Life after Death, Catholicism, C.S. Lewis, and European Myth

What important points did you learn from this article?

Compare and contrast these mythological beliefs about death and those in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Which ideas might Lewis have taken from myth and which ideas did he not?

How do our Catholic beliefs about life after death compare to what you just read in regard to:1) Sections or boundaries

2) Concept of soul

3) Judgment and punishment

4) The Shift from the Otherworld to the Underworld in Northern Europe

Early Celtic religion was polytheistic, nature centered, and administered by a priestly caste called the Druids. The Druids were a major power within the Celtic empire, with all public and private affairs subject to their authority. Before Christianity had spread to these area, there was no hell-like world. Everything non-mortal existed in the Otherworld, which was always located to the west. After the influence of Christianity, the otherworld had been transformed into an underworld, namely to punish and lower the power of the old pagan gods in the eyes of the Northern European peoples. The Celtic Realms as well as their rulers were an important source of legendary underworld culture.

The Celtic underworld, Annwfn, is often called the kingdom of shades. It is a series of coexisting realms containing many different life-forms. In addition to housing the souls of the damned, Annwfn includes areas owned by the gods and the benevolent spirits. These different sectors are separated by mountain ranges, rivers and impassable chasms.

In the poem, Preiddeu Annwfn, Annwfn is depicted as a paradise island associated with King Arthur. In search of the Holy Grail, the narrator of this poem, Taliesin (who was a member of an expedition into the land of the Otherworld), provides a descriptive account of Annwfn. The poem relates that Annwfn is divided into three regions, Caer Wydyr, Caer Feddwidd, and Arran or Avalon. (Celtic Otherworld)

Caer Wydr, also referred to as Nennius, lies within a glass fort. It is not a waste land, but it is a gloomy and dark land. Of the three regions, Caer Wydr, is considered the most undesirable place to reside after death. In the poem, Taliesin relates that the members of the expedition try to strike up a conversation with the fortress guard, but he said nothing and acted as if they were not there at all. His silence indicated that only lost souls inhabited this land. (Celtic Otherworld)

Caer Feddwidd, the Fort of Carousal, is ruled by Arianrhod, the Goddess of time, space, and energy. It is also known as Caer Rigor or Caer Siddi. Taliesin reports that there is a mystical fountain of wine in this land which, if drunk from, one will find eternal youth and health. (Celtic Otherworld)

The third region of Annwfn is Arran or Avalon, and is considered the most divine of the three lands. Arran is based largely on pagan beliefs and hosts the Cauldron of Plenty, which is also linked to the Holy Grail. Avalon is closely associated with the Arthurian legends. These legends relate that only those who are pure, self sacrificing, and spiritual are allowed to enter this region. (Celtic Otherworld)

Another Northern European realm in Ireland, was known as the Cave of Cruachan in Connaught, and has been called the gateway to the underworld. In the old legends, Cruachan is a gateway through which dead armies of zombies come to attack the living. Christians updated the tales, claiming that it is through the cave that condemned human souls enter the underworld.

The inhabitants of this Irish realm were also an important part of their legends. The Fomorii are a monstrous race of creatures who dwell far below the sea. The inhabitants of this gloomy underworld are horribly misshapen and deformed. They are ruled by Balor, who has a terrible tempter, and often strikes out against his subjects without provocation. Legends vary, but most agree that the Fomorii's evil caused their deformities. In addition, Balor's wrath is punishment for the sins of their past.

All over Northern Europe different legendary Celtic gods or lords ruled the underworld. Bile is known as the ancient Celtic lord of the dead. He is said to be an evil and vicious god who requires human sacrifices to appease his violent nature. The kingdom of Bile is a vast wasteland of crushed spirits and broken bodies who must pay the deity eternal homage.

Bran is another the lord of the dead in Welsh mythology. His symbol is the raven, an image associated with death and the grave. Bran was a deified mortal who angered the gods, was beheaded, and then banished to the underworld as punishment for his transgressions. Bran's kingdom of the dead is filled with failed heroes who must spend eternity in angst and regret.

