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Brigid of the White Spring

16/4/2019

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One morning last week I decided to do a candle meditation, instead of my usual "eyes shut" style. No sooner had I begun to gaze at the flame than I received this message/download or whatever name you want to give it. When it came to an end, I wondered whether I would be able to recall it to write it down, but that also seemed to be fairly easy. I am thinking about maybe recording it as an audio, later on. Let me know if you think that would be a good idea!
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photo: Jonathon Wilkins CC (BY SA 3.0)

Brigid of the White Spring


I am the fire of the life force
I am the fire of creativity
I am Brigid of the white spring
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from the fire
I am Brigid of the white calf
I am the fire of creativity
I am the fire of poetry
I am Boann of the white spring
I am Boann of the white calf
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from my fire
I am the flame of poetry
I am the fire of creativity
I am Brigid of the white rain
I am Brigid of the white snow
I am Boann of the white spring
I am the pool with nine salmon
I am the pool overlooked by nine hazels
I am the pool of the wisdom of nine eternities
I am Brigid of the white spring
I am Brigid of the white calf
Dive into the depths of my healing waters
Do not take your eyes from the flame
Dive into the depths of my healing waters
I am Boann of the white spring
I am the pool of nine wise salmon
I am the pool of nine hazels
I am the pool of the wisdom of nine eternities
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from the flame
I am the fire of creativity
I am the fire of poetry
I am Brigid of the white spring




































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Manitou

25/9/2013

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In honour of the Autumn Equinox, my partner, Mark, and I took a trip to Manitou Springs. We have been there a few times, but typical of people who are (sort of) local, we hadn't given the place much thought. It's a small mountain resort with nice boutiques and a good vibe, a fun change from our daily lives. It was only toward the end of our last trip that I noticed the Cheyenne Spring font on the main street, tasted the water, and all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in my head. "Oh, Manitou Springs!" So we decided to dedicate our next visit to finding and investigating the springs -- and bringing jars.

Although I remembered to take the jars, I forgot my camera, so the gallery of photos below are not mine. They are from other people's blogs and articles, or from the website of the local Mineral Springs Foundation, who produce a free brochure, including photos, a map, and an analysis of the mineral content or each spring. They have done good work in renovating and decorating many of the springs around the town, inviting a number of artists and sculptors to design fonts. The result is a great deal of variation in the ambiance of the different springs.

Back home in Scotland the "places of interest" seem to be so thick on the ground that you are tripping over them. Lots of wells and springs, ancient monuments and places of natural beauty. To me, it feels very easy to find places that help me to feel close to the gods, to the spirits of nature or people of the past. Yes, the trees and rocks and soil are sacred everywhere, but I feel less resonance here. I hoped that these springs might be a good place to feel something like that, but I'm not sure.

The town of Manitou happened to be rather busy when we visited, with some sort of festival going on. There was a very friendly and slightly crowded atmosphere, which I enjoyed, but it wasn't conducive to quiet moments of spirituality. At each spring we visited we ended up chatting to people. A few were locals, getting water from their favourite spring, and happy to tell us about its benefits. Most were other people "doing the tour", but hardly anyone liked the taste of the water. Except me. I thought some of it was excellent. Each spring varies quite a bit in its mineral make up, but most of them are naturally carbonated, and have a high mineral content, which I enjoyed. One or two would take some getting used to. Iron Spring, for example is rather salty tasting and with its high iron content, reminded me of the taste of blood. I particularly liked the taste of the water from Wheeler Spring, which was fizzy and refreshing, and has a more traditional style of font, too.

It must be the Druid in me, but I found people's jokes and face pulling about the taste of the water a bit frustrating. I find the stuff that comes out of many a household tap completely disgusting. I don't like many mainstream commercial beverages, either. What the earth was offering, via these springs, tasted so much better to me, but people seem to me to have lost their discernment. Too much soda-pop and Miller Lite, I guess. Visiting the springs was just a box to tick, and a funny story about how bad it tasted to be told later.

