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

Celtic Spirit Rides the Tide of the Universe

By C. Austin

The construction crane towers past the 7th floor hospital room window from which I look. From this corner room I can see construction on all sides. Despite the bleak economic conditions of this city, here is a place of vigorous building.

Inside the window is a quiet room punctuated only by the sound of my son breathing lightly on a hospital bed two feet away.

With machines that deliver IV fluids and log vital signs, sliding curtains and plastic bagged medical supplies, I find little Celtic "spirit," to calm me. The wind is locked out, I'm floors off the ground and there is no artifact of my home or heritage to be found here, save what is in my heart and on the bed in front of me.

Anyone who can recall the sudden hospitalization of a loved one will remember the surreal habitat of an emergency room - the questions, the fatigue, the speculation, more waiting.

Like the word "emerge," the word "emergency" derives from the Latin "emergere" to "rise out or up," and "mergere" (merge) meaning to "dip, plunge or sink." There is motion in the word emerge - a rising and falling. The word contains the energy to create out of itself. In the case of "emergency," there is both rise and fall and its meaning "unforeseen occurrence" makes good, albeit disturbing, sense.

There is a note on my refrigerator that reads that Celtic people have "an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains them through temporary periods of joy." Though it is no better than a bumper sticker slogan, its message has always resonated with me.

To feel the tragedy and joy of life in the same moment is the curious ability to view two sides of the coin of life at once. Those who can be mindful of joy in times of sorrow and those that can feel the play of mortality even in life's lightest moments are a step away from the mainstream.

Sigmund Freud once said of the Irish that "[t]his is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." There is a certain kind of disassociation in being able to ride the tides of the universe - letting the kite string out and away while the body travels a dusty path. That melancholic swaying through life is the legacy of Celtic peoples. Sometimes that ability to sense vast swings of experience proves too much - and the soul is cast adrift, careering from one end of the spectrum to the other. But the soul that can navigate those tides will find the gift of emergence in the forms and patterns that become visible in unlikely moments.

It is that penetrating flexibility and vision that holds me now. In the emergency room I watched the fall and rise of energy that answered my son's need for help. In the hours that passed, information and thoughts became visible and receded. Decisions I made were based on the convergence of that which had gathered around me - people, information - the flow of things.

I marveled at the perfect arrangement of things unknowable that made the best possible situation for my son. There was an ever present feeling that the whole of the story had been told, I just had to follow the unseen path to the right conclusion, the stumbling of humans against the background of a greater story.

At the conclusion of surgery, it had gone well. Yes, it was appendicitis, yes, that appendix had burst - it was fortuitous that no further time had been lost in stopping the spread of toxins into his body.

My job wasn't to do - it was to see - to see the whole of what was playing out through the magnificent arrangement of the individual parts and players. It wasn't for me to be trapped in the role I play in life, but to sense the moving energy and hold it long enough to help another living thing, which in this case, was my son.

That is the gift that I hold close now in this room far above the ground. It is the middle of the night now, the panoramic city lights glitter through the window, far beyond this episode, which will become smaller in memory as the days pass by.

And the view? Young buildings are rising to the sky, older buildings fade from view. Though the older sections of town are lovely, the future belongs to that which is emerging, scaffolding its way into our world, through the events of our lives and the lives of those we love - through the "unforeseen occurrences" that happily and unhappily sometimes bring a greater perspective into view.

St. Patrick's Day Renews Spirit of Return

By C. Austin

The tides of March are upon us once again. The vernal equinox will tilt our world toward spring at 11:50 PM PDT on March 19. The celebration of St. Patrick's Day, equinox and Easter combine this month to bring us a hearty reminder of renewal and return.

St. Patrick's Day on March 17 is a festival of all things Irish. Though named for a man named Patrick who led a Christian mission to Ireland in about 450 AD, St. Patrick's Day in our time has much to do with the tenacity of the Irish spirit and the appeal of Irish culture.

In 1845 a highly infectious, fungus-like pathogen called Phytophthora infestans (commonly known as "Late Blight") changed the course of Irish history. In the mid-1800's Ireland was a generally poor country that supported a population of about eight million, one-third of which was either entirely or significantly dependent on the cultivation of potatoes as a staple food. By 1901, after the Famine era, the population had fallen to four million.