According to ancient Gaelic myth, another deity is Mider, a benevolent god of the underworld. Mider is a just overlord who does not torture spirits in his kingdom. His realm is a place of tedium and sorrow rather than physical pain. Mider has a magic caldron capable of performing supernatural feats. However, Mider's daughter betrays him and helps the hero Cuchulain steal the magic cauldron from the underworld.

Cernunnous, the horned one, is the ancient Celtic god of the underworld and ruler of the dead. Images of the dark sorcerer, etched into cave walls in France, date back to 9000 BC. Cernunnous is portrayed as a horned figure surrounded by fearsome animals. He is also associated with hunting and fertility. Cernunnous became identified with the antichrist (Satan) when Christianity spread to the Celtic regions. After the conversion of Ireland, Cernunnous was increasingly linked with a dark and foul underworld, the dwelling place of evil spirits and souls of the damned.

Gwynn is another Celtic god of the underworld. He is a hunter who preys on souls, claiming then for the underworld, Annwfn. Gwynn is also associated with Fairies, who have also been called the hosts of hell by some Christians.

The Celtic Donn is the Irish underworld god. According to legend, Donn was drowned by the Goddess Eriu after he insulted her. From that point on, he appears in the tales as the keeper of the first guidepost on the journey to the Otherworld. The dead were believed to have briefly visited or passed by his house just after the moment of death. This house is located on an island called Techn Duinn or House of Donn that is southwest of Munster off the coast of Ireland.

Another legendary Northern European realm is known as Niflheim. This land of mists is the Germanic underworld. It is described a cold realm of icy suffering ruled by the goddess, Hel. Souls of those who die by any other means other than battle are sent to Niflheim. It is surrounded by steep walls that are impassable to the living. It lies on the other side of Echoing Bridge, a treacherous passageway to the land of spirits. Souls are challenged and assaulted as they try to cross. Niflheim is a dreary, dark place of everlasting winter where a poisonous fountain spews rivers of ice. The entrance to Niflheim is Gnipahelli, a dark, foul smelling opening that is guarded by the fierce dog Garm. The ferocious monster is forever watching for Hermodr, the dark ferryman who brings the dead to the underworld. Garm also prevents the spirits from escaping Niflheim.

The goddess Hel, is the ruler of Niflheim and it's inhabitants. She is a hideous creature who is half human and half green rotting corpse. Hel is the daughter of the trickster god, Loki, and the giantess, Angrboda. Hel is also the sibling of both the Midgard Worm, who will cause the sea to flood the world with lashings of his tail, and of Fenrir, the phantom wolf who will swallow the sun at Ragnarok. Hel is aided by Hermodr who ferries some spirits to Niflheim. Other souls of immoral people wash up on the haunted shore of Nastron and are then delivered to Hel for punishment. Hel's father, Loki, is there to help. Legend's report that Loki who was banished to the underworld after becoming increasingly hostile and deceitful. He eventually killed Baldar, a fellow deity, sealing his own fate.

Sulis is the Romano-Celtic underworld goddess. She is also known as a deity concerned with knowledge and prophecy. Sulis is the tutelary goddess of the thermal waters at Bath, England, and is closely linked with the roman goddess, Minerva.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/5999/hell/celtic.html

The Otherworld

The land of the sidhe / Tuatha Dé Danann / Children of Don / Children of Llyr. That is, the home of the supernatural figures alternately called gods and faeries.

The designation of this land as "the otherworld" might be due to the etymology of the word Annwfn, one of the Welsh names for the place:

an- (intensifying prefix) + dwfn: deep = "The Very-Deep Place"an- (negating prefix) + dwfn: world = "The Not-World"

In other words, we are dealing with a place which is deep in the earth, but not what we think of as the underworld, i.e. the land of the dead (called Uffern in later Welsh). The pagan Celts--and modern druids--believed in reincarnation, and so there was no real "land of the dead" per se, and especially no "god of the dead" despite the claims of Julius Caesar that the Celts say they are descended of Dis Pater. Only later, in the manuscripts, are we told of Tech Duinn as the home of the dead.

In Celtic mythology, it seems that the Otherworld can be divided into two realms (using Irish terms): the sidhe and Hy-Breasil.

Sídhe

The sídhe, while generally used as a collective term for the gods or faeries, originally refered to the long barrows, the hollow hills that the Tuatha Dé Danann inhabit.

