meaning in relationship to their cosmos.

There is an ancient symbol referred to as a Vesica Piscis. It is an upright almond shape produced by the overlap of two intersecting circles. It was originally a symbol of the Great Goddess, the almond shape is the vulva which gives birth to the manifest world. It is now seen commonly on many automobiles as the "fish shape" that symbolizes Jesus Christ.

Two circles form the image, and they are the worlds of spirit and of matter. If they did not intersect they would represent only duality, forever side by side, never creating, possibly forever in opposition. But when they do intersect they produce the third, the common ground where both spirit and matter can become manifest in the flickering life of a human being.

Humankind is the indispensable third, without which the creative universe could never manifest into matter. The third is both within and without -- the world that we create as humanity, and the personal, the path that we walk by seeing that both worlds contribute to the life that we make for ourselves.

When we can, just for a moment, feel those three worlds together, then we realize that what we have called three is an illusion, it is One. Perhaps those that came before us realized that triplism notifies, multiplies and symbolizes a greater reality. Three paths to one Source.

And so, many years down the line, I come full circle. Beltaine itself is the Celtic festival of "re-union" and its birthplace is an Irish hill called Uisneach, a place of primordial unity. From my long ago Beltaine to that soon to come, I find that separateness and division is not the legacy of humankind, it is the illusion we must see through.

Compass of the Soul Found in Tales of Wonder and Peril

By C. Austin

Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it! For you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you. --D. H. Lawrence

It is grey. The sky is grey, the water lapping at my tiny, becalmed boat is grey and the fog in front of my eyes is so thick it is impossible to see where I am going. As to the fog behind--well, I didnŽÂ’t want to go back there anyway. I canŽÂ’t go back. When did everything lose its definition? And when, in this waking nightmare, did I lose my oars?

Every good story begins at an end. It may have been surprising - a lost job, illness or a sudden event. It may have been suspected, "irreconcilable differences," or the growing awareness that you have crumpled inside, despite an apparently "successful" life. But it is an end. All seasons end.

I wonder what time it is, or even what day? I cannot stand what I do anymore, there is nothing here for me. But how did I get here, what was it? Something that ended me here.

We call it a "midlife crises," or more thoughtfully stated, the "Middle Passage." We of the Age of Cynicism toss the term "midlife crises" lightly, along with jokes about office dalliances and fading vitality even as we look about the worn furniture of our own lives and wonder "is this all there is?"

The timing, midlife or later, doesnŽÂ’t really matter, the tide is upon you when the structure of the everyday - routine, people and objects - suddenly seem strange, grey and utterly disagreeable. The material world and your position in it seem to be dissolving and you wonder if you are going mad. Modern day living calls for therapy, something to fix us, patch it up and set us right.

Those of an earlier age called it something different. The Irish story that refers to a deep, oceanic voyage to the Otherworld is called an "immrama." These are the Celtic wonder tales in the western sea to mysterious strange islands. Some scholars believe these tales to be the remains of a "Celtic Book of the Dead," a navigational tool for the souls of those passing on. This may be so, but I believe that the immrama tales more importantly offer a compass for the souls of the living.

I thought I saw something or did I feel something? That is why I came this way. IŽÂ’m alone, even when IŽÂ’m surrounded by people. IŽÂ’ve got to get out of here. IŽÂ’ll make a break, start something new, anything to change how I feel.

The imram begins today, as it did a thousand years ago, with a day slightly different. Something divine beckons or throws us out -- an unseen turn of events, an affair or a quiet, unsettling voice that pushes us on.

Once adrift, like the heroes of old, we wonder what to do-- what power can we call down to rescue us from our growing estrangement from the mainland? Rather than face the disintegration of the end, we force false beginnings. We may try a new job, a new relationship, alcohol or therapy. We may set goals and enforce routines, anything to regain control and halt the grey fog that encroaches from all sides.

But the petty structure of the worldŽÂ’s illusions cannot hold against the rising of the dark oceanic swell of life. Thrash as we will, we are swept far beyond the pale, committed to the sea and the Otherworldly forces that govern it.

