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A CELTIC QUEST
Caitlin Matthews
Author of many books on Celtic and native spirituality,
and a shamanic counsellor
THE QUEST FOR BELONGING
The following article concerns my own spiritual quest.
Like many people in Britain, I am descended from
Celtic stock but, cut off from my ancestral roots. I grew
up feeling spiritually dislocated and culturally
misplaced. Learning Irish, I read and researched my
people’s history, thereby discovering a wider context for
the Celtic peoples which is rarely related in history
books. Most strongly of all I was drawn to the spiritual
treasury which was still accessible - not through
orthodox spirituality alone, but through communion
with the ancestors of my race and the spirits of the land.
I have pursued my spiritual quest on all levels, by
scholarly research as well as by shamanic guidance,
using the ancient methods of retrieving information
which were employed by my ancestors. The result of
my quest has been a rediscovery of the inner spiritual
home which has nourished my people in the past and
which still offers shelter for many spiritual nomads
today.
For mine is but one such quest at a time when
spirituality is entering a more personally empowered
phase. The quest for spiritual ancestry and belonging is
one which is being widely experienced as social
fragmentation draws people from their land of origin to
seek a livelihood elsewhere. But this new spiritual urge
is not merely related to the individual’s belonging in a
landscape, it is also concerned with her historical and
ancestral context.
Against such a background as this we can contextualise
the resurgence of Pagan spiritualities, of which the
Celtic tradition is but one current. I cannot instance all
forms of Paganism, of which there are as many streams
as can be found within Hinduism, but I will attempt to
present one strand - the Celtic spiritual tradition, of
which I am a practitioner.
CELTIC SPIRITUALITY AS QUEST
The Celtic peoples spread out across Europe during the
first millennium BCE, eventually settling along its
western seaboard. They brought with them a spirituality
that was integral both to life itself and to the otherworld
which haunted their imagination. Theirs was a
spirituality which was rooted in the ancestral memory,
taking pride in tribal achievement, respecting the
natural world and always learning from it. It was an
animistic faith which understood the power of the
elements, and conceived of deities as ancestors and as
spirits of the landscape. Each part of the land had its
own traditional story, associated with a famous
ancestor. These stories are still told today, retained by
local people. Wherever we live on the land, its
traditions remain to inspire us, encouraging us to make
a spiritual journey to rediscover that inspiration and use
it for our own times.
One of the reasons I have been led to this tradition has
been the growing sense of creative and spiritual futility
in Britain. The creative and spiritual dimensions of life
are ill served, poorly treated and largely ignored by
most levels of society. We have entered the wasteland
of disenchantment; where our songs and stories are
replaced by the two-dimensional video image; where
our capacity to imagine, dream and create is extradited
from lives crammed with over-time or hollow with
unemployment; where our spiritual gifts and sacred
calling are politely veiled as being likely to give offence
to others.
The sacred Celtic journey is and has always been taken
in order to seek re-enchantment and revalidation of the
creative, imaginative and spiritual dimensions, to
restore nourishment to spiritual wastelands.
Prime among many Celtic stories of the sacred journey
is the Grail Quest which has origins in pre-Christian
Celtic myth as the cup or cauldron which restores life,
health, nourishment and courage. This is one of the
longest on-going stories which has survived from oral
tradition to medieval transcription, and which has been
up-dated in every generation since. It details the
personal spiritual progress from ignorance to mature
wisdom. The dangers of the quest are often monstrous,
or deluding phantoms which beset the traveller - in
much the same way that John Bunyan’s Christian
encounters in Pilgrim’s Progress. Spiritual perspicacity
and resourcefulness are pressed to their limits in the
dark wood, the perilous voyage, the mysterious grail
castle. The aim of the quest is the Grail which
regenerates all things - sometimes seen as healing
cauldron, sometimes as the Cup of the Last Supper.
Whichever is achieved, the Grail does not solely
transform its finder, but is achieved for the benefit of
all. This is the prime impulse and teaching of the quest
tradition which is found throughout all levels of the
Celtic tradition.