According to Irish myth, the Tuatha Dé Danann were driven into the hills--literally, sídhe--after being defeated by the Milesians, the modern Irish. They sought refuge inside the hills, and through the wisdom of Manannan mac Lír, divided up into seperate kingdoms, with one high king over the various sidhe--this king was Bodb Derg, much to the anger of Lír. The most famous of these sídhe were Brú na Bóinne and Temhair in Meath.

What must be remembered, though, is that these hills are in fact neolithic structures--burial mounds. While the early history of Ireland is somewhat murky, let's propose an idea, one which has been floated around before. Could the Irish have known the function of the sídhe? Could the worship of these gods/faeries who inhabit the sidhe be a form of ancestor worship? It's unknown, and purely speculation.

The sidhe also exists in Welsh tradition. It is refered to as a gorsedd, meaning "seat", tor meaning "hill" or "tower", and "Caer Siddi" in the poems of Taliesin. For instance, there is the Gorsedd Arbeth, where Pwyll pen Annwfn first sees Rhiannon, and where later Pryderi causes an enchantment to fall on Dyfed. Then there is Glastonbury Tor, where according to one saints' life--that of Saint Collen--Gwynn ap Nudd rules over the Tylwyth Teg. Giraldus Cambriensis records the story of Elidur, a priest who lived with the "Good People" as a child, after finding their home in the side of a hill. Interestingly, Girladus claims that they spoke Greek, which would back up certain claims of descendence from the Greeks and Trojans, a common theme in some of the early histories and bruts

Then there is Caer Siddi, mentioned in the poems of Taliesin:

Save only sevenNone returned from Caer Siddi.--"The Spoils of Annwn"

Perfect is my seat in Caer SiddiManawyd and Pryderi know it.--"Song Before the Sons of Llyr"

While the word siddi is a borrowing from the Irish sídhe, it should be noted that this actually seems to refer to an Otherworld island; for that, see below under Hy Breasil.

It should be noted that in Welsh literature there isn't a firm tradition of sidhe as a home to the gods, as there is in Irish literature. Figures like Gwydion, Arianrhod , and Bendigedfran do not live in the hollow hills; it is the home to "lesser" supernatural beings who have not been rationalized into kings and queens.

While Annwn/Annwfn--the Otherworld as ruled by Arawn--isn't specifically said to be inside a hill, it is likely that that is the case in the earliest version of the story. In alternate tales, when Annwfn is ruled by Gwyn ap Nudd, entrance is gained through Glastonbury Tor (see "St. Collen and Gwyn ap Nudd").

Now, when a human finds his way into these sidhe, it is usually on one of the "Fire Festivals": Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnassadh. On these days--but especially Samhain and Beltane--the doors on the hills would open and the faeries would walk about the realm of men. There are numerous stories, both literary (such as those dealing with Fionn mac Cumhill) and folklore (too numerous to mention) wherein the hero witnesses the faeries leaving and entering the hollow hills on these days, participating on combat on these days, and so on. This method seems to be discouraged by the faeries--this is their time, and the human who stumbles upon them is often punished in some form.

The other method of finding a way into the sidhe was to be lost: caught up in a magical fog--such as when Conn Céad Cathach and his men were caught, and found themselves at the house of Lugh Lamhfada, or lost in the woods, such as when Pwyll ran into Arawn while hunting. This is usually a case of being selected by the god for a special reason--kingship, or switching roles for a duel. In these instances, the hero is (eventually) rewarded for his deeds.

What is most important about the sídhe is that while it is supernatural, ruled by gods, it is very much like our world--there are wars, jealousy, betrayals. It is as full as strife as our world, and often this strife bleeds over into our world.

Hy Breasil

The term Hy Breasil (and its various spellings) refers to the Blessed Isles of legend. Until the modern era (well into the age of exploration), maps would often have an island of "Brasil" or "Breasil" out in the Atlantic. The idea of islands out to the west is, of course, half based in fact and half based in myth: the Hesperides and Hy Breasil could just as easily be the Azores and the Faroe Islands. So it is no surprise that the Celts had islands in their Otherworld; it is important to notice, though, that they differ with the sidhe in both their governance and their reachability.