The crop failure that occurred during 1845 coincided with a period of Irish population growth as well as economic stagnation. The potato failure of 1845 should not have had a lasting effect on Ireland. However, the lack of effective intervention by Irish landlords, merchants and most importantly, the British government, transformed the crop failure of 1845 into a famine known as An Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger).

Successive crop failures between 1845 and 1851 and an inability or unwillingness to provide assistance to the poor and destitute brought unimaginable pain, disease or death to over two million souls who fled into Ireland's underworld arms or sailed beyond the ninth wave to find a new life in countries such as America and Canada. Tragically, many of those seeking to escape the famine died on disease-ridden vessels known as "coffin ships."

Ironically, the pathogen that caused the potato famine itself came from the America's (central Mexico) and traveled across the Atlantic to Belgium where it began its deadly devastation of European potato fields in 1843. The ravages of poverty, pestilence and politics permanently changed the lives of those who call themselves Irish.

Millions of people fled Ireland's broken hearth during and in the years following the Great Hunger. Carrying their culture and their connectedness with them, these immigrants took up residence all over the world. The fortune, political clout and identity forged by these immigrant populations abroad has served to sustain their ties with Ireland. Whether or not the descendents of these immigrant families ever physically returned to Ireland is not of consequence. As Ireland turns, so turn her people, wherever they live.

Despite the sentimentality of the occasion, it is telling that on March 17 of each year, "all the world is Irish" - there are no celebrations of similar magnitude of other immigrant populations. With no geographic borders the Irish psyche remains connected over boundless space and time.

March is indeed a time of return - the return of thoughts to the man Patrick who bravely carried out his Irish mission despite great hardship. For many, so also returns faith - in a mythological saint who assailed the creatures and characters of another time to bring monotheism to Ireland. But to all of those living beyond Ireland, to the descendents of the Irish Diaspora, our thoughts of admiration, courage and appreciation return to those who are responsible for the lives we lead and the character that we can call our own.

Spring is again with us - may the sun shine warmly in your heart and inspire the creativity of the next new season of our lives.

Creation Found in the Winds of Spring

By C. Austin

February has arrived and with it the Celtic spring on Imbolg, February 1. Winter is not quite so bitter, the storms not quite so lasting. The spirit of the growing year plays about the branches and the bare ground where a crocus might soon appear.

In days long passed, there were February festivals of spring - of purification and renewal - that insured the vestiges of the old year were swept away and that new energy would bring renewed abundance and fortune.

Among these festivals were Lupercalia, St. Valentine's Day and of course, St. Brigid's Day and Imbolg, known too as Candlemas and Oimelic.

To populations dependent upon agriculture and livestock, the return of the greening spirit to the world was of vital importance. From February into March, winter's grip lessens in northern Europe and it was a time of lambing and an availability of milk.

The corn dollies of Brigit were clothed and left near the household hearth on Imbolg eve that she might bring fortune and health in the coming year. With her dark, underworld origin, the smithy Brigit is an archaic deity, but her generative qualities are equally expressed wearing the halo of St. Brigid.

While we can appreciate the concerns our forebears had for the renewal of their lives and fields, I wonder how many reading this article noticed Imbolg at all? Surely some did, but February first might also have been the domain of a large sigh that time is passing quickly and that happily the winter is too. But is the springtime just a lovely turn of the season or does it stir thoughts as to how creation is expressed in your life?

Humans have long sought to explain their physical existence and the cycle of creation that attends life. Some of the greatest of stories are those that explain how we came into being. Genesis, the myths of the Rig Veda and Hesiod's Theogany tell us how light and matter formed, appeared or crossed out of darkness.

For the Irish, in the beginning there was...or perhaps there wasn't. Unlike most ethnic groups or influential tribes, the Irish Celts and the Celts in general, have no myth of creation. The 11th century text, the Lebor Gabala Erenn (known as the "Book of Invasions" or "The Book of the Taking of Ireland") is a pseudo-history of the origin of the Irish race. While the book is a combination of Judeo-Christian theology, medieval history and revisionism, it is considered to contain some valid pre-Christian content.

