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Visions in meditation part 2 - Manannán

22/1/2013

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The sea is ever-changing.

Introduction
This is the second of three visions I had in meditation. To read more about how this came to be, you can read the introduction to part 1. While I don't really see this as poetry, it just flowed in this format.
I sit in my room
The room is framed with magic
The window set about
With shells, with starfish
Through it I see the sea
Sitting beside it, I hear the sea
But the sea is distant
A thousand miles or more

"Come out to play!"
Manannán is calling me
"Come out to play!"
I know He is the trickster

"No trick," he says
"There is a door.
Go into the next room and see."
And there is a door
I open it to solid water
Which does not spill

Through the open doorway
I enter the water and swim
I know what it is to be a selkie
The water perfectly cool
I swim
I know the speed of a dolphin
And Manannán rides on my back

Not the stately Storm King
Of beard and robes
He is something other
Suggestion of beard
Green hide
Webbed feet
He is something ancient
Entirely other

And I see
He rides the dolphins
And the great fishes
He loves this!
And the smaller fish
His "little lambs"

And I understand
That this
This is why He is God of the Sea
Because in this life
This underwater life
Where He knows
The pleasure of speed
The pleasure of travel
He will protect
His fast steeds
His little lambs

Picture
artist: Helen Rich







manannan mac lir
"This," He tells me
"Is part of you
For your land
Was once under the sea
Now you mourn
Salt without water
The bleached bones"

And I see
When He rises from the water
He becomes that robed
And bearded Father
On His sacred island
He is thus

And now He shows me
How His waters will rise
And the earth will be whole
And the land will recede
And the people of the land
Will turn on one another
And thus reduce their numbers
And the earth will be whole
But never the same
For the sea is ever-changing


under the sea
artist: Osnat Tzadok

Out of this vision , in my "rational" mind I think more and more how foolish we are, how inflated in our sense of our abilities to think that we can "protect" Gaia from our kind. And if we're honest, we don't do it for Her, we are just trying to preserve our real estate, our playground, things we feel sentimental about, our way of life.
There is not one thing we have made which did not come from the earth - the concrete and glass, the rusting metal. We ripped it all from her breast, and when we push too far, a great change will come. Our plastic and trash and destruction will somehow be re-shaped as nothing more than strange deposits of minerals and organic material, and what is left of our race, if anything - will we be as the Fomorians or as the Tuatha de Danannán? Or maybe Manannán's children this time?
As I typed this from my handwritten notes just now, I also remembered that Manannán is the trickster, killing and re-animating the men of the fortress to make a point, as if it's nothing.
Continue to part 3...
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The Voyage of Bran and the Joy of Illusion

30/10/2012

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Manannán mac Lir - a great master of illusion has much to teach us!

This piece was originally published in March, 2012

Yesterday evening I listened to an amazing recording by the poet, musician and story teller Robin Williamson. An excerpt from the Irish epic The Voyage of Bran. Within this tale is an extraordinary passage illustrating aspects of illusion and perceived reality, as only poetry can. Bran and his men are crossing the sea in their coracle (a light boat) when they encounter Manannán mac Lir (God of the Sea) driving toward them over the water in his chariot. He describes to Bran their surroundings, which, although they are looking on one another and conversing, is entirely different than the view which Bran and his men see from their boat.

Bran deems it a marvellous beauty
In his coracle across the clear sea:
While to me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain on which he rides about.

Sea-horses glisten in summer
As far as Bran has stretched his glance:
Rivers pour forth a stream of honey
In the land of Manannán mac Lir.

Speckled salmon leap from the womb
Of the white sea, on which thou lookest:
They are calves, they are coloured lambs
With friendliness, without harm for the other.

Along the top of a wood has swum
Thy coracle across ridges,
There is a wood of beautiful fruit
Under the prow of thy little skiff.

Bran and Manannan
The Voyage of Bran from a tapestry by Terry Dunne
I found this passage very exciting. Imagine these two "realities" coexisting in the same time and place! Where one individual sails on water, the other drives his chariot across a beautiful landscape. So how is this possible? Which is the true reality? Neither or both. Reality is perceived. Does this make it illusion? Perhaps, but if so, illusion is strong enough to support a boat full of men. Strong enough to support a horse and chariot. As I listened to Robin Williamson describe this illusion-reality riddle I found myself laughing. Filled with joy and wonder.

How frightened we are to loose our grip on our perceived reality! How fearful of finding our coracle aground, or of drowning ourselves in our chariot. So careful are we to hold fast to the mundane, repetitive din and jostle we call reality, that we rarely glimpse the other realities that lie amongst it. The other realities we may also touch, and know - in silence, in nature, in simple awareness, in moments of thoughtless being. Some would argue that most of us are asleep when we believe we are awake and "living". We are sleepwalking through a reality made up of digital images, shopping, competition, empty talk and short term gratification; when all the while another reality of nature, oneness, and quiet knowing also surrounds us.  

For me, moments of glimpsing the riddle of illusion and reality are often the most illuminating and also the most fun. I am always refreshed when I am plunged into that which lies beyond the mundane. When I am reminded that the grinding "reality" that describes my current struggle is only as fluid or as solid as belief makes it.

This is part of why I find joy in using my cards. As I stand in my boat and ponder the image before me, I am always delighted to see things differently. How easily I am shown that

"There is a wood of beautiful fruit
Under the prow of my little skiff."


where I thought there was only water.This is the joy of the riddle, of the illusion and the moment of insight. Words like "meditation", "divination" and "enlightenment" sound so heavy and serious. Like hard work, or something slightly perilous from which we might not find the way back. More often they are the best parts of life. Burdens are lifted from us and we become light and happy.

Manannán mac Lir offered the purest of gifts to Bran that day on the sea. The playful joy of the riddle of reality and illusion. Is this just a metaphysical plaything? A glittering but useless toy? Well, as things worked out for Bran, he was not going to be able to safely land his coracle on Erin again. In some versions of the story, he meets his end after doing so, but in the oldest versions, we are told that it is one of Bran's men, Nechtán, who is "overcome with homesickness" and upon stepping from the coracle onto the shore, crumbles to ash (for in what seemed a few months journeying, they had been away for many hundreds of years). So it seems to me that the insights given to Bran by Manannán mac Lir will have strengthened him against both homesickness and helped him to see that the sea which might now be his permanent home was also a land of fruit, forests and green pastures. Something he would not otherwise have guessed.

Again, this is part of the riddle of reading cards, or gaining wisdom from nature, myth or any other well of wisdom. An insight here, a reassurance there and sometimes a moment of joy and wonder that changes everything.

~ Kris

To arrange a reading, or ask a question, you can send me a message here. 


Quotes based on the Kuno Meyer translation of 1895 which is available at this link - http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/vob/vob02.htm

Robin Williamson's telling of the story is on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ8xP_Z8q0E

Link to original image - http://www.terrytheweaver.ie/pages/The%20Voyage%20of%20Bran_jpg.htm
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