According to Irish (and occasionally in Welsh) mythology, the islands lie "beyond the ninth wave." Now, the reason for this is likely bound up with their fondness for the number three--nine, of course, is 3 x 3--a square of three, probably representing perfection (this is just speculation). The Otherworld islands are lands of peace and eternal life, unlike the sidhe:

Without grief, without sorrow, without death,Without any sickness, without debility,That is the sign of Emain--

Uncommon is an equal marvel.--The Voyage of Bran

In Irish myth, these islands are ruled by Manannan mac Lír. Now, Manannan, while a god, is not really one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He has no pedigree with them, but instead is descended of Ler, "the sea" about whom little is known, though he is the later basis of Shakespeare's King Lear. And so, as the isles are not ruled by the TDD, they are peaceful, not centered on the inter-tribal warfare of the sidhe. They are also extremely difficult to access. One only reaches these islands through the invitation of Manannan or his daughters. This process is usually termed an echtrae.

In The Voyage of Bran and in other Irish texts, we are give several names for the Otherworld Islands:

Emhain Abhlach: Plain of Apples,Mag Findargat,Mag Argatnél,Mag Réin,Mag Mon,Mag Mell,Aircthech,Ciuin,Emne,Imchiuin,Ildathach,Inis Subai: Isle of Joy,Tír na mBean: the Land of Women,Tìr fo Thonn: the Land Beneath the Wave,Tìr Tairnigir: the Land of Promise,Tír na nOg: the Land of Youth,Hy Breasil / Hy-Brazil / Hi Brasil: Most Best Place (?)

The Voyage of Máel Dúin (though a Christian immram) lists some forty islands, while The Voyage of Saint Brendan lists still more islands; both texts are similiar to the early, pagan echtrae in their descriptions of these islands.

For a human to come to these islands was, except in certain circumstances, to be there for eternity. Connla and Oisín were chosen by lovestricken daughters of Manannan. While Connla was never seen again, Oisín foolishly decided to return to Ireland to see his family again; he found that hundreds of years had passed in the interim. Moreover, once he dismounted from his enchanted white horse and set foot on the soil, those hundreds of years caught up with Oisín and he died. Similarly, Bran, after visiting the various islands mentioned above, returned to Ireland only to find that he had been away for hundreds of years; he sailed back out to sea, never seen again.

More pleasant is the story of Cormac mac Airt, who was brought to the islands by Manannan so as to give him the cup of truthfulness and other magical items. Cormac was able to return home, as he had been invited there for a short time, not intended as a husband for one of the faeries.

In Welsh myth, though the islands are less prominent, they do exist, more or less ruled by the enchanted head of Bendigedfran ap Llyr, brother of Manawyddan (the Welsh Manannan). Here there is no aging, no death, great feasts, and the ability to forget all pain. According to Branwen uerch Llyr, he and his companions stayed on Gwales (an unidentified island) for eighty years in this state, before one of them broke the enchantment by opening a forbidden door.

In some medieval Welsh traditions, Myrddin gathered the Thirteen Treasures of Britain and housed them on his "Isle of Glass."

In The Book of Taliesin there is the poem "The Spoils of Annwn" which recounts an unsuccessful attempt of Arthur to raid the Otherworld islands in search of a magic cauldron. In it, he lists what seem to be eight islands, with a fort on each island:

Caer Siddi, Caer Pedyrvan,Caer Vedwyd,Caer Rigor,Caer Wydyr,Caer Golud,Caer Vandwy,Caer Achren

And finally, one cannot write of Otherword islands without mentioning Avalon, Ynys Afallach in Welsh. Originally ruled by Afallach son of Nudd with his daugther Modron, later medieval versions have it ruled by Brons (Bendigedfran ap Llyr) or Pelles (Pwyll). It is where King Arthur was taken by Morgan le Fay (Modron?) to be healed of his wounds after the battle of Camlann; it is also said to be where the Holy Grail resides.