As Ireland is historically considered to have been settled by gradual migration, it is believed that the succession of invasions cataloged in the Lebor Gabala Erenn may parallel the waves of immigration that came to represent the Irish people.

Here lies some agreement between history and mythology - that the psyche of the Irish people came into being over time, not abruptly, but out of movement - a continuous crossing over from one form to another that continues to present day. The lengthy record of Ireland is one of process.

Today, the domain of creation has shifted from the theologian to the scientist. The divine has fled the cathedral and can now be found, some say, in the serotonin receptors of the human brain or in the inflation of dark matter in an ever expanding universe.

Science is a vast field in which to look for beginnings, especially if what we are interested in is something that speaks personally, to the shifts, starts and stops of everyday life.

But from science comes the idea of a "participatory universe," advanced by physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr - that we set up the conditions for the information we will derive from the methods of observation that we use. Another physicist by the name of John Wheeler commented on their finding noting that "so the old word 'observer' simply has to be crossed off the books, and we must put in the new word 'participator' (let me be clear that use of these observations is purely metaphorical and not meant to translate important scientific theories into metaphysics)."

The idea that we are all participants in the world we are creating is a far cry from the commonly held thought that life is impersonally and mechanistically done to us, that destiny is outside of us. It recalls those days long past, when periodic renewal of the bond between human and divine was paramount.

Life is a participatory process. Like the continuous crossing and migration of populations, so ideas rise, change form and carry on. Just as our forebears purified their space to make way for new energy, so we must "spring clean" - dispose of old thoughts and arrangements that take too much from us.

Just as they performed rituals to welcome the energy of life, let us be reminded that the way that we welcome and use our thoughts creates our day-to-day life and subtly contributes to the greater world in which we live.

Just as the mythologic period of time, "a year and a day," stands for eternity, so inside each of us is held the universe - waiting to cross that threshold from darkness into light, waiting for creation.

The beginning of time is as it always was, a divine exhalation into a mortal world. With every breath comes a chance for a new beginning, a different thought, an altered outcome. Change, like springtime, is always just around the corner.

Finding Light in a Season of Darkness

By C. Austin

On a recent evening I watched the moon. It was beautiful- clear and full and fast against the mountainous clouds of night. It was younger than me then, but the cycle of time will see its brightness wane. So too our star, the sun, has waned from our northerly view in the past six months and that loss of light has cooled and darkened our landscape.

The winter solstice can be observed this year at 10:09 PM, PST on December 21. The winter solstice occurs at the moment that the sun reaches the southernmost observable limit of its journey across the earth's sky.

The commemoration of the winter solstice stretches long into human prehistory. As befits a moment that gave birth to several of the world's religions, the solstice carries great truth. In an instant, darkness finds its fullest memory while simultaneously light, weak but present, returns to the world. It is the journey - both end and beginning - that is held in that eternal moment, duality is vanquished as two become one.

The mythologic expression of the solstice is found in the symbolic conflict of the Holly and the Oak King and the quest for the Holy Grail. Both of these traditions call for the recognition of darkness before light can once again find its place. Indeed, at winter solstice the sun, consciousness itself, turns back to rediscover its path, made new again by a light unique only to this cycle.

For us too, there comes a time when a limit is reached and to go forward, we must turn back to retrieve vital fragments, pieces that were dropped long ago. Like the newly reborn sun, we return to the dark paths of our lifetimes. Only this time, we can use the strength of new consciousness to perceive the distant figures that formed our past and to illume the dim figures that present our future. It is a queer light to be sure - but it is in that strange, growing light that pieces are found, perception is altered and life is genuinely created anew come spring.

And as that perception unfolds, we come upon the insight that it isn't just the sun - solar consciousness - that has made the great journey. It is us - we of earth and matter. It is the earth too that has reached a turning point in its annual trip around the sun - we who have walked patiently into darkness to find the light. We so often see daily life, with its drama or sunny props, as something that happens to us. When in truth, all of life is our own inner script cast upon nature, so that we may encounter it physically in a world outside of ourselves.

This is a time of light in the darkness. May you find peace and may its vision hold you throughout the year. Blessings of the solstice to all.