I haven't delved too deeply into the history of Manitou Springs. Manitou means "spirit" in the Algonquin languages. Spirit both in the sense of what we might call gods and of the spirits that inhabit all things in the animistic sense. Several local plains tribes, such as the Cheyenne and Arapahoe peoples, held the area as particularly sacred and knew that the waters had healing powers. Because of the high mineral content of the water, some of the springs had formed natural mineral basins which were ideal for bathing. When European explorers found the area they quickly began to develop it as a spa, with great emphasis put on its healing potential and romantic associations with the local tribes. These settlers, too, valued the water, and the beauty of the area, but had rather different ideas about what was sacred.

Over the course of the 20th century the "spa" concept gradually gave way to a more general type of commercial tourism. The area has many tourist attractions, including Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods, and the springs at Manitou became a minor sideline which I don't even remember hearing mentioned. Manitou Springs became known for its enormous amusement arcade, cog railway and vast selection of motels.

Looking at the photos of Soda Spring, below, in 1870 and the present, I know which I prefer. However, I'm glad that perhaps something of the dignity and original reverence for the springs has been revived by the Mineral Springs Foundation. Water in Colorado is rarely a source of peace. It is generally seen as a scarce commodity, bought and sold for unsustainable agriculture, use by growing cities and for sporting and recreation. The saying "Whisky's for drinking, water's for fighting" refers to the legal wrangling that is almost always ongoing over water, somewhere in the state. Yet holy wells and holy water have gone unnoticed...

Because the town was built around the springs, most of them are along the main street or along major traffic arteries. The atmosphere when we visited this time, while pleasant, wasn't great for, say, a few moments of meditation. I would like to go back on a weekday in the off season, and see how it is then.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like The Divine Connection of Water and Mother Nepesta.

These photos can all be clicked to enlarge, and the captions link to their original sources, which are often quite interesting in themselves.
Soda Springs 1870, manitou Springs
Soda Spring, 1870

Cheyenne Spring, Manitou Springs
Cheyenne Spring

Twin Spring, Manitou Spring
Twin Spring

Iron Springs Geyser 1910, Manitou Springs
Iron Springs Geyser, 1910

Soda Spring, Manitou Springs
Soda Spring, present day

Cheyenne Spring, spring house, Manitou Springs
Cheyenne Spring and spring house


Stratton Spring, Manitou Springs
Stratton Spring

Manitou Mineral Water, Ute Chief Mineral Springs, Manitou Springs
Turn of the century label from a bottle of Manitou Mineral Water


Original Iron Spring Pavillion, Manitou Springs
Original Iron Spring Pavilion

Wheeler Spring, Manitou Springs
Wheeler Spring


Shoshone Spring, Manitou Springs
Shoshone Spring


Shoshone Spring House interior, Manitou Springs











Shoshone spring house, interior


Navajo Spring, Manitou Springs
Navajo Spring



Iron Spring Pavillion, Manitou Springs
Iron Spring Pavilion today

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Wild Child?

21/8/2013

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Shetland ponies, water horses and oracle cards.

Preface
As some of my readers know, I have been experimenting with readings on relationships with animals. In one of the first readings I did, the Beach card came up. The Beach is one of several cards which describes a "thin place" or a liminal space where two entities converge. In Celtic spirituality, such places are particularly magical or prone to "supernatural" happenings. As I considered this reading I realised that there are points in human-animal relations that have this powerful, liminal quality, and that both animals and humans may experience this. I am talking about something different than simply sharing love or affection, companionship and mutual support. I think these experiences draw their power from the essential differences between the human and the animal involved. While the opportunity for such moments may always be there, many of us don't experience them, or only rarely, although part of our attraction to animals may be that we recognise the potential for them at a deep level.