One of the most recognized symbols of the Otherworld Islands is the apple. Like the name of Avalon (from afal "apple") to the Silver Branch of Manannan, which is carried by visitors from the islands when luring away the hero, it is a familiar symbol, with counterparts in the Greek Hesperides, the Norse Apples of Youth, and the Judeo-Christian Fruit of the Tree of Life.

http://www.maryjones.us/jce/otherworld.html

The Avalon of later Arthurian legends was known as Annwn to the earlier Celts. 

"Various hills and islands are access to Annwn. An Otherworld or underworld of Welsh legend, one of the many survivals from pagan Celtic Mythology. The most important hill is Glastonbury, the most

important island is Lundy." -Guidebook to Arthurian Britain.

The same author adds;-

'Annwn. The most famous of the Otherworld places which passed into Arthurian legend from Christian mythology. ***** 'It is an ISLAND, a

realm of magic and of mysteries older than Christianity. ****** -Geoffrey Ashe in 'Guidebook to Arthurian Britain.'

'Annwyn could be entered via Lundy'- Geoffrey Ashe, Avalonian Quest.

"The island of Gwair's imprisonment 'Ynys Weir'  was also called Annwyn. It was also called 'Kaer Sidi.' There is a remarkable similarity between 'Kaer Sidi' and the 'isle of immortal elders' in 'Perlesvaus' also the island in the 'Navigation of St. Brendan.'  The fortress becomes the abbey which becomes the pagan temple of Joseph which becomes the

Grail castle. Depending on the preconceptions of the teller and the listeners.

'Annwn is but one name for the isle where Gwair was imprisoned. Another name was Kaer Sidi. Anwyl suggested that this was the name

for the castle where Pryderi of the golden hair was imprisoned.....remarkable similarity of Kaer Sidi to the isle of the

immortal elders in Perlesvaus justifies us assuming that the mysterious captive in the pit was Gwair. Perceval goes on to another island where

he liberates a chained youth, Galobrun." from 'Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance'

The use of the name 'Avalon' - 'Insula Avallonis' - for the Celtic Otherworld probably predates Geoffrey of Monmouth's writing.  'Insula Avallonis' is used by Geoffrey of Monmouth as the equivalent of 'insula

pomorum.' 

He writes of Arthur - 'Passing away after his last battle to the enchanted ISLE of Avalon.' - 'Insula Avalloni.' He also states that Arthur's enchanted sword, Excalibur, was 'forged on the ISLE of

Avalon.'

 In the 'Vitae Merlini' by Geoffrey of Monmouth, 'Morgen' is named as the chief among nine sisters who rule over the 'insula pomorum que

fortunata vocateur' to whom Arthur is brought after the battle of Camlann.

Sacred Isles

'Many of the islands off the west coast of Britain, including Lundy, were known to the Celts as 'Isles of the Dead'. They were regarded as holy islands which formed gateways to the otherworld and to which the illustrious dead were ferried, there to be buried with solemn rite amid the spirits of their forefathers.' - A.F. Langham, The Island of Lundy.

'All these facts point to a powerful belief that the islands not far from the British coast were regarded as the homes of the various gods of the

sun.'   Celtic myth &

The pre-Christian Celts believed islands were sacred places. 

One theme common to many ancient legends about these isles is their occupation by by priestesses;  Arianrhod, Ygerne, Morgan, Elaine and

the presence on the island of at least one tower.

Islands were held to be major gateways to the Otherworld.

The Otherworld was, and is, accessible from anywhere, and everywhere. But at certain places it is easier to feel it, or to go there. 

Even in the twenty first century islands remain insulated from the mainstream world.

('Insulate' is derived from the Latin word for island.)

*** "The fact which most clearly accounts for the transformation of the sacred islands of the gods into the dwellings of monastic communities is the actual occupation of these sacred islands off the British coast by

Christian monks. Stories told about the divine inhabitants of these islands were naturally transferred to the human but still hallowed

successors...In fact many a hermit, anchorite, and venerable figure in religious garb who crosses our path in Arthurian romance may be

legitimately suspected of being a god or goddess in disguise."  from 'Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance.'

"We have seen the Guardians of the Grail assuming more and more distinctly the forms of the Welsh gods, Manawyd, Myrddin, Bran,

Avalloch, Gwair, Beli, and Llwch; and the castle of the Grail as distinctly rearing its crystal walls and phantom towers on Lundy."