November Wind Blows In Hungry Ghosts

By C. Austin

The sun is shining and the clouds rove the sky with a vigor that speaks little of summer's long gone pleasantries. Sunny in this moment, cloudy the next. Moving almost as fast as the seasons themselves, once it was summer and now it is not. Time, and clouds it would seem, wait for no one.

It is the season of phantoms - all those for whom time has moved ceaselessly on. For our own part, we measure time as the mechanical repetition and accumulation of cycles - night and day, 24 hours, a week, a month, a year - a life.

The tribes we call "Celtic" seem to have measured their time as beginning with the night. Their year began in the darkness of winter on November 1. But their time was also attached to place - to the landscape on which their lives transpired, where their crops, cattle and children grew, and where, like the growing season, they died back to the ground. The year itself revolved, like a pilgrimage, around various stations of life, death, renewal, birth, planting, harvest, the hearth. On a greater scale, authors such as Michael Dames have suggested that the Irish year rotated around features and sites in the landscape such as Cnoc Aine and the Hill of Tara as seen from alignments on the central hill of Uisneach.

It is to the landscape, the terrain where the energy of life is spent, that the ghosts of the season return. The rituals of Samhain call for the respectful and welcoming treatment of flickering ghosts, to curry favor and luck from them in the coming year. Phantoms are those who are literally "out of time." Like all creatures of the Otherworld, the space they occupy is infinite, their time is irrelevant.

But we are not creatures of the Otherworld, neither our space nor our time is infinite. Yet we have ghosts. Ghosts whose time is long past, but who yet reside in our present. They wait for us in the dark, in our memories, in our relationships and they scare us at the most unexpected moments. Theirs is the energy that was cast away, that even time couldn't burn off - the fear, the grief, the horror. They might be something that was done, they might be something left undone, they flit, they hide and they suck your breath away when you recognize them. They reside in the landscape where they spent the most time - in your mind and in your body. And no amount of repetitive cycles of days or months or years will make them go away.

They are the hungry ghosts and this is their season. If you are unlucky and don't give them their due, they'll stay with you throughout all your seasons. But though they be specters they, like all of us, seek only return. They too appreciate a warmly lit room, a heart with space to feel the pain, their memory. Darkness has its place, but it is a hard place to spend forever. Despite their dread look, recognize that light in their eyes - it is yours, after all.

Once it was summer, now it is not. Our time continues to turn. We have darkness and a difficult world around us. Draw close, hold friends and family dear, and spare some warmth and compassion for the ghosts that gather at your door.

Autumn Blows Away in the Winds of Samhain

By C. Austin

Though the sun remains bright, the wind is picking up. The season, time itself, blows likes leaves through our hands. On Oidche Shamhna, the night of Samhain, we once again peer through the frame at our own dark nature.

Samhain, on October 31, marks the end of the Celtic year. Most people are unaware that the trick-or-treat, witches, mayhem, costuming and pumpkins of Halloween are vestiges of this great festival. But like so many things Celtic, Samhain has evolved to suit and to survive in our society.

Perhaps one of the reasons Halloween remains on our calendar is because of the pull of Samhain – the call to darkness, the shiver of mortality on an otherwise fine autumn night.

Samhain stands as a threshold - the year and the autumnal season fade into history at dusk on October 31. By dawn of November 1, winter and the New Year have arrived. On that threshold we can rest while all that is before and behind swirls out of our reach.

Though the essence of Samhain is chaos, that chaos is not entirely unbounded. The festival of Samhain is the frame through which we can recognize and honour disintegration. Like looking through a holed stone our attention gradually becomes focused on the Other, on the weirdness of the dark season. We can look out at dissolution, we can look in on our own confusion, but we will not fly apart, held safely in the frame. A fractured world can be traversed, a broken heart healed when it is viewed through a window that will not break.

In the old world it was the holed stone, “An cloc cosanta” or “luck stone” through which some sought a safe glimpse of the Otherworld. The natural world abounds in frames – be they of trees, shorelines or the hollowed stone arches where Nature holds her own space. In our culture, those frames are often built with a therapist or with family or a good friend – anywhere one can go to set for awhile and safely experience the chaos within and beyond.