I once did a reading for someone who was constantly plagued by feelings of both anger and anxiety. This card was central to her reading. It turned out that her husband was somewhat verbally abusive, but what she found most hurtful was that he never took her seriously. No matter what she did or said, he'd consider it childish or silly. The Shetland Pony is a card of the misunderstood, of the one not taken seriously. Frequently the response is to avoid eye contact and just put up with things, or to find an outlet in rebellion.
As I see the Shetland Pony card - someone is not treated with dignity. (Enough, in itself, to create some anger....) There are some things that certain people will probably never understand or be able to take seriously. If you are the pony you will probably find a way around this, enough to get by in the situation, without giving up everything! However, you may find that you are constantly nagged or teased by friends or family because of your interests or tastes. Writing this, I have a little twinge of guilt, as I know I've been on the "dishing out" end of this,  as well as the receiving. Sometimes these things are about scoring points, other times just a failure to take others seriously. Patronising is a word that comes to mind!
shetland pony, stanley howe
photo by Stanley Howe


This failure to understand, and to think we know best, carries over into impatience when we find that the other person has dug their heels in over "something silly". But we're all afraid of something silly! I know people who would rather jump out of a plane than give a speech in public and others who would prefer to have a tooth pulled than learn to use a computer. Just as we might see someone's refusal to do something as stubborn, when they are really afraid, so we may make the same misjudgement about ourselves. Then we come up with phrases like "It's just the way I am, " or "No way am I doing that, it's stupid!" because these positions feel less threatening than simply saying, "I'm scared. You'd have to be really patient with me for me to even try that."

This is the obvious and "top layer" meaning of the card. It's the one I would probably focus on when it comes up in someone's reading. However, I knew there was more to this card, and for days, I have caught glimpses of it and wrestled with it, but there were missing pieces. I hope that I have found, if not all the missing pieces, at least enough of them to show us the way...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Water horse, liminal horse.

nokken, njuggle, jonny andvik
Nøkken by Jonny Andvik

In the Shetland Islands, there is a creature called the njuggle (or njogle - there are lots of variations. This creature is part of folklore, and until recently part of folk belief. The njuggle (pronounces nyuggle) is essentially a supernatural Shetland pony, who is associated with bodies of water such as lochs and streams. It seems that many bodies of water in Shetland have one. One habit of njuggles is to prance and parade up and down the banks of their home water, often beautifully saddled and bridled, enticing some hapless human to mount them. As soon as this occurs, they plunge into the water with their rider and give them a good dooking, or in some sinister versions they drown and even devour their victim. Most Shetland njuggles are more the playful type, though.

Some readers will recognise the Scottish/Irish Kelpie, or "water horse", in this description. (Forget the whole 2007 movie of the same title - just forget it. We're talking about someone's traditional beliefs here, not about Hollywood.) There are certainly parallels all over Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, where such creatures are sometimes called the nøk, or nyk, etc. Etymologists tell us that this may well be the origin of referring to the devil as "Auld Nick" as well as possibly relating to sea gods like the Celtic god Nechtan, and even Neptune (who created the horse, in some myths). Horses and water are frequently linked in both myth and folklore.  I've also noticed that if you remove the letter N from the names Nechtan and Neptune, it is possible to see the relationship of both words to early word roots denoting the horse including the Latin equos/equus, the Greek hippos, and the Gaulish epos. These roots gave us words like Epona, pony, and the Gaelic word for horse: each.

Back in Shetland, another common prank of the njuggle was to inhabit the space under mill wheels and stop the wheel when it took their fancy. Maybe they were jealous, as the tails of some njuggles were said to be like wheels, which they used to propel themselves through the water. Or maybe they simply wanted to halt the wheels of "progress" which would eventually drive them into a kind of extinction. In these cases, they could be scared away with fire, like so many of the things we once feared.

At the liminal point between land and water there is a field of energy which at once repels and attracts - where we fear and yet desire to enter the wildness of the water, to give up control of the wildness in us to a greater wildness. The Irish mystic writer,John Moriarty, talked in an interview, about this need for wildness ~

"We shape the earth to suit ourselves. We plough it and we knock it and we shape it and we re-shape it. Dolphins were land animals once, and they went down into the sea. They said to the ocean, "Well, shape me to suit you." And now -- the Lord save us, I was in a house in Connemara sometime recently, and I saw a dolphin bone. The curve of it was as beautiful as any couple of bars of Mozart's music. It was so beautiful! I've no bone in my body that is shaped to the earth like that.