The Britons were thus not unlike the Greeks in placing the enchanted abodes of the gods in islands of the sea. ****'Beheld in the glamour of distance, surrounde above and below by an expanse of crimson and

gold, brooded over by cloudy flames, every island became in the eyes of those on shore an unearthly paradise, the home of their particular deity. - The Isle of Man named after Manannan or Manawyd (or the

other way round!) - the Isle of Bardsey, trad. assoc. by the Welsh as the place where Merlin retired to dwell in his glass house. - Grassholm, the

site of the entertainment of the Noble Head; Bran - 

**** Rhys has pointed out that the Isle of Lundy off the Devon coast probably owes its Welsh name Ynys Wair to the localisation there of the

imprisonment there of Gwair or Gwri.  

All solar gods

***All these facts point to a powerful belief that the islands not far from the British coast were regarded as the homes of the various gods of the

sun

Many classical writers stress the sanctity of islands and their inhabitation by priestesses with their strange rites and powers.

Demetrius (1st. C. BC);- describes the sacred isles lying off the coast of Britain and Ireland and imparts them with a an awesome gloom. He reports that few are inhabited and some are named after gods and

heroes

Strabo (dates) tells of an island of women near the mouth of the River Loire visited by Posidonius, a Greek who traveled in the first century BC. which was forbidden to men. These women are represented as

priestesses, and used to pay visits to men on the mainland but no men were allowed on the island. The temple had a roof but it was unroofed

once a year.

Pomponius Mela (---?ad.) speaks of nine Celtic priestesses who dwell on the island of Sena (Ile de Seine) off the SW tip of Brittany. The place from which the souls of the departed were ferried to Britain. 'Sena, opposite the coast of the Osimi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish

god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenae, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts, to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal

form they might choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. 'These holy women had many magical powers. They could raise storms, change themselves

into bird or animal form at will, cure the sick, foretell the future, forecast the weather. They are, however devoted to the service of

voyagers only who have set out to consult them.

Tacitus (dates) writes of druidesses on Anglesey, a druid sacred island, the stronghold of druidic Britain, who fought beside their men against

the Romans

Tir nan og, 'Land of youth' or Avalon, Insula Pomonum, Apple Isle; It is situated on an island, glimmering far out on the western ocean

The Romans called Ireland the 'Insula Sacra' - 'Sacred Isle.'

Remains of a wooden temple built circa 1 BC (is that right?) have been excavated on Hayling island. It was replaced with a stone temple by the

Romans

The people of Armorica (Brittany) conducted the souls of their dead across the sea to Britain.

Evidence from recent archaeological excavations on the Isles of Scilly demonstrate that they were places of pre-Christian pilgrimage and

veneration.

In early Irish legend the Hebrides of Scotland were the haunt of demons, shunned by mankind

 Legend tells how Fer Hi - 'Man of the Yew'. son of the sea god Manannan Mac Lir and a druid of the divine tribe, the Tuatha de

Danaan of Ireland had his home in the western isles.

The Gaelic hero, Cu Chulainn, son of the pan-Celtic god Lugh, sailed from Ireland to the spectral Isle of Skye to learn military secrets from

the war-goddess, Sga Thach, the shadowy one.

Bardsey Island (Ynys Enli) 2 miles off Caernarvonshire was a place of pilgrimage and sanctity in early times

 The church in Scotland was established by St. Columba on Iona. Columba found druids in possession of Iona when he landed there in

563 and banished the 'false bishops.'

 In Christian times there was a Major monastic settlement on Lindisfarne - 'Holy Isle.'

http://www.lundyisleofavalon.co.uk/places

The Ancient Celtic OtherworldFirst Appeared in Ripples, The Quarterly Journal of Shining Lakes Grove, Yule, 1995.

Few areas of Celtic lore are more confused by the ravages of time and cultural intrusion than the phenomena of death and the afterlife. The coming of the new Christian faith to Northern Europe signaled a radical change in our traditional understanding of death and rebirth as new characters and biblical theology were superimposed on aboriginal mythology. This hybridization of belief systems created a uniquely Celtic Christianity that, while greatly enhanced by popular folk belief, was in many ways very different from our pre-Christian understanding of the world.