Samhain is rich in its antiquity, in its darkness and even in its hope. Through it one can renew ties to loved ones departed and in turn, be seen and held by the divine light of the Samhain bonfire. Whether as a community or as an individual, as long as we recognize the need for change and the disorder it brings, there will always be a light in the darkness. May peace and health be yours in the New Year.

The Tides of Summer Swirl into Autumn

By C. Austin

Like many, I took a summer holiday at the beach. Suntans are fading even as scattered sand remains as a reminder.

It has been many years since I had the opportunity to watch the waves roll in over the sand - not just for a few hours on a sunny afternoon, but for a week, as wind, tide and weather plied their trade on the oceanic view. I looked forward to the break.

From a wooden stairway above the beach, my first view of the water was breathtaking. The western water stretched endlessly as the late afternoon sun danced a path to the horizon. The reflected glitter was almost blinding to my dull senses and it was easy to understand why early humans believed that water captured divine properties of the sun and moon.

As it does in Ireland, the wind off the western shore has its own feel, especially at twilight. The fabled paradise Tir na n'Og is located in the western ocean. For hero and mortal alike there is wisdom to be gained in the west - but it is found only by those who suffer for insight, the wisdom of the west is wrested from loss.

Ireland, Britain, Scotland and Wales are island communities. Surrounded as they are by water, the ocean is the boundary between this world and the Other. To voyage beyond the "seventh wave" was to go beyond the known world and most immigrants, like my relatives in the 1800's, would not see their homeland again.

The following morning I mustered our crew down to the beach to watch the Perseid meteor shower at 4:30 AM. The lack of artificial lighting created a perfect venue for shooting stars that I didn't want to miss. Alone at the beach we watched the celestial show amid the ceaseless motion of the darkened waves.

Under the stars, the unlit presence of the waves pulled at my attention - shadowy timelessness lapping at the grains of mortal life, forever wearing, forever murmuring in a language understood in the body, not the mind.

Much later that day we returned to the beach, sand toys and towels in hand. The sun had replaced the darkness and the value of water and waves was calculated in terms of adventure and recreation - energetic children in the water with adults reclining watchfully on the beach.

The water that I watched carried echoes of its own path. Not just of the fog and mist that enveloped primordial life, but ages of ice and eons of mountains, rivers and rain. With every drop of spray, water holds the liquid memories of eternity and of all those adults, like me, whose dearest childhood days were spent playing in its tides.

I was not long for the beach, I never could resist the siren song of the waves. Soon I crashed among them with my children. Children play so easily in the water, they go in, they come out, they return - they are fluid. Just as waves flow in and out, hesitant to pass their own high tide mark, so adults move toward the sea. They come down to water's edge, they walk along the shore, but they are often hesitant to cross into the water, cautious of immersion. Both are tidal in their own way - humans and waves.

The next day dawned grey and windy. Finding myself with a bit of free time I made for the beach. Before I saw them, I felt the waves calling. With surreal haste I pressed against the breeze and down to the waterline. The waves, much larger than on previous days, crashed with impunity. Like horses, the foaming green-grey water raced diagonally as well as straight on toward the beach, forming whitecaps even to the distance.

The turbulence of the waves seemed to reflect a widening turbulence within my own self. Half expecting an answer I asked out loud, "what is it?" Disappointed at the lack of response I paced the shore for some time with the same uneasy question. Happily the beach was deserted, saving onlookers from the specter of a middle-aged woman attempting conversation with the near roaring surf.

I found my answer that day, not in the counterpoint to my question, but in the nature of my disquiet. A symmetry arose when the unrest within me resonated with the breaking dissonance outside of me - a symmetry I created by answering the call to come. My answer had been in my own response to attend to the waves - "as within, so without." Even as I write this, the uneasy door opened that day remains ajar and time, I imagine, will eventually lead me through it.

Later that day our group again visited the shore - the sky sunny, the water swirling and choppy. I was repeatedly knocked down by the waves, surprised each time at the energy behind each swell. Retrieving my senses at some point I thought the better of the battering and retreated to my towel.

After nightfall the unsettled weather ushered in a thunderstorm. Sitting at an overlook I watched the weather moving in from the west. Lightening flashed within the clouds, revealing the restless water below. In the still clear sky to the north a meteor flashed long across space and within my reach, fireflies blinked on and off.

