Tír Na nÓg, this is our otherworld, more than a heaven - a place where nobody knows of sadness, and where nobody ever gets old, where everyone there lives forever, but there is more than one Celtic Otherworld.
Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth)
Tir Tairngire (the Land of Promise)
Tir na tSamhraidh (the Land of Summer)
Tir na mBeo (the Land of the Living)
Tír N-aill (the Other Land)
Tir fo Thuinn (the Land under the Waves)
Mag Mell (the Plain of Delights / the Plain of Happiness / the Plain of Honey)
Magh Ildathach (the Plain of Many Colors)
Magh Mór (the Great Plain)
Magh Da Cheo (the Plain of the Two Mists)
Emain Ablach (Emhain of the Apples)
Hy-Brasil (Breasal’s Island)
Hy-Falga (Falga’s Island)
Dun Scaith (Fortress of Shadows)
and Tech Duinn (the House of Donn - but a doorway is not the place itself)
Some quote from famous authors on our otherworld follow.
W. B. Yeats: “In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart… Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the shadows of things beyond.”
George William Russell: “Many go to the Tir-na-nÓg in sleep, and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence of a soul.”
Peter Berresford Ellis: “[Otherworld is a] general term for the various lands of the gods, both good and evil, and for the place where one was reborn after death…A constant exchange of souls was always taking place between the two worlds; death in this world brought a soul to the Otherworld and death in the Otherworld brought a soul to this world”
John Arnott MacCulloch: “the underlying religious doctrine, the immortality of the soul, which, at least in the context of the ancient Celtic religion, i.e., Celtic paganism, makes the existence of the Otherworld possible.”
and
“Many races have imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time, eternal happiness and eternal love.”
Thomas William Hazen Rolleston: “The world of the dead was in all respects a replica of this world, but it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief—a survival of the older conception of the bodily state of the dead—they resume their tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings. Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their customary dress. Like the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed and clothe the dead in the other world.”
and
“The fact is that the Celtic conception of the realm of death differed altogether from that of the Greeks and Romans…The Other-world was not a place of gloom and suffering, but of light and liberation…Evil, pain, and gloom there were, no doubt, and no doubt these principles were embodied by the Irish Celts in their myths of Balor and the Fomorians…but that they were particularly associated with the idea of death is, I think, a false supposition founded on misleading analogies drawn from the ideas of the classical nations.”
Charles Squire: “Such identification of a mere mortal country with the other world seems strange enough to us, but to our Celtic ancestors it was a quite natural thought. All islands—and peninsulas, which, viewed from an opposite coast, probably seemed to them islands—were deemed to be per-eminently homes of the dark Powers of Hades. Difficult of access, protected by the turbulent and dangerous sea, sometimes rendered quite invisible by fogs and mists and, at other times, looming up ghostily on the horizon…they gained a mystery and a sanctity from the law of the human mind which has always held the unknown to be the terrible,” (source: Celtic Myth and Legend).
Walter Evans-Wentz: “The Celtic Otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save with the mystic vision of the Irish seer,”
and
“[T]here are many Otherworlds. The Tír-na-nog of the ancient Irish, in which the races of the Sidhe exist, may be described as a radiant archetype of this world, though this definition does not at all express its psychic nature. In Tír-na-nog one sees nothing save harmony and beautiful forms. There are other worlds in which we can see horrible shapes.”
Access to this Irish otherworld
Manannán mac Lir is the ruler king of Tir na nÓg and god of the Sea. It is Manannán who takes the dead from this world to the other world by his boat without sail or oars or by his white mare that gallops on sea or land.
It is believed that Tech Donn - the House of Donn or Bull Rock is the main entrance portal where all the souls of the dead must gather before traveling to their final destination of Tir na nÓg. This is an actual island with an arch or bridge over the sea.
Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth)
Tir Tairngire (the Land of Promise)
Tir na tSamhraidh (the Land of Summer)
Tir na mBeo (the Land of the Living)
Tír N-aill (the Other Land)
Tir fo Thuinn (the Land under the Waves)
Mag Mell (the Plain of Delights / the Plain of Happiness / the Plain of Honey)
Magh Ildathach (the Plain of Many Colors)
Magh Mór (the Great Plain)
Magh Da Cheo (the Plain of the Two Mists)
Emain Ablach (Emhain of the Apples)
Hy-Brasil (Breasal’s Island)
Hy-Falga (Falga’s Island)
Dun Scaith (Fortress of Shadows)
and Tech Duinn (the House of Donn - but a doorway is not the place itself)
Some quote from famous authors on our otherworld follow.