Much of the thinking that resulted from this course of events has been passed down through the centuries to us in folk tales and continues to distort our views of ancient cosmology today. Many of these ideas even continue to be upheld and promoted by modern Neopagan lore as tales are retold and studied for use in revivalist movements. To gain a clearer understanding of our cosmological heritage we must attempt to identify and remove these external influences of late history to reveal a functional and internally consistent world view. While we can not hold out much hope for a truly precise picture of our ancestors' beliefs, these efforts will carry us much closer to that goal.

The Myth of the Sidhe Gods

The Gods and Goddesses of our ancestors were seen as very powerful. They existed in this world and could move freely between the realms. They were intimately tied to the activities of the world and had an active role in daily events. Many were involved directly in the very cycles upon which life depended.

When Christianity came to the fore people slowly adapted their understanding of these older deities to the new faith. A theology developed to explain the deities' loss of power to the Christians God which described them as being defeated and relegated to the margins of the world. This belief was a continuation of our traditional view of supernatural relegation. The Celtic Deities were forced to live underground in the same way that they had once forced older pre-Celtic Gods to move out into the Sea.

Today the myths that have been passed through time to us contain stories of how the Gods were forced to live beneath the ground in caves and burial mounds. They began to be referred to as the Sidhe from the Gaelic term for under the hill . Stories abound of fantastic underworld palaces where the former Gods, in diminished form, host marvelous banquets for the dead and heroes of old. These themes are repeated in other tales which picture these palaces as hostels or bruidhen. These accounts have contributed much confusion to a clear understanding of ancient cosmology as they unjustly cast most of the major Irish deities in the role of the Celtic Otherworld God.

As the Christian view of the sinister nature of death and the Otherworld took hold, attitudes toward the old Gods became rooted in suspicion and fear. In late times our view of the Gods became so diminished that they began to be thought of as fairies, sprites, elves, dwarves, etc. These characters maintained their sinister and dangerous nature until recent times when the New Age movement and modern Disney stories turned them into cute but inconsequential playthings.

The Schizophrenic Horned Man

A very popular figure in modern day Neopaganism is the horned man, often given the name Cernunnos taken from a single inscription in Gaul. This modern horned man is a strange mixture of a number of ancient deities from Pan through the Green Man through Hermes through Arawn to Gwyn ap Nudd created through the syncretic power of Wiccan theology. He is seen as a representation of the wild and lusty force of nature while at the same time embodying a sinister otherworldly soul hunter character.

I believe that some of the content of this deity is the result of the collision of the ancient Welsh Otherworld God Arawn with the Christian Devil which occurred as Annwn slowly became synonymous with the Christian Hell. Other portions come from Gwyn ap Nudd, who was once a Welsh hunter God but later became the leader of the wild hunt where the forces of chaos and evil roamed the countryside seeking lone travelers for the opportunity to snatch their souls.

As the aboriginal view of death as a natural passage in the never-ending cycle of life was overtaken by Christian concepts, the previously benevolent Otherworld God took on the sinister and fearful characteristics of a demon. The festival of Samhain slowly turned from a respectful honoring of those who had passed beyond into a time to

hide in our homes for fear of having our souls snatched away. Tales that once told us how to welcome the honored dead into our homes were reversed to teach us how to protect ourselves from them and bar them from our doors.

The horned man is indeed one of oldest known deities of Western Europe. But far from being a soul snatching Death God he was the protector of animals and the forest creatures. He was intimately connected with the deeply spiritual, but hardly sinister, activity of hunting and was honored widely as vital to the delicate dance of life. In this original form he is a very appropriate deity for our modern movement at a time when environmentalism is practically a spiritual imperative.

The Sea God King of the Otherworld

The ancient Celtic Otherworld had little to do with the underground. In fact, it is more readily identified on the horizontal plane as outward from the center rather than downward. It was associated strongly with the sea, and for this reason occupies a place as a realm in the triad of land, sea and sky. The dead are envisioned as living on beautiful islands or in magical lands under the surface of the waves.

