366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore. Carl McColman

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СКАЧАТЬ Native American wisdom is clear in its respect for Mother Nature and insistence that a balanced life means walking in harmony with the environment. Similar themes may be found throughout primal and shamanistic cultures worldwide. For that matter, the Jewish tradition has a strong history of insisting that the earth be cared for—the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not just a religious directive, but also implies that society needs to refrain from over-working the land.

      So the Celtic tradition of venerating nature is not alone. Which is another way of saying that the profound earth mysticism of the Celts is, ultimately, of universal importance.

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      Why is Celtic nature mysticism so attractive? To begin with, the culture of the West—which traces its roots back to the Roman Empire and its reliance on centralized, urban government—seems to have lost its way regarding nature. The political and business climate throughout Europe, America, and increasingly the rest of the world, regards the environment as a resource, and efforts at conservation or environmental protection are chiefly designed to preserve those resources for long-term usage. Rarely is a sense of nature as divine, as sacred, as valuable in itself, seriously considered. And yet this is the heart of the Celtic understanding of nature. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the link between the goddess, the land, and sovereignty. A king does not assume the right to manage the land, or exploit, or utilize its resources. Rather he marries the land, in the persona of the sovereign goddess. Goddess and king are partners—what we know of pre-Roman Celtic law suggests that marriage was often seen as a joining of equals. What would our world look like today, if we could begin to see the environment as our partner, rather than our resource?

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      The connection between humankind and nature was, to the ancient Celts, an essentially moral relationship. If a king ruled with wisdom and justice, the land responded with abundance and prosperity—cows gave plentiful milk, the land yielded bountiful harvests, and the trees were laden with fruit. But under a king whose reign was unjust or inhospitable, the land withdrew her blessings. Crop failure, drought, and meager harvests were linked not to the arbitrary whims of capricious nature, but rather to the failings of a king (and, by extension, to the people he governed). Mythically speaking, the remedy of such a problem was to find a new king—symbolic of establishing a new, and healthier, relationship with the sacred land. Simply put, when nature is encountered relationally, then nature has a claim on how she is treated. It matters what we do in regard to our environment. This is the heart of Celtic mysticism.

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      For many people, Celtic nature spirituality is mostly a romanticized kind of thing. We can travel to Tintagel or Glendalough or Iona and be enraptured by the many faces of the goddess—lush or austere, majestic or severe. We can find peace by a holy well or ponder the mysteries in a ring of standing stones. Our imaginations can be beguiled by stories of the fairy folk—never mind the ominous or dangerous edge to the fairy faith; we’ll just enjoy the idea of spirits inhabiting our gardens. It’s all lovely, poetic, and beautiful. But does it really make a difference in our lives? How does Celtic nature spirituality matter?

      The question is a subtle pun. For “matter” comes from the same Latin root as does “matrix” (womb) and “mother.” To make something matter—anything, not just nature mysticism—means to imbue it with relationship, meaning, purpose, as symbolized by the most primal and powerful of all relationships, that between mother and child. Catholic Ireland is full of imagery of the madonna and child, but this is far more than just religious artwork. It’s truly an icon of the most profound relationship of all, that between the earth and her children. So how do we find, in our sentimental love for the glorious beauty of nature, a genuine relationship between humanity and the environment? As we answer that question, we will be taking an important step toward making the Celtic tradition come alive in our midst.

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      Saying that the ancient Celts were pagan is kind of like saying that they were Celts: we’re using a word to describe them that did not originate with them. It was the Greeks who named the Celts, and the Roman Christians who coined the religious meaning for the word pagani, which originally suggested civilian or country-dweller. But the country-dweller sense of the word means that it is not entirely inappropriate—after all, the Celts had no cities until the Romans or Vikings or Normans came along and built them. As a rural people, they naturally found their spiritual compass in the waters of the sea, the whispers of the wind, the fertility of the land. Their faith certainly was not “pagan” in the later pejorative sense of amoral or superstitious, but rather embodied a profound sense of being held in the embrace of the wild earth, her raging seas, and her abundant life. The pre-Christian Celts were likely animistic—regarding everything as imbued with spiritual presence. This survived after the arrival of Christianity, where heaven and the presence of God were seen not as removed from the natural world, but intimately interwoven within it. Nature was seen not just as an image of beauty—she truly embodied Divine love and grace.

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      The pagan spirituality of the Celts has been a significant inspiration to the neopagan (“new pagan”) movement that began in England in the mid-twentieth century and has since spread throughout the English-speaking world, as well as Europe and beyond. Although much of the modern pagan movement is undermined by an uncritical overemphasis on magic and psychic phenomena, the heart of the new paganism reflects a sincere effort to re-sacralize nature, to awaken the sleeping goddess of the land and restore a sense of humanity as living in relationship with her. Since this is such an integral, if not always conscious, part of the Celtic world, neopagans have embraced many elements of Celtic wisdom, from the myths, to the gods and goddesses, to Gaelic folk holidays and ceremonial customs. Some modern pagans carefully seek to integrate Celtic culture into their spirituality in respectful and considerate ways; others simply treat the Celtic tradition as a consumable resource (ironic, given how its greatest strength may be in the way it can teach us alternatives to the consumer lifestyle).

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      The great achievement of Christianity in the Celtic world came not from how it triumphed over the pagan spirituality that existed prior to its arrival, but—on the contrary—how it more or less seamlessly integrated the earth-honoring traditions of the pagan Celts into its singular vision of faith. Celtic Christianity is nature Christianity. Nowhere is this more clearly set forth than in the Lorica of Saint Patrick, a poem-prayer that invokes Divine protection:

       I bind unto myself today

      The virtues of the star-lit heaven,

      The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

      The whiteness of the moon at even,

      The flashing of the lightning free,

      The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

       The stable earth, the deep salt sea

       Around the old eternal rocks.

      (Translated by Cecil F. H. Alexander)

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