W. B. Yeats: “In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart… Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the shadows of things beyond.”
George William Russell: “Many go to the Tir-na-nÓg in sleep, and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence of a soul.”
Peter Berresford Ellis: “[Otherworld is a] general term for the various lands of the gods, both good and evil, and for the place where one was reborn after death…A constant exchange of souls was always taking place between the two worlds; death in this world brought a soul to the Otherworld and death in the Otherworld brought a soul to this world”
John Arnott MacCulloch: “the underlying religious doctrine, the immortality of the soul, which, at least in the context of the ancient Celtic religion, i.e., Celtic paganism, makes the existence of the Otherworld possible.”
and
“Many races have imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time, eternal happiness and eternal love.”
Thomas William Hazen Rolleston: “The world of the dead was in all respects a replica of this world, but it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief—a survival of the older conception of the bodily state of the dead—they resume their tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings. Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their customary dress. Like the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed and clothe the dead in the other world.”
and
“The fact is that the Celtic conception of the realm of death differed altogether from that of the Greeks and Romans…The Other-world was not a place of gloom and suffering, but of light and liberation…Evil, pain, and gloom there were, no doubt, and no doubt these principles were embodied by the Irish Celts in their myths of Balor and the Fomorians…but that they were particularly associated with the idea of death is, I think, a false supposition founded on misleading analogies drawn from the ideas of the classical nations.”
Charles Squire: “Such identification of a mere mortal country with the other world seems strange enough to us, but to our Celtic ancestors it was a quite natural thought. All islands—and peninsulas, which, viewed from an opposite coast, probably seemed to them islands—were deemed to be per-eminently homes of the dark Powers of Hades. Difficult of access, protected by the turbulent and dangerous sea, sometimes rendered quite invisible by fogs and mists and, at other times, looming up ghostily on the horizon…they gained a mystery and a sanctity from the law of the human mind which has always held the unknown to be the terrible,” (source: Celtic Myth and Legend).
Walter Evans-Wentz: “The Celtic Otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save with the mystic vision of the Irish seer,”
and
“[T]here are many Otherworlds. The Tír-na-nog of the ancient Irish, in which the races of the Sidhe exist, may be described as a radiant archetype of this world, though this definition does not at all express its psychic nature. In Tír-na-nog one sees nothing save harmony and beautiful forms. There are other worlds in which we can see horrible shapes.”
Access to this Irish otherworld
Manannán mac Lir is the ruler king of Tir na nÓg and god of the Sea. It is Manannán who takes the dead from this world to the other world by his boat without sail or oars or by his white mare that gallops on sea or land.
It is believed that Tech Donn - the House of Donn or Bull Rock is the main entrance portal where all the souls of the dead must gather before traveling to their final destination of Tir na nÓg. This is an actual island with an arch or bridge over the sea.
This island was home to Donn Firinne, one of the six chiefs of the Tuatha De Dannan and he seems to get replaced by Donn of the Milesians who however does the same job of gatekeeper to the other world. Donn was aboard a ship of Míl Espáine that brought the ancestors of the Irish people from Portugal/Spain to Ireland. Donn, offended the goddess Ériu of the Tuatha De Dannan and was struck down by a storm before reaching land. His body washed up onto high ground at Tech Duinn, “the House of Donn” a rocky island called Bull Rock that even today is still believed to be a gathering place for the dead.
Bull Rock these days is a solar powered automated un-inhabited Lighthouse located 4 km off Dursey Island at the end of the Beara Peninsula in West Coprk, Ireland. There are a number of hazardous rocks off the western end of Dursey Island: The Bull, The Cow, The Calf and The Heifer. Bull Rock has steep sides with a summit of 305 feet above sea level.
The Bull has a large tunnel running all the way through the rock. It is at Samhain that Donn blows his horn calling the dead together to go with Manannán to Tir na nÓg.
You can watch a 9 minute video of the Bull Rock lighthouse recorded in 1979 at
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0114/1023147-bull-rock-lighthouse/
Amazing tours at https://durseyboattrips.com/
Tech Duinn is a place - it is the gate way to Tir na nÓg
You can watch a 9 minute video of the Bull Rock lighthouse recorded in 1979 at
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0114/1023147-bull-rock-lighthouse/
Amazing tours at https://durseyboattrips.com/
Tech Duinn is a place - it is the gate way to Tir na nÓg
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