"So they said, "Shape us to suit you". We went the opposite way, We shape the earth to suit us - and that's going to fail. Unless there's wildness around you, something terrible happens to the wildness inside of you. And if the wildness inside of you dies. I think you're finished."

For some reason horses offer us a way to make this connection, but not by harnessing and forcing them into our control. Not by "knocking and shaping and re-shaping" them. It is only when we find a way to merge our wildness with theirs, or have the merger thrust upon us, that it actually does us any good. Still, this involves some danger. Swimming or putting a small boat out into wild water, riding a horse galloping out of control, both must be similar on the scale of dangerous things to do. There is always vulnerability in liminal experiences. The danger of getting stuck "in limbo", of not finding our way back...of somehow falling through the cracks of our own experience.

Modern people, I think, lack the liminal experiences which were once achieved through ritual, through feeling themselves a part of nature, through rites of passage and though belief in the supernatural. Yet these are things we long for. How and whether modern people manage to recover this part of life may just be the defining questions of our survival, and whether, if we survive, we thrive or we languish. Yet simply having a liminal experience may not be enough if we don't have points of reference for it. In "traditional" cultures, points of reference were marked by the rituals and prescriptions surrounding various life events, both the pivotal and the routine. They gave an assurance of success to the experience, if not a guarantee. Many folk beliefs, and their associated tales, offer advice as to how to avoid unwanted outcomes within liminal experiences or how to deal with them if they overtake us, and many heroic myths have grown up around dealing with such things.

Much has been written in the past twenty years about our spiritual connections with horses. Throughout human history they have been repeatedly raised as icons of something wild, free, powerful and supernatural. Perhaps only the sea, itself, shares a similar place in our deepest ideas of power and mystery. In northwest Europe, early peoples tended to gravitate to the coastline. Much of the land was boggy, steep or heavily wooded, making travel by sea much easier than by land, and the sea shore provided a bounty. The little primitive horses were probably only interesting as an occasional source of red meat. The sea was everything.

As populations grew and moved slowly inland, and farming and land travel became more important, so did the horse and its many uses. Yet most horses remained essentially wild animals, with many more being "owned" than were ever tamed, and this is still the case today with most of the mountain and moorland breeds of the British Isles, where many are still allowed to breed in semi-wild conditions and only some are tamed. As this shift was made, and men turned more toward the land and less toward the sea, perhaps the horse both replaced, and became mixed with the sea as the ultimate symbol of unknowable power and wildness. Spiritually, the horse led us back toward the water, and toward our wildness.

The small ponies of Shetland, a land hovering in its own liminal position between Scotland and Scandinavia, are the closest horses we have to the first horses to walk the earth. They are shaped to the earth, and not so much by the hand of man, as most animals we call domestic. As such, I think they are truly an ideal symbol of our longing  toward our own inner wildness and a guide into the waters of liminal experience.

Today, the njuggle is often thought of as a story for children. Which may be to say "Something thought to be childish is entirely misunderstood..."


More on the ideas in this post -
Liminality
- This article contains more than you ever wanted to know about the concept of liminaltiy, which I didn't explain very thoroughly.

The John Moriarty interview link

Radio Essay on Britain's wild ponies
_________________________________________________

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like The Beach, a series of posts exploring liminal space through myth, or Rambles with the Mari Lwyd, about horse traditions in British culture.

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My ears are keen, my breath is warm
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A chapbook collection containing the short story The Wild Mare, plus four poems which share the theme of horses.

Size 8.5" x 5.5"

21 pages

Please see product page for more information.

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Mother Nepesta

8/8/2013

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The importance of rivers in our lives, and of the Arkansas River in mine.

arkansas river
The Arkansas River near it's source, in the foothills, and near my home in the lower Arkansas valley, SE Colorado.

Leadville, Salida, Cañon City, now we are at Pueblo. Little Fountain Creek, The St Charles, Chico Creek, The Huerfano, the Apishapa, now we are at Manzanola. Bob Creek, Horse Creek, Timpas Creek, now we are at La Junta. The Purgatoire . . .  