The Otherworld is a happy place of peace and harmony, an idealized mirror image of this world. There is no pain, sickness or aging as the dead enjoy beautiful music and endless banquets of delight. The heroes of the ages entertain themselves with all sort of sports and good-natured athletic competitions as all await their time of return to this world.

The king and host of this wondrous realm is a Sea God. For Shining Lakes Grove he has been identified as Manannan mac Lir. His functional equivalent in the Welsh pantheon is the God Arawn. Both of them are far from demonic characters. Manannan is a wise and gracious host who has many wondrous abilities and possessions such as magical horses who can stride on the surface of the ocean, a cloak of invisibility and magical pigs.

Other Otherworldly Characters and Concepts

The Irish Celts have a tale of the first mortal ever to die. Just prior to their landfall upon Ireland, the sons of Mil are stricken by a mishap. One of their number, a fellow named Donn is drowned by the Goddess Eriu after he insults her. From this point on he appears in the tales as the keeper of the first guidepost on the journey to the Otherworld. The dead were believed to have briefly visited or passed by his house just after the moment of death. This house is located on an island off the coast of Ireland called TechnDuinn or House of Donn. This tale is undoubtedly of ancient origin as it is present in other forms in the larger body of Indo-European lore such as the Vedic Yama.

The battle hags of Celtic lore are closely associated with death. They are often seen transformed into ravens who hang around battlefields to feast on the gory remains. They are closely associated with the destiny of warriors and are usually triple Goddesses. Examples are Badbh, Nemhain, Macha and the Morrigan. They do not, however, seem to have anything to do with the realm of the dead itself and rather are mostly concerned with the moment of loss of life and possibly transportation of the soul to that realm.

There are also female characters who can be more readily seen as Goddesses of the Otherworld. They are generally very beautiful women who have great regenerative and healing powers. They are strongly associated with swans or songbirds with beautiful plumage and magical voices. The Goddesses often have the ability to transform themselves into the form of these birds. Examples of these Goddesses are Fand, Be Lind, Fi Band, Naiv, Rhiannon and probably Epona. In later tales they were seen as enchantresses who lured heroes into Otherworld adventures.

Living mortals also occasionally entered the Otherworld. A large number of the tales that have been passed down to us concern mortal adventures into the Otherworld and encounters with its inhabitants. Bold heroes such as Pwyll, Cu Chulainn, Bran, Finn and Conaire all found or fell upon a way to transgress the boundary between the worlds. These tales provide a wealth of knowledge about the nature of the Otherworld while pointing the way for modern practitioners to access and explore this realm. This is particularly true of those tales surrounding the God Manannan mac Lir.

A final character that should be mentioned is the Otherworldly dog or hound. As with many of the Indo-European people, the Celts also had such beasts in their mythology. Kings of the Otherworld such as Manannan and Arawn had special dogs which were red and white or speckled in appearance. They served their masters as hunting dogs or guard gods. When they were viewed by mortals they were seen as omens of impending death.

Conclusions for Neopagan Theology

Through the careful study and adoption of the principals outlined above we will be able to cultivate an understanding of death and the Otherworld that is much closer to that of our ancestors. The concept of the Otherworld as a peaceful and benevolent respite has important implications to our funerary and worship practices while permitting us to evolve a much more balanced and less-fearful approach to the journey beyond the veil.

The understanding of the genealogy of the Sidhe God tales is particularly important to our revival of faith in the old Gods. The fact that these Gods have been freed from their underground prisons to rule the world again has great power to bring them into our lives and show us their relevance to the interworkings of life. As we have begun to learn in Shining Lakes Grove this belief that the Gods can be once again seen and felt in nature around us has great power to intimately connect our acts of love and worship to the ever changing force of life around us.

http://www.adf.org/articles/cosmology/otherworld.html

CELTIC OTHERWORLD 1

In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart.'--W. B. YEATS.

'Many go to the Tir-na-nog 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.'--A. E.

General ideas of the Otherworld: its location; its subjectivity; its names; its extent; Tethra one of its kings--The Silver Branch and the Golden Bough; and Initiations--The Otherworld the Heaven. World of all religions--Voyage of Bran--Cormac in the Land of Promise--Magic Wands--Cuchulainn's Sick-Bed--Ossian's return from Fairyland--Lanval