Chapter One: YOUR CELTIC PATH
To find your Celtic Path you must first of all know that a unique lifepath is available to you, but only if you choose to find it, and then walk it. One great path shared by many awaits you; with each walker living their own personalised experience and expression of that shared Celtic Path.
Guidance, teachings and inspirations are offered in this book but it must be your choice to embrace and work with these ideas to emancipate your mind from mental and physical slavery and to stand proud as a free man or free woman.
The Celtic Path is not the opposite of the imperial path, nor is it the way to become somehow ‘above’ others or to be used as a means of control over people and resources. Instead it can be visualised as a way of ‘right relationship’ with all other living beings; of knowing that you have been here before; that you are fully awake here in the ever-unfolding now and that you will be here again in the ever-approaching future. It is not being suggested that this is an easy choice to make, but feeling the inner desire to enjoy fullness of life and to share experiences of common unity with others while sharing love and abundance, should be recognised as the first step already taken on your Path.
Each of us can only start from where we currently are in life. To move into a better reality that fills us with an empowering sense of being fully awake in each incarnation is the higher spiritual purpose that drives us all. But the control program that most of us know as ‘modern society’ prevents most people from ever knowing that such an option even exists, let alone believe it to be true. Instead, the control program seeks to create an insatiable hunger in the slaves it has created for them to aspire to become more like their masters; to fight and claw their way up the ladder to a supposed ‘better life’ within their respective spheres, as if this is the only option available. Happiness is presented as having more money, a bigger TV, a better car etc., etc. Success (they say) means owning more and bigger things, including a more comfortable prison cell (dwelling) in a more expensive area, with bigger and flashier toys and distractions such as the latest widescreen TV or new car, or expensive clothes and jet-set holidays. But in climbing their misplaced ladder we merely shift position within their control program, and with each such step we each move further away from becoming a true, shining, light-being. Many modern ‘revolutions’ seek restructuring of the control program without calling it such, but rearranging a system of power over others will only produce a new system of controlling others under a different name.
The real revolution is spiritual evolution and it is those who walk a common path away from the control program that generate the abundance for the greater good. Food sovereignty of local, organically grown produce for example, that can be shared, traded or exchanged for other locally-produced goods is the key to creating and living in a better world for everyone. There are many reasons for such common unity to be successful in an empirical sense but it is in the immeasurable happiness that is generated that proves its true value. People working with Nature co-creating abundance and happiness is what happens when the masters disappear. We have been there before - let us go there now!
Embracing the Primordial Tradition
All ancient cultures had their own understanding and unique path of connection to a higher knowledge system, one that is above and beyond individual abilities or capacities. It has been known by many different names over the millennia but it is being walked by men and women everywhere to reach very similar conclusions. This ‘understanding and connection’ is known today by the Celtic Druid Temple members as the Primordial Tradition.
The Druids of the Celtic Homelands had, and have their own unique Path to bring them into elevated consciousness; a higher awareness of the human over-mind, all focused on right relationship and care for the greater good of all life. This is what we know and see as the Primordial Tradition. It may be a difficult concept in contrast to today’s consumerism but in times past and in new times happening right now, the special understanding gained from walking a Celtic Path to the Primordial Tradition means sharing wisdom gained for the betterment of all beings, including minerals and plant life.
Everyone has occasional glimpses of this higher way of being, of caring for the greater good; and some people have focused their life-path on making a full appreciation and understanding of it so they can bring the highest wisdom back to benefit us all. A true Druid cannot exploit this insight for personal gain. Instead he or she must find ways to share their knowledge and seek out people to share it with so that the wisdom collectively gained can be re-shared, grounded or planted as a seed to multiply organically.
Ireland’s Unique Path
The Celtic Homelands stretch from the west coast of Ireland to the Ural Mountains in Russia and from the Mediterranean coast to the southern edge of the Baltic countries. Each modern country inside this huge area has its own very unique appreciation and expression of our Celtic Heritage.
Ireland’s location as an Island on the western shores of Europe has had - and continues to have many benefits and many challenges. Our island was once known as the ‘edge of the world’ where the winds and waters of Atlantis washed our rocky shores. Its isolation allowed some protection from the great wars and plagues that repeatedly savaged the European mainland. At the same time ancient Ireland depended on a two-way trade with mainland Europe and beyond, for luxuries such as silk and wine. But we also had repeated invasions of foreign imperial colonialists seeking to exploit our abundant natural resources from the great forests that once covered the land. There is one imperial invasion of Ireland in particular that stands out above all others in terms of its damage to the free expression of our Celtic Spirit. Over hundreds of years, the scribes of the Catholic Church composed their many fake histories of Ireland, which unfortunately remain accepted even today as ‘Irish Celtic Mythology’.