Like a poem, these names describe the journey of my mother river, the Arkansas (which we pronounce "arkansaw" around here) from her source to my homelands. It is a dry land, and water is important to us. I can recite those tributaries from west to east without effort, like a genealogy. They say the Pawnee called her the Kicka - but the Pawnee never lived in this area. The Cheyenne call her Mó'soonêó'he'e, and the Spanish once called her Rio Napestle. The old settlement of Nepesta isn't far from here. There was still a store there when I was small.

Nepestle/Nepesta may have come from a Comanche word for wife or it could be related to an Algonquin root, ni, which refers to water. I've always liked the sound of the word Nepesta, and I like the associations of water and feminity, whether that is its origin or not. Perhaps I will think of the river's spirit in this area as Nepesta. Now there's something to meditate on!


When the River card comes up in a reading, I usually write something like this to my client:

The River is an important entity. Unless you are at the top of a mountain, then you must live in the valley of some river or stream which mothers the land around it with its waters. A good place to start might be to ask yourself what river you feel most connected to. Perhaps it is associated with an important place in your childhood, or you may have your own reasons for feeling more strongly about some other river. Sit for a moment with the feelings you have for this river and its surroundings. Spend some time just feeling that River. Such an amazing entity, a River. Can you imagine sitting on a little island, in the middle of a beautiful river, really feeling its power and depth as it flows past, constantly changing, yet never changing? Then allow the insights to come...

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River - Birth, motherhood and nurturing. Letting go. Cleansing.
Motherhood and birth may represent much more than the literal meanings, of course. Creativity, nurturing, etc. The other aspect is partly about "going with the flow", but more particularly letting everything else go with the flow. If you've ever meditated, you've probably heard advice like letting a river take unwanted thoughts away -"just let them go" we're told. Our metaphorical River can take away other things we don't need, too. It can clean away what we no longer need, making room for the new things we want to welcome. There is another little meaning to the word "cleansing" which is connected to motherhood, and is also worth looking at. Have you ever heard afterbirth called "cleansing" by country people? The first time I heard this, a light bulb went on in my head. Of course, we all know the dire medical effects of retained placenta, but what an interesting way of thinking of it! It's a reminder that hanging onto things that were once vital, but have now done their job, is not always in our best interests.

For information on readings, visit Go Deeper Readings. To arrange a reading, email me.
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A Song, a Story, the Sea

3/7/2013

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Growing up, as I did, in landlocked Colorado, the sea was not so much a mystery to me, as an object of no meaning whatsoever. I never even saw it until I was in my twenties and moved to California. However, when I was about twelve years old a musician called Donovan Leitch came across my radar and his music moved me intensely, and still does so today. In 1968 I bought his double album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden. One LP was acoustic and one electric. The acoustic one spoke deeply to me, and most of the songs on it were about the sea - or more precisely the seaside. Starfish, crabs, gulls and assorted wandering humans inhabited the lyrics in a way that made this environment real and interesting to me for the first time.
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Donovan Leitch

I awoke this morning with a song from that LP in my head. What struck me was how like Manannán, as he appears in his trickster guise, the tinker character is. Manannán who can be recognised by the water sloshing from his shoes as he walks on dry land. I knew he was familiar from somewhere. Maybe I first met him in this song!

You can read about some of Manannán's fun and games in Lady Gregory's "God's and Fighting Men" Part I Book IV: Manannan at Play or listen to an adaptation of it by the folks at The Celtic Myth Podshow in The Raggedy Man

If you enjoyed this post, you might like The Beach

Mythology

A chapbook collection containing the allegorical tale The Story Shawl, a poem about Macha entitled Approaching the House of Cruinniuc, and a long essay called The Beach.


Size 8.5" x 5.5"


14 pages


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Paying My Rent

18/6/2013

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Honouring Manannán at Midsummer

Midsummer is days away, and I'm having trouble mustering enthusiasm. I don't like the heat, and summers are very hot here is SE Colorado. However, I really want to "pay my rent" this year.

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As you may know, there is an old tradition in the Isle of Man, of paying rent to Manannán mac Lir on Midsummer Eve. The rent? Just a bundle of rushes. That's the traditional rent he requires. I've spotted plenty of rushes growing along the road on the way into the local village, and I am planning to cut some and do something meaningful  with them. I wondered about visiting one of the local lakes, but they are all reservoirs and there is a drought on. It might be a little depressing. We'll see. I might just go to my little "grove" here on the farm.