IŽÂ’m losing it. I feel like IŽÂ’m bumping into stumps and dark trees in the water. I canŽÂ’t see. Something is swimming down there, but itŽÂ’s dark, I canŽÂ’t see. I keep waiting but it is still dark, there is no dawn. No one is coming, IŽÂ’m lost. Somebody help me, please somebody help.

There is a reason that the midlife experience is called a "crises" or a "passage." It is a disorienting journey into death and disintegration. It is not a condition that can be resolved by an external action -- a divorce, a job plan, a holiday. It is an internal condition -- the requirement at midlife to finally meet oneŽÂ’s Self, the Other that carries the calling to which we were born. Before that fateful meeting can occur, however, the first life, the life built on childhood conditioning and expectations must die. Not change, not accommodate, not compromise -- die.

Dissolution is necessary to break up the old habits that govern our roles and behaviors. Room must be made for a new way of thinking, for change and a new identity.

To someone experiencing this dissolution, life can become emotionally and physically frightening. Thinking becomes spacious, disconnected and befuddled, tasks are not easily accomplished, external events occur that seem to be connected to oneŽÂ’s growing anxiety. The universe seems to be collapsing and with it, the tacit agreement with life that if one acts a certain way, that everything will turn out reasonably well.

We see in nature the very cycle we experience as humans. Despite the pretty colours and the crisp breeze, autumn marks the time of disintegration. Rarely do we respect autumn for what it actually is, the Fall - a spinning decomposition into darkness and death for all things that live. It is easy for me to write that an old identity must die, but it is painfully difficult to live it.

I give up, some part of me has died. IŽÂ’m nothing. If I donŽÂ’t move I canŽÂ’t be knocked down. IŽÂ’ll sit. IŽÂ’m safe if I sit. Paralyzed. IŽÂ’ll wait. Nothing will happen if I donŽÂ’t try anything. IŽÂ’m safe in the dark, no one can see me.

With the descent into winter, we go fallow. Like a caterpillar in its chrysalis we have literally dissolved into our own elements. As Robert Frost writes, one is "lost enough to find yourself."

When one is lost at sea, it is at the moment when one accepts that the oneŽÂ’s former life is irretrievably gone that the wind picks up every so slightly. With the acceptance of loss, oneŽÂ’s load becomes lighter and the currach floats more gently on the waves. All Otherworldly experiences are initiatory and our voyageur now begins the "lonely pioneering of the soul," responsible for navigating their own course through transition.

What was that!? It canŽÂ’t be, I dealt with that a long time ago, that has to be over. God help me, IŽÂ’m as scared now as I was when I was then, why did that happen to me? How is it possible that itŽÂ’s still here?? Why does it have to come back?

Because our traveler accepted the death of what was, he is no longer bogged down, anchored in one spot. He is more easily able to pilot the liminal ocean of the Otherworld.

Having surrendered physical and emotional integration, our voyageur begins to encounter the mysterious islands and fabled monsters that lie in the unconscious sea. Guided only by instinct now, each successive island visited will represent a place or a condition that has laid long forgotten in memory.

The more frightening of the monsters of the immrama tales are those events and fears that hold a special terror for our explorer, having been cast out to sea as long ago as childhood. One by one, the lonely coracle encounters these sometimes fearsome, sometimes friendly places. To some islands we go ashore, to some we wisely pass by. This is the task of this time of death, this time between dreams, to take a hard look at the dragons and set them and ourselves free.

To some voyageurs, as in the immrama tales, the islands will prove too tempting or too devastating and they will be wrecked forever on those shores, their journey abandoned. But to those who sail on, the paradoxical review of their own nature will show them who they were, who they no longer are and provide clues as to who they might become.

I can breathe out here. I canŽÂ’t see where IŽÂ’m going, but now that I think of it, it isnŽÂ’t really so bad. IŽÂ’m still kicking. I seem to be able to get around and thatŽÂ’s okay. It is so dark though, why canŽÂ’t it ever be light? It feels like there is a way though, it seems crazy, like thereŽÂ’s a path and I just have to follow it, like I already know what to do in some weird way, I just have to follow it.