But these contrived histories were not written by Celts - they were written by those who sought to control or contain the wild and free energies of a Celtic people. These fake accounts should properly be known as ‘the Church Mythology of Celtic Ireland’, because our Celtic history has yet to be accurately documented. To be able to record or recollect it with some measure of authenticity, there must first be an undoing of the twists and insults loaded on to us by the Church and its education-indoctrination system.
One example of our lost story is the fact that Ireland is known in the Gaelic language as Éire, a name that comes from the old Irish word Ériu. Ériu is the name of a daughter of Ernmas, who was the mother goddess of fertility and agriculture. Ernmas was one of the ancient gods of the Tuatha De Danaan– the mythical people of the Goddess Danu - and Ériu’s sisters were Banba and Fódla.
But none of this is taught to children in our schools today because until recently all of the schools were controlled and administered 100% by the Catholic Church who were determined to erase and rewrite any part of our history that didn’t align with their ‘educational’ agenda. Nevertheless, we are blessed with a rich, although mostly hidden cultural heritage. There are hundreds of thousands of ancient monuments to be seen in Ireland, places where we can simply sit in meditation and silence, dreaming peacefully while charging up our bodies’ energy field. A tradition of folk-lore and place-name heritage including magic stories with a living connection to our own ancient myths still exists.
A classic example is when, during fierce storms, some people may still be heard to remark “Manannán is angry today”. Manannán was the ancient god of the sea. It was he who gave the allfather god Dagda the great shield, who in turn gave the great shield to Fionn mac Cumhaill - that famous hunter-warrior of Irish legend and so the story continues over the millenia. Inside this continuity of cultural heritage is the spirit of right relations to Nature; of masculine and feminine dignity and divinity; of respect, not fear; of sharing, not hoarding; and many other such natural principles and practices that the Catholic Church tried so hard to erase.
The familiar in-house and road-side statues of Mary and Brigid to be seen here in the West of Ireland are representations of the goddess energy that the Church sought so hard to suppress. Mary’s ‘divinity’ for example has recently been downgraded to her only being ‘Divine’ from the time of conception to the birth of Jesus’. This repression of the feminine divine was done by a male dominated patriarchal Church in an effort to disconnect people from the idea that Mary (as a model of the holy feminine) had any inherent power herself, whereupon people were then told to ask Mary, now merely as an intercessor, to try to get Jesus to fix their problems. Nevertheless, small statues of Mary and Brigid still exist in many households, whilst larger ones adorn roadside shrines reminding the world of the belief rooted in ancient myths and scriptures that there are indeed strong independent women who connect directly with ‘goddess energies’ as did their Celtic ancestors. Many such long-established Celtic customs and accepted ways of behaving have survived the passing of time, and have persisted despite the covert agenda of the alien Episcopal supremacy.
The best known may be the continued celebration of the 8 ancient solar festivals throughout the year, such as Samhain, the end of summer, when the people celebrate the end of the old year and the start of the new year. Although corrupted and redesigned to displace Samhain, Halloween is now a special Catholic event in most Irish homes, an event that mirrors Samhain in many ways. Imbolg has also been displaced by St Brigid’s day, but the festival was originally to honour the Goddess Brigid, daughter of Dagda, the good God of the winter solstice also known today as Christmas. Earrach is now called Spring and the exact time of ‘equal day and equal night’ is, interestingly, usually on St Patrick’s day, still a time of national celebration. It is important to note that St Patrick is claimed to have chased the Dragon known as Crom out of Ireland while ‘St Paddy’s Day’ today ignores this connection altogether. This displacement occurred because any mythical battles between Catholic saints and Dragons had to be claimed by the Catholic Church as symbolic of their authority and control over the Indigenous Gods. Interestingly, in the last few years many huge dragons have been seen in St Patrick’s day parades. It should also be noted that the biggest star group Hydra (water dragon/serpent) becomes fully visible from Ireland at night at the time of the spring equinox on the same day; March 17th each year. Bealtine was rebranded as ‘May Day’ which celebrates the start of summer, when the trees are in full leaf, the cows were let out into pastures, and all communities gathered honouring Bilé the father of the Gods and husband to Danu.