Barrule hill fort, Manannan, Midsummer
Barrule hill fort on the Isle of Man. A site associated with the rent paying tradition.

As I was poking around the internet looking for information about Manannán's Midsummer rites on the Isle of Man -- looking for inspiration, really -- I came across this wonderful poem on a blog called Stone of Destiny. It's by a fellow called Shaun Paul, who lives in Texas, and it expresses much in common with how I'm feeling. He has kindly allowed me to share it here.
   
...and the rent is due

I would bring him bundles of rushes from the waters edge.
Carry them by hand to the high place, stony Barrule, overlooking the sea.
For Midsummer Eve has come and Manannán awaits his payment.

Only, I am far from those shores.
Arid winds bend prairie grass like waves on an earthen sea,
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

Standing on the very brink of thundering wave and stone,
I have opened my arms, buoyed by winds sweeping from far Emain Ablach.
Lifted a moment, from the rocky cliff, like the Heron King taking flight.

I cling to memories of a rugged coast,
As I choke on the fumes of engines going nowhere.
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

As the rising tide sends plumes of white foam into the air,
The sea god’s wife approaches, her soothing kiss, lingering upon my cheek.
They call her Fand, which means “teardrop”, and she tastes like the sea.

We carry the ocean, like a memory, flowing within us.
Weeping, we give it back again, carried home on the Summer breeze.
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

                  - Shaun Paul

lake, rushes
If you enjoyed this post you might also like The Hills of the Sky.

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Rain Woman

31/3/2013

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The two short items here were a bit of synchronicity from my life yesterday. In the evening, I wrote the poem below. Then a little later, I happened upon this very interesting article about Dodola and Peperuda, a Slavic rain dancing tradition I'd never heard of. If you are fascinated by folk traditions, as I am, you might enjoy it. Here's a quote:
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During a period of spring or summer drought, it was the custom in many Balkan villages for a group of local girls to undress and then put on various combinations of leaves, sprigs, blossoms, flowers and herbs to perform the rainmaking ceremony. Early reports, made mostly if not entirely by male observers, describe these girls as ‘naked’ under their clothing of greenery: although what precise degree of undress this ‘nakedness’ really constituted is a moot point, since none of the commentators is likely to have witnessed the actual disrobing, let alone the training, preparation or rehearsal of the girls for the ceremony – roles which seem to have been reserved exclusively for mature and sometimes elderly women. At any rate, led by an older girl or young woman who had also been dressed or decorated in this way, the girls then went in procession through their village, and stopped in front of houses to perform dances and sing songs, which included formulaic refrains, all the while calling upon the heavens to send down rain. The housewives poured water over the leader of the troupe, and sometimes the girls themselves sprinkled water over the courtyards, using bundles of sprigs and leaves. They were then rewarded by the householders with flour or food and sometimes money.
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The Divine Connection of Water

15/2/2013

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Well - A pure source of deepest understanding and healing. A knowing beyond words. Divine connection.

I look at the words above, which form the definition of the card Well in the Go Deeper oracle, and I wonder what more there is to say. Water is such a wonder to me, in any form. To have it welling up out of the ground, unbidden, is surely a kind of miracle. I actually believe that all water is sacred - the dirty river, the stuff in a plastic bottle - even in all the places we fail to see the sacred, water is there. We are mostly water. The earth is mostly water. We may ignore, defile, dirty and desecrate the sacred, we may buy it and sell it and even imprison it, but it remains sacred.
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Water is a divine connection. You only have to look at the myth of the well at the centre of the world, where the salmon of knowledge swim, where the hazel trees drop their purple nuts for the salmon to eat, to know that this is both a great metaphor and a truth that we understand instinctively as water beings. Every well is a tributary of the great well, and so it is natural for sacred energy, or sacred beings, to gravitate to these places, just as it's natural for humans and animals to do so. We are thirsty - but not just for H2O. Our souls are thirsty, too, as is our energetic body.

