There is a certain reverie to the blending of seasons. Though our calendar points to June 21 as the official beginning of summer, the Celtic summer has by then already reached its midpoint. Spring into summer and the turning at the summer solstice toward autumn - conditions are always changing.
Weeks ago I cycled down a tree lined path on my way to somewhere. A flash of orange caught my eye and I stopped to glimpse a Baltimore Oriole, a brilliant bird of orange and black. As I watched the bird fly off, I noticed the sights and sounds of a nearby marshy space. Tadpoles scattered excitedly around reeds that poked up everywhere, bejeweled dragonflies hovered at a distance, glistening frogs of green and grey sat camouflaged in the sun, water pushed further back toward the trees and all of life seemed abuzz in the muck. It was an impressive display of creation for such a small vignette.
As I cycled the same area just a few days ago, I remembered the scene and slowed at the spot. To my surprise, the condition of the place had entirely changed. The warm weather that pushed though recently had dried up the watery melting pot that gave life to so many. The reeds were dried and broken, the water had receded to a few damp muddy spots and the frogs had disappeared. Life had contracted.
The conditions under which we live are not so different as those of the frog pond. There are seasons of moisture, of ideas, of change and the coming of new life. And there are brittle seasons, where moisture has receded and one retreats to a deeper place to wait for more favorable conditions. Sometimes the change in conditions is brought about by our own folly, more often it is not.
In the early Irish narrative tradition, the imposition of conditions, of gessa, was not uncommon. Gessa are the peculiar conditions and strange taboos that are laid upon demi-gods, kings and heroes by others, commonly women, sometimes a druid and oftentimes at birth. Gessa can be made for positive purposes, such as causing a man to elope with a woman -- but more often they were circuitous, enigmatic conditions such as those laid upon Conaire, a legendary high king of Ireland. A geis placed upon him warned that he "shalt not go right-handwise around Tara and left-handwise round Brega" and "three Reds shall not go before thee to the house of Red."
Possibly a geis had an institutional purpose. Some suggest a geis may have allowed a marginalized segment of society, such as women, to assert their rights based upon a "code of honour" that existed within society. This idea relates to the tradition of the banshee, the feminine spirit who warns of death. As the tradition goes, if a man out late came upon a banshee, he was well advised to be polite and move along. Those interfering with the banshee would likely meet their doom with little delay. In this way, a certain "code," was made known through the narrative -- it is not wise to be out late nor is it wise to accost and bother women. Violation of the code, just as with violation of the geis, almost certainly meant death.
The early Irish conventions of tabooing, satire and punning are complicated modes of communication. The taboo, or geis may be beyond rational explanation because we no longer have access to the mindset that produced (or even copied) the narratives. It is also possible that there is nothing "rational" about gessa. Perhaps the conditions placed upon these heroes and thus our ancestors were not so unlike the ambiguous and conflicting conditions that we all face from time to time.
Like the warm wind that dried up the frog pond, or a capricious turn of events such as a lost job or a troublesome co-worker or neighbor, a geis may have been an attempt to express something about ambiguous causes. "Why does this always happen to me?," "I'll never get a break," or "my life changed after that" -- all statements of sometimes frustrated wonder about that which we cannot control or even understand.
Although the geis, and sometimes the turn of events in our lives may seem fickle, it may be our perception that is problematic. By focusing upon the local, personal view, one misses the larger picture, the greater interconnected tapestry of which we all are a part. Writer Alwyn Rees pointed out, "the discovery of points where unrelated things coincide is one of the great arts of seers and magicians." The heroes of Irish myth and they who created them were part of a larger story, as are we.
Gazing at the now quiet frog pond, I thought it a loss. Upon closer view though, I noticed a pair of eyes in the mud -- still a frog here and there. Beyond that, small pools of water yet remained, almost hidden under the trees. Life was not finished here, only the conditions had changed. Though less expansive, life deepened, though less fluid, life adapted. Less visible but still present - waiting for the conditions to change, waiting for the next season of life.