Parallel to this tradition is the Gaelic immram or
‘voyage’ quest, whereby a hero is called to penetrate to
the furthest West in order to find wisdom, healing or
paradise. For the Celtic peoples, the lands Westward
over the Atlantic have ever been the regions of the
Blessed Isles, the happy otherworld from which Faery
visitants, empowering objects, and supra-human
wisdom derive. As with the Grail quest, the immrama or
‘voyage stories’ are found in both pre and post Christian
traditions, testifying to the importance of these
journeys, which may have been remnants of a once
coherent ‘book of the dead’ teaching, preparing people
for states of existence after death, similar to the Tibetan
bardo wisdom.
This tradition of wisdom through story and quest is still
maintained by Celtic practitioners who utilize these
scenarios in a similar manner to the Jesuit way of
meditating on scripture in the Ignatian Spiritual
Exercises. This meditative repetition enhances the
stories thus used, creating distinct cosmological
pathways for all spiritual explorers. In this way,
traditional stories and myths are memorised arid retold,
not in any pretentious folkloric way, but as living
pathways of spiritual wisdom. The spiritual beings
encountered in these scenarios give actual teaching and
often provide otherworldly and ancestral guidance to
those bereft of ordinary reality tutors. By meditative
interface with these stories, the Celtic tradition is passed
on. Since these stories are part of living memory, the
necessity for book or ‘scripture’ is obviated, and the
scenarios can be used in any place from prison cell to
barren desert. This open secret is the key to the ongoing
nurture of the Celtic tradition.
TRAVELLERS ROUND THE
CIRCUIT OF THE YEAR
Recognized practitioners of Celtic spiritual tradition
may be enumerated as follows;
1.
2.
3.
4.
Druids.
Local villages, families and groups who follow and
have followed the Old Ways from early times.
Some groups of Wiccans. (the modern term for
witches or practitioners of the Old Ways).
Individuals who find spiritual freedom and validation
in following a native and traditional spirituality
which is rooted in their land and ancestral culture.
These constitute the largest of the groups outlined
above.
What is interesting to one in these groups is that Celtic
ethnicity is not necessarily a prerequisite, as might be
imagined. We have entered a phase of maturity wherein
spiritual lineage transcends blood lineage. The impulse
for joining such groups often springs from exposure to
the lands of Britain and Ireland, or from reading stories
and myths deriving from Celtic tradition. A sense of
belonging is also often felt from perceived memory of
previous incarnation.
There is no standardization in Celtic spiritual practice. It
is as diverse as Hinduism in this respect. The common
elements revolve around observance of the following
principles:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
belief in the inter-connectedness of all life forms
a deep reverence for the elements of fire, water, earth
and air.
a ritual observance of the seasonal sequence of the
year
a reverence for spirits of sacred sites - either the manmade or the natural sites
a reverence for the ancestors
6.
7.
8.
a deep love of music and story
belief in diverse god-forms or spiritual helpers
a sense of traditional continuity and relationship
between spiritual and mundane worlds.
All groups celebrate the Celtic festivals of Samhain,
Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, which are known in
the Christian and secular calendars as Halloween, St
Brighid’s Day, May Day and Lammas. Groups may also
celebrate the four quarter days whereby the movements
of the sun demark the year and its seasons: Midwinter,
Spring Equinox, Midsummer, Autumn Equinox. This
traditional observance of the year is a sacred journey
through the cycles of the earth, the moon, the sun and
the stars which is binding on all people. The observance
of festivals varies considerably, but usually involves
group celebration around a fire, where songs are sung,
dances danced, omens taken, feasts eaten etc. A master
or mistress of ceremonies or a core of organisers may be
elected to help co-ordinate events, but there is rarely a
single priestly figure leading here. It is common for a
group to jointly create and perform a mystery drama,
which reflects the spirit of the season and which
represents the protagonists, spirits, deities, animals,
spiritual powers etc.
Seasonal ritual is marked by group enjoyment. A casual
observer might not be able to tell the difference between
such a sacred celebration and a secular party. But there
is usually one clear sacred feature to each celebration,
even if a formal ritual drama is not enacted by the
company. At Samhain there is the divination by omens:
at Imbolc there is the lighting of candles and the
seclusion of women to enact a mystery relating to the
epiphany of Brighid; at Beltane there is usually some
sacred enactment of loving partnership and an
empowerment for the growing year; at Lughnasadh a
blessing upon the harvest is given.