I'm sure you know that wells are associated with knowledge and wisdom, with healing, with divination and with the granting of requests. They are a place of power. Water that has been purified by the earth carries many important minerals. However, it must also have a special energy.  Just how powerful the energetic memory of water might be is getting more interest these days among scientists. The following documentary is long, and I would be the first to suspect that it contains a fair dose of pseudo science. However, I believe that nevertheless, these scientists are following what Einstein said is most important - their intuition. There is immense food for thought here, and I really recommend taking the time to watch this, even if you consider one part or another of the whole to be questionable.


Just in case you didn't watch the video right away, it features a number of scientists who are doing research into the memory of water. Into how the molecular structure of water changes when it is influenced by all kinds of different things. Everything from human emotions to music to modern forms of water transportation and treatment are considered, and a few religious scholars and philosophers add in their thoughts along the way. The video constantly reminds us that not only is our existence defined by water, but that we have an influence over it. Perhaps that's why positive thinking works -- or prayer, or holy water and holy wells.

We know enough about how our world works to understand that water circulates. It evaporates and falls as rain, it works its way into the ground and comes up somewhere else as a spring, it flows down the sides of mountains to end up in the sea, where the process is repeated in an ancient cycle. To some extent, the scientists in the film tell us, water cleanses itself of the negative memories it acquires through things like freezing and evaporation. It wipes the slate clean. However, this also made me think that when we visit a holy well, when we bless food or drink (even the food contains water) when we bless the earth and when we bless ourselves and each other - we have the opportunity to connect with the divine in a way that is similar to that physical circulation of water. If the water heals us, perhaps this is also because we help to heal the water. If we lavish love and care on the earth and on her well-shrines, and other waters, we become part of a circulation of healing, of wisdom and knowledge, of love and gratitude.

Of all the Pagan practices that have survived many centuries of Christianity in Europe, the veneration and recourse to sacred wells is high on the list. The Roman church found it easiest to create new, saintly stories around these places, and let the traditions continue in slightly modified forms, but even in Scotland, with its long history of protestant Calvinism and accompanying concerns about "idolitry", sacred wells survived, and are visited to this day. What we perhaps lost, to some extent, was the worship and veneration, the gratitude for sacred energy that completes the circle of divine connection. In the past few centuries, the cultural climate might have been willing to allow a visit to a well to ask a favour or to say a prayer, but to be seen to be actively worshiping there was not always safe. In this way, as we moved into modern times, I think our culture perhaps lost a little of the best these places have to offer. The awe, the reverence, the holiness of these places was slowly replaced by a sense of a transaction. A place to tie a clootie, throw a coin, leave a bent pin. I am not making light of any of these traditions per se, so much as saying that there is potential, without worship, love and gratitude, without a sense of the two way working of the divine connection, to lose our place in all this.

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The photograph on my oracle card is of a well I have visited a number of times. It's not in a secret place, and I have not heard that it is even dedicated to a saint or goddess, or that it has reputed healing properties. It is in a small village in a somewhat remote part of a modern, developed European country. The people who live there are well educated and in some ways enjoy the best of both the modern world and an idyllic rural lifestyle - though not without its challenges. Their instinctive care for this small well, and their continued use of it into the 21st century, when every house has modern plumbing and piped water, is a testament to a deep knowing that is still within us. We are not only connected to the divine, we are the divine, but we easily become disassociated from the wholeness of the divine. Visiting the Well is not only about drinking of her waters, but about returning gratitude to her.
Further reading:
Sacred Waters - Holy Wells by Mara Freeman
Holy Wells in Ireland by Mary Ellen Sweeney

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Visions in meditation part 2 - Manannán

22/1/2013

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The sea is ever-changing.

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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 Dé Danann? 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...
Here are some tales of Manannán in His role as trickster-teacher.

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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!

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Yesterday evening I listened to an amazing recording by the poet, musician and story teller Robin Williamson. His telling of  The Voyage of Bran. (His rendering of the poetry is better than Meyer's which I have quoted below, since it's in the public domain.) 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.

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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

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