The summer solstice gatherings honoured the longest days of the year where the people would assemble at their gathering places. This longest day is sacred to the White Mare Goddess, who was known in Ireland as Éatain Eachraidhe, or as Macha or Aonbharr. This was the Iron Age expression of the goddess. In the preceding age the goddess was honoured as the White Cow or as Boann / Boyne, the sacred river that flows before Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth. Lughnasa was the first of 3 harvests and honours the God Lugh, often mistakenly called the Sun God. Lugh was one of the chief gods of the Tuatha De Danann and he ‘created’ a celebration consisting of a funeral feast and tribal games that commemorated the death of his foster-mother Tailtiu. This event is still celebrated today as the Lughnasadh festival. Fómhar or the Autumn Equinox is the second of the three great harvests. This was a serious processing of cattle; preparing meat for smoking, drying and salting, and readying skins for tanning, complete with great bone fires to keep the flies and vultures away. Feasting was a central feature because the people brought stock (cattle) for slaughter, and for grading and selection for the next cull at Samhain.
Research by the author shows that the Crane Bird constellation is high in the night sky at this time of the year and when we look south at midnight we see ‘Corr’ in the shape of the star-group known as Cygnus. The Eurasian Crane, once the third most popular pet in Ireland, became extinct here only in late medieval times, sometime between 1540 and 1600. A new book, entitled Corr Scéal - “Crane Notions” written by Lorcán Ó Tuathail explains the importance of the Corr / Crane to our ancestors. We at the Celtic Druid Temple call the Goddess associated with Corr by the name Corra and have acknowledged her return to our country again in 2018. Corra Abú. ‘Hooray for Corra’!
These eight solar festivals Samhain, Geimhreadh, Imbolg, Earrach, Beltine, Samhradh, Lughnasadh, Fomhar are still honoured by the free people of Ireland today because of a belief that has been passed on from one generation to another. A comprehensive appreciation of these 8 celebrations of the Sun or solar year is explored in great detail in the online homestudy course to be found at www.celticdruidtemple.com
There is also the ancient tradition of teaching in triads. A triad is arrangement of ideas, concepts or philosophies presented in a group of three sentences. Found throughout the world in ancient literature and found in profusion in writings relating to Ireland and her people. The Catholic Church even added their own triads to their ‘Church Mythology of Celtic Ireland’. But those latter triads stand out from the Celtic Triads because the Church triads are often hierarchical in nature and not crafted for the benefit of everyone as was the Celtic way. In other words, the Celtic triads were people-centered, not institution centered. Then there was the storytelling. Stories about the true impact of things natural and historical that happened to the people. But these were stories with life and imagination and a depth of understanding that went beyond the mere facts. Great tales of cosmic battles between the gods of the ancestors and unimaginable beasts causing widespread terror instilled listeners with respect and caution.
The lineage stories of the noble families were retold, complete with warning tales about the fairies and what to do when caught in their many traps. All of these tales emerged out of this living storytelling tradition. Before our culture was written down, before it was sterilised and sanitised by the Church, it was a fluid, living history. A longstanding cycle of community stories existed in those days. These living stories would have been told around camp fires. The stories were aligned to the stars as their main framework with the more prominent planets in the role of current players, with news and prophecies adding warnings and guidance for daily decision-making. Our ancient tradition of living storytelling has mostly died off these days with the advent of the TV, radio and distracting mass media, but there are still those who teach in story form for those that have the ears to hear.
When stories like these get written down, they lose something. They freeze into a script on a page. Fixed to the time-and-date of writing, living oral traditions lose their ability to share current news or interpret the imminent signs. They are no longer the fluid, flowing commentaries at one with Nature, ever-changing and evolving, delivering essential guidance and insight, but instead with their crucial meanings now twisted to suit a foreign imperial agenda as the life-spark goes out of them. These stories are repeated by the New Age Bandits and Neopagans as ‘facts’ becaue they were written down and they simply repeat the disinformation of the church scribes...
Thus, bit by bit the ancient great ones were reduced to whores, witches and tricksters as our Celtic culture became progressively replaced with imperial dogma. Every aspect of life was changed by the Church until it was no longer recognisable as Celtic culture. This was done to our language, to the old stories, to the Triads, to the old Gael Laws known as Fenechus, as well as to Ogham, the secret language of the Druids.