Pray to the moon when she is round
Luck with you will then abound
What you seek for shall be found
On the sea or on the ground
-Old prayer to the Moon
Stand atop Knockadoon, County Limerick, Ireland on any clear day. Quietly gather in what you can sense. The solar disk dances upon the dark waters of the lough below you. The wind whispers past your ears in a language that, for the briefest of moments, you remember that you once understood.
Wild geese, flying over Garret island honk at you once or twice as they arc over sets of low stone circles just below and to the south of where you stand on Kockadoon. Glancing to the west you realize you are almost on a direct sight line to Rannach Crom Dubh, the largest stone circle in Ireland. If you are looking carefully that day, just to the south of Rannach Crom Dubh your eyes will fall upon the Cloch a bhile, "The Stone of the Tree," a hoary moss-covered stone.
If you are lucky, you may experience an ineffable grandeur, a dizzying and stunning realization that you have become part of an ancient map, a map that is drawn in the soil, the trees and stones, wind and water, moon and sun. In that instant you can feel the flexible ligature that eternally binds the mortal world with Nature, the divine Cosmos. You have stepped into the world of your ancestors.
The pre-Celts and the Celtic people who followed them recognized the numinous forces of Nature. The greatest moment of their rituals marked the earthy, yet mythic, intersection of our mortal world with that of the cosmos. The landscape, the environment itself, was life giving to both the physical being and the soul.
The pre-Celts throughout the European continent were believed to have been a lunar-oriented people. The remnants of these long ago communities are found in rock art, remains of tree circles and settlements, and the lunar alignments of still standing megalithic monuments.
Later came the passage tombs and court tombs that remain to puzzle and intrigue us today. "It is difficult to separate their [court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs, wedge tombs] construction from some awareness of the influence of the sun in the people's lives" writes archeologist Laurence Flanagan.
Although the beliefs and practices of the pre- and proto-Celts are not clearly known by us, they can sometimes be felt in the deep undercurrent of Celtic mythology and the folklore that sustains it.
In the Irish sun we see the great goddess Aine. In the darkness of the soil and underworld we feel Crom Drubh, the "dark bent one," toiling to insure that grain and light push forth again from the soil and from our hearts in the spring. Bright Lugh nutures the golden grain as it grows toward harvest.
In the trees can be found the vegetative mystery of life. The mysterious and sometimes revered Druids are thought to take their name from the Greek "drui" meaning oak tree. The sacred alder tree holds sway until April 14 when the willow, the tree of enchantment, and the moon leads us to the great Beltaine fires of May Eve.
From the trees come the songs of birds, messengers with the ability to traverse the worlds and favoured as a symbol of master poets. The first cuckoo of spring brings tidings of good luck, the shriek of the screech owl in November portends winter. The birds of Rhiannon, the Children of Lir -- all hold their place in our hearts.
Our "modern" society habitually devalues the divinity that is inherent in the landscape. The land, the trees, the water, even the air, used and abused for its commerce and industry. Despite this, the spirit of the land awaits.
Our ancestors aligned themselves with Nature, invoking the primal forces that governed their lives. Through ritual and symbol they sought to bring balance to their world. So too can we.
Look around you. Breathe the air, marvel at the mystery of the tree that creates oxygen for you. Listen to the wind sighing in your ear, notice that the sun has set on another day. The moon is rising, she who has been called "the sun of the night, the light of the beautiful and the lamp of their fairies" by the druids. The numinous world of your ancestors is not lost. The map is before you: it is your Nature.