Such marvels, these flashes of light, those moments of revelation. In our dark journey through life we occasionally receive grace - like a firefly, a quiet enlightenment in our personal lives, or vibrant lightening enlivening our culture or the atmosphere in which we live and more rarely, a sudden radiant shooting star, an event or understanding that streaks across universal consciousness. Three gifts of illumination for three spheres of life.

On the following day the weather cleared, the water a dazzling tempest. A walk along the wet sand gave rise to the inevitable thoughts about footprints, how heavily we travel at times and how easily our path is erased. Such a thin line between where we walk and where we walk no more, where mind meets enduring mystery.

But it is along that line where the significance of life can be found. The word "equinox" means "equal night," and refers to the momentary balance of the length of day and night. The autumnal equinox occurs on September 23 this year, at 2:52 AM PDT. Balance along that line might mean to look with one's heart to the western ocean at the same time one's mortal feet remain on this side of eternity. Dispense with duality, and find, for one divine moment, the symmetry in one's Nature, within and without.

That evening we had a bonfire on the beach. Sparks spiraling up from the fire mingled with the fireflies. On the horizon, a crescent moon appeared dusty red as it set in the thickening air. The next day, our last full day, a weather system pushed through bringing heavy rain. It rained with an intensity I had not recently experienced, drumming the rooftops and anyone splashing through it. The waves welcomed the returning water - a cycle complete - and I couldn't help but feel the rising tide of the days to come.

Lughnasadh Heralds Harvest of the Soul

By C. Austin

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
- William Blake

Throughout the seasons we ramble away our days walking an obscured path. Our passage is fueled by equal parts hope, destiny, biology and futility. One step forward, sometimes two steps back and on into the dimming light of a dusty summer day. The Celtic fire festival of Lughnasadh on August 1 commemorates that enduring trail forged between nature and humanity - the labour that is required and the bounty that is received.

Lughnasadh, the last celebratory Fair before years' end, marks the beginning of the Celtic autumn and falls between the solar celebrations of the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. Though it might seem a harvest festival principally commemorates a diminishing sun, it does not.

The solar events of the Celtic year, the solstices and equinoxes, look to consciousness - to that which is bright, an orbit delineated by clear thought and reason. The lunar events of the Celtic year, the four great fire festivals, are darkly illuminating. Bringing forth their wisdom from the underground, from the unconscious, the fire festivals renew the bond between flickering human life and the deep generative power of nature.

Lughnasadh originated far in the Neolithic past with Tailtu, the last queen of the Fir Bolg, the mythical settlers of the province of Connacht. After clearing the land, Tailtu gave birth to fields of grain and then died from her efforts. Like many primitive earth goddesses, Tailtu came from and returned, like wheat chaff, to the land. Over centuries divinity rose heavenward from earth to the sky and Lughnasadh, once a funerary Fair to Tailtu, became a celebration of the sun god, Lugh.

If we look beyond the brilliant halo of Lugh, the original story of Tailtu gives us clues toward living a creative life. Tailtu was the last queen of her kind, a feminine energy that felt the longing of humanity. Even today that profound feminine energy lives on within us, alert for hunger or hurt. Tailtu chops wood and clears the landscape of our psyche, crafting places where ideas and food for the soul can find root. When the time is right, Tailtu gives birth, delivering shining sheaves of wheat - harvest for a hungry soul. Then she dies, a need fulfilled. Soon she will rise again.

There is another from whom Lugh inherited his great festival - the dark harvest god Crom Dubh, known as "Black Stoop," or the "dark bent one." He emerges from the underworld around the first of August and it is on his back that the first bundles of wheat are carried. Though it is the creative feminine that gives birth, it is the masculine that carries new energy into the world.

Both Tailtu and Crom Dubh are earthbound, and like us, follow the cycles of nature. We toil as they toil. But a harvest cannot be had from a seed that was never planted. Celebration, good fortune and a balanced life do not descend from on high because we wish it to be so. Throughout the days with which we are blessed we must plant our seeds, our best ideas, our worst fears, and we must work them, cultivate them and bring forth our own harvest - the shining sheaf of wheat, the gift of Lughnasadh for any season.

Solstice Arrives Amid Ever Changing Conditions of Life

By C. Austin

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.

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