Local folk-customs often reinforce such peer group
celebrations and testify to deep, ongoing traditions in
the community in which all people can share. Examples
of such celebrations can be seen at Padstow on May
Day where the whole Cornish village is involved in the
complex and repetitive rituals surrounding the hoss - a
shiny, black beaked hobby horse of fearsome aspect
which is animated by a dancer who capers within its
canvas-covered frame to the accompaniment of music.
It tours the village, repeating the figures of its energetic
dance and pitiful ‘death’, resurrecting itself with vigour.
This annual celebration is held by Celtic practitioners to
combine the terror and joyful catharsis which typify the
Old Ways.
The sacred journey of the horse, one of the totem beasts
of Britain, is also found at the time of Midwinter when a
series of hobby horses tour their locality, usually in the
company of mummers, guisers or morris dancers who
perform a Midwinter play in which the death and
resurrection of the year is enacted. The hobby horse is
usually terrifying and extorts money from viewers. The
design of the horse often incorporates a snapping mouth
which doubles as a money-box The latter day method of
collecting money for charitable purposes has perhaps
enabled this old custom to continue with some
plausibility within a Christian society. In former times,
the Midwinter hobby horses may have been closer in
function to the Welsh Man Lwyd, a horse’s skull on a
pole which is skirted with a white beribboned cloak; it
is animated by a skilled poet who, in company with
others, tours the locality in order to engage in riddling
dialogues with householders. The Man sings a
challenge and the householder must cap it. The riddling
dialogue, which is improvised, continues until one or
other sides is unable to continue - the Man is then
admitted to receive refreshment.
The ritual circuit of the horse remains strongly part of
the Celtic tradition, revealing the shamanic origins of
the old expression ‘the horse’s mouth’. Horse-flesh is
abhorrent to people living in Britain and Ireland,
although it is eaten with relish in France, Belgium,
Denmark and Germany. The ubiquity of horse as a
sacred animal is a constant in Celtic mythology; it is
one of the prime originative myths surrounding the
foundation of Armagh (anciently, Emain Macha). For
those living in North West Europe, the horse’s circuit is
tied up inextricably with the circuit of the sun, perhaps
revealing why the British hobby horse tradition is found
at opposite ends of the year; they are ritually processed around May (the traditional beginning of
summer) and at Midwinter and New Year (when the sun
begins to grow in strength.)
THE SILVER BRANCH AS LURE
In Celtic tradition, and especially within the immram
stories, the Silver Branch acts as a lure to take up the
path. Musical branches of metal were carried by ancient
Irish poets as emblems of poetic rank: the branch
symbolized a scion of the otherworldly axile tree from
which all wisdom derived. It alerted hearers to their
own spiritual quest and ancestral connection with all
life.
The silver branch is often carried also by an
otherworldly or Faery woman whose function is to
awaken the spiritual sleeper to radical action. Its
appearance in a story inevitably preludes a long and
dangerous spiritual quest, but one which is both
rewarding and enlightening. The appearance of
otherworldly messengers is common in Celtic tradition;
they frequently use music in order to awaken or lure the
unconscious soul. The Faery Woman, known also as the
bansidhe (banshee), sings to proclaim a coming death.
In the poetry of l4th-l8th century Ireland, she appears
as the aisling or vision woman, often representing the
oppressed land of Eire, who comes to call champions to
defend her. W. B. Yeats completed the politicization of
this ancient otherworldly messenger in his portrayal of
her as Kathleen O’Houlihan, the old woman, Ireland
herself, forever roaming the roads looking for better
times. Images such as these have been important in
inspiring the Celtic people from oppression and spiritual
despair into political independence and renewed
self-esteem.
In our own times, a song, a story are sufficiently potent
to restore the displaced soul of the Celtic people. This is
hardly surprising from a people whose traditions were
orally preserved and recited from memory’s storehouse.
We may instance the power of one such song. Prior to
the seventies, Scotland did not have many empowering
songs: only the old laments. Since then, national pride
and identity has been boosted by such songs as Flower
of Scotland, which is now sung by supporters in rugby
and football fields whenever Scotland plays and which
is the unofficial anthem of Scottish Nationalism. Its
lyrics (by Roy Williamson of the folk-group, The
Corries) kindle a new awareness of what is being lost
and what can be regained. Scotland’s resistance, not its
defeat is stressed here:
FLOWER OF SCOTLAND
O Flower of Scotland.