No longer lonely, the solitary voyageur glides on. Eschewing social convention and rigid expectations, our traveler accepts instinct as the only true guide.

From her dark ocean journey, the voyageur will bring back insight to create, to act upon and to share with others. A new world will be found when it is time. Those who have made the passage will not turn back. They know the world they left no longer serves them and should they try, they, like Neachtan or Oisin, will crumble to dust.

Having traveled through the Fall and through deathly winter, the small boat broaches a new season, spring. The Celtic spring begins on Imbolg, February 2 and in this season all who have truly traveled the route of death will be reborn. Not reformed, not adjusted, but born again into a uniquely mysterious life that stretches before them. Every good story ends with a beginning and all seasons begin again.

The fog is thinning a bit, what is that? I can see a dim shoreline, looks like a different country. IŽÂ’ve made it somewhere. I can say no more of the adventure as IŽÂ’ve not heard it myself. But it looks like good ground underfoot and a sun somewhere above so IŽÂ’ve got to press on, into this strange, new land.

Midwinter Duel Transformed by Light of Solstice

By C. Austin

Almost too soon the winter festival season is upon us. On December 21 at 1:19 PM PST, the sun will reach its southernmost observable limit in our earthŽÂ’s annual orbit of that great star. Everything has its limits, even darkness.

"I donŽÂ’t have time to get that done," "I just canŽÂ’t take this anymore," "sorry, our resources are limited" -- there are few that donŽÂ’t experience the frustration of limitation on almost a daily basis. However, the greater limitation is of our own ability to take notice of the boundaries of our own scarce personal resources.

The Yule season is a particular time of year where limits can be easily strained. Not just financial assets, but more importantly, emotional and spiritual resources that become exhausted beyond their ability to regenerate themselves in a healthy way. Who has not experienced the fatigue of the Christmas or Yule season? Who hasnŽÂ’t been pushed beyond their limits by familial togetherness or too much loneliness?

Because these examples are more dramatic, they are easier to predict and perhaps prevent. But what of the quiet limitations of life, the ones that have become so chronic that they are not easily noticed?

Quiet limitations take the form of jobs, careers, or relationships long outworn, that are maintained simply because they are familiar. They take the form of exhaustion that becomes so common that it is simply overlooked as "just the way it is." They take the form of grief, lived for so long that it is mistaken for life.

Unlike the passages of our daily lives, seasonal festivals do not become timeworn. There is good reason why festivals occur on an annual basis -- we need the reminder of their messages to reorient and refresh ourselves at regular intervals through the year and throughout our lives. And the festival of the winter Solstice is no different.

As the saying goes, "it is darkest before the dawn." We are all on a path, some rushing headlong, some taking it slow, one day at a time. But inevitably the path becomes a rut and one finds oneself in the darkest of places. While it is easy to feel how one got there, it is not so easy to see how one will go on. The year, like our lives, winds itself down into this dark, quiet place in the underground or in a wild forest where the voices in your head can drive you mad.

And there you are. And there is no where else to go. The pushing beyond oneŽÂ’s own limits can be done no more. Change is upon you. The weakened Holly King lifts his arm in defense at the glinting sword of the Oak King. A deep understanding comes upon you as the battle rages. You must let go, you have got to let go, you must surrender to change. Feeling your growing resolve, the bright Oak King vanquishes his opponent.

Falling to his knees the Holly King cedes his energy and his reign to the winded, but still standing Oak King. The dawn has come, the dark energy has not been killed but transformed into a new way of being, a new solar year that may seem the same, but is so very different from the last.

The duel is over, the limits of the withering of the world and the psyche have been reached. A great battle ensued in its natural time, not according to the time we may or may not set aside to deal with our "personal issues." The inner and outer worlds are in accord. There was no slaughter, only recognition and transformation. The newborn sun, the new way, will grow nestled in an awakening world until it is able to shine forth over the vegetative year in coming months.

And in due time, that brilliant new light will itself yearn for darkness, for mystery and change and so again we will meet our Holly King in the midst of a beautiful summer day. But that time is not now. For now we try to feel where in our lives we have stayed too long and await the transformative light of the coming winter Solstice. May peace and health be yours through the coming seasons.