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

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      THE PATH OF NATURE

      In the Carmina Gadelica, an anthology of Scottish folk prayers and poems collected in the late-nineteenth century, we see how Celtic Christianity carried its nature-positive spirituality into the modern world. The ordinary Christian folk of Gaelic-speaking Scotland offered prayers and the poetry of praise at every moment of the day, and in every setting—from rising out of bed, to stoking the fire, to milking the cow, to traveling or fishing or spinning thread. “Nature” in this rich spiritual tradition means more than just the environment. Arising out of the essential truth that all things are part of nature—including humanity and the culture of the world we’ve created—the Carmina Gadelica sings of the natural presence of God and Mary and all the saints (with the occasional pagan god or goddess thrown in) throughout the daily rhythm of life. There is no separation between nature and grace, or between nature and humanity—or between nature and the divine. All is interwoven. And that tapestry is held together in the language of devotion and praise.

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      THE PATH OF NATURE

      Relating to nature as a Sacred Other, not as an exploitable resource … allowing nature to function as a means of grace in our lives … recognizing that nature means more than just the unspoiled wilderness, but in a deeper and more real sense encompasses all aspects of the material world—these are but a few of the treasures revealed to us by the simple yet richly-textured tradition of Celtic nature mysticism. And as we conclude this path within the Celtic tradition, bear this in mind: just as you are not separate from God, or not separate from nature, or not separate from grace, so too are you not separate from the rich tradition of Celtic wisdom. Whether you are a Celt by ancestry or by the stirrings of your heart, if you embrace the Celtic tradition, you are part of it. Which means that the choices you make, the poems you write, the decisions you come to in your life to honor the natural world, are all part of the ongoing symphony of Celtic mysticism. Celtic spirituality is not a museum installation; it is a living path of insight and illumination. Consider how you can honor the goddess of the land and allow the grace of nature to flow in your life. Then you will become a living conduit of the Celtic way.

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       THE PATH OF THE BARD

      The tale is told that long ago, with the transition from oral tradition to the preservation of lore in medieval manuscripts, somehow the great Irish epic The Tain (the Cattle-Raid of Cooley) had been lost. Sadly, no one survived who knew the tale. Like a language that had died, the rich stories and myths surrounding the tale of the war in Ulster had disappeared, seemingly forever.

      But not so fast. Around the year 600 CE, a great Irish bard named Senchán Torpéist attempted to gather the missing strands of the story together, so that it might be remembered and handed down to future generations. He consulted with various bards and poets and scribes, all of whom knew part of the story, none of whom knew the entire narrative. When it seemed futile and he was on the verge of giving up, the bard received a vision. In it he was visited by Fergus mac Róich, one of the great mythic kings and heroes of Ulster, and a tutor to the young hero, Cúchulainn. In the vision, Fergus carefully recounted every detail of The Tain to Senchán Torpéist, and so the story was saved. The bard saw to it that it was written down, and so the epic survives to this very day.

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      THE PATH OF THE BARD

      The story of Senchán Torpéist and the remembering of The Tain provides an important glimpse into the role of the bard in Celtic society. To begin with, the bards were the keepers of history. Far more than mere poets, their job was to preserve the memory of the people, by safeguarding the genealogies and stories of great and valorous heroes, from the recent to the distant past. Clearly, if a tale as noble and heroic as The Tain had been lost, there had been a breakdown in the bardic system. In our world of Hollywood-style adaptations of stories, it might seem like no big deal if a story is lost—just make up a new one. But this would have been unthinkable to a bard. Any story worth telling is a story worth remembering—it is an aspect of the lore of the people. So the bard’s role was not only to entertain and inform, but perhaps more importantly, to archive and preserve.

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      THE PATH OF THE BARD

      So what could a bard do when an important element of the lore had been lost? In a way, the loss of The Tain is a metaphor for the loss of the entire pre-Christian Celtic tradition. We see how Senchán Torpéist attempted to remedy the problem: first, by gathering what fragments existed and by attempting to reconstruct the story from them, almost as one would try to repair a broken piece of fine crystal by reassembling the various fragments. So the bard’s role as archivist could extend to being a historical detective, looking at all that we do know as a way of trying to close the gap on what we don’t know. After all, to understand who we are today, and to guess where we’re going, it’s fairly important to recognize who we’ve been and where we’re coming from. So by carefully preserving (or investigating) the past, the bard gives us in the present perhaps the most valuable gift possible: self-knowledge.

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      THE PATH OF THE BARD

      In the end, Senchán Torpéist revived The Tain not by detective work or by educated guesswork—he received supernatural assistance. The spirit of one of the ancient heroes visits him, and sets the record straight. And thus, the seventh-century bard is able to preserve a story that probably dates back some five to six hundred years before his time. So we come to another important characteristic of the bards. Their skills and training extended beyond those of a mere journalist or historian—their poetry was regarded as having a spiritual component, making them not only poets, but prophets as well (prophecy meaning not only the ability to speak of the future, but in its broader sense of the ability to speak any spiritually-sourced truth). In Ireland, the bards were known as the filidh, a word best translated as “seer-poet.” The eloquence of the bard came not only from their own training and natural abilities, but also from their abilities to communicate with the otherworld. As a weaver of words and a preserver of memories, the bard also played a necessary third function: as a spokesperson for Spirit. Indeed, the filidh were regarded as having magical abilities. Which is not too surprising, considering that the order of bards probably originated in the ancient priestly function of the druids.

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      THE PATH OF THE BARD

      The bard’s magic could be described in a single word: enchantment. Chanting, of course, is related to song, but an enchantment is a song with something extra: an altered state, a doorway to the spiritual realm. Enchantment is what separates garden-variety entertainment from the true bard’s art, where his or her talents are used to bring divine transformation into the world.

      Think of Gregorian chant. It’s a style of music that has been used in Christian monasteries for a thousand years, and yet in the late twentieth century several CDs of such unadorned singing were bestsellers, with millions of copies sold to people who had little or no connection with organized religion. Why? Naturally, because the music was enchanting. People described it as soothing, relaxing, СКАЧАТЬ