When will we see your like again?
That fought and died for
Your wee bit hill and glen
Chorus:
And stood against them
Proud Edward’s army
And sent him homeward tae think again
The hills are bare now
And autumn leaves lie thick and still
Oh land that is lost now,
Which those so dearly held.
Those days are past now,
And in the past they must remain;
But we can still rise now,
And be the nation again.
We note that, though the song begins in the old lament
mode, the Scots are exhorted to return to traditional
national values but only in order to implement them
right now, not in some distant past.
In my own ritual work, I have used the Silver Branch - a
crescent of apple-wood with sweet hawk-bells hanging
from hawk’s jesses - to bring peace and to instil a deeper
state of sacred listening. It is efficacious in calming
dissension and in awakening the otherworldly senses. It
leads listeners from the mundane world into the true and
blessed realms of the Celtic otherworld - which was its
original use in the hands of the shamanic Celtic poets.
THE CELTIC DIASPORA
The sacred journey is also discernible in the
semi-nomadic background of the Celtic peoples which
has led them all over the world. This exodus has not
been spurred only by economic necessity or the
displacement of war or clearance, it is central to the
Celtic spirit which seeks mystical enlightenment
through self-exile or journey. The Celtic peoples have
gone to the very ends of the earth led by spiritual
wanderlust, following the Westward track to the New
World of the Americas: the Welsh to Patagonia, the
Scots to Canada, the Irish to America.
Next year I make my own sacred journey to the Celtic
diaspora. I have been invited by an organization
affiliated to the Cree Nation, to come and give Celtic
ceremonies in Canada. This invitation surprised me,
since I knew that native peoples do not take admixture
with other traditions lightly. Then I discovered that
many Cree have Gaelic blood, due to the intermarriage
of Scottish emigrants with native peoples: they were
concerned that the Celtic ancestors were not being
honoured equally with their Cree ones. My presence is
intended to enable them to create an ancestral
bridgehead.
Later next year I travel to New Zealand to perform a
similar task. A group of white New Zealand women
have asked me to come and help them solve the
problems of their spiritual and ancestral displacement.
They had approached their local Maori women for help
in this, but were told, ‘We can’t share our traditions with
you until you find out who you are and where you come
from. What traditions do you have?’
This question is one which I have spent my life trying to
find out. What began for me as a quest for ancestral
belonging has brought me into the circle of a wider
family, people of all races and countries who seek the
spiritual lineage of the Celtic way. All my writing,
teaching and research has been in pursuit of that
tradition and how it may best be used in our world in
ways beneficial to all living beings.
The longer I live, the more I am discovering that within
the Celtic tradition, the sacred journey is the quest and
the finding.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carr-Gomm, Philip Elements of the Druid Tradition
Element Books, 1991
Dames, Michael Mythic Ireland Thames and Hudson, 1992
Matthews, Caitlin The Celtic Book of the Dead
Aquarian Press, 1992
Matthews, Caitlin Elements of the Celtic Tradition Element
books, 1989
Matthews, John Taliesin: Shamanism and the Bardic
Mysteries in Britain and Ireland Aquarian Press, 1990
Rees, Brinley and Alwyn Celtic Heritage Thames and
Hudson, 1961
RESOURCES
Caitlin Matthews gives practical and experiential workshops
in Celtic Shamanism and a variety of other related areas, as
well as offering shamanic counselling. She also lectures to
schools. To contact her, send two first class stamps to BCM
Hallowquest, London WC1N 3XX
Centre for Creation Spirituality St James Church, 197
Piccadilly, London W1V 9LS This group explores the
relationship between Christianity and native spiritualities,
including the Celtic tradition. Lectures, seminars and
workshops are given throughout the year.
Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids 260 Kew Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 3EG This druidic order is firmly
founded upon Celtic traditional lines, having a correspondence
training course, a tree planting programme and strong
commitment to spiritual practice. It is also a member of the
Council of British Druids which holds an annual Druidic
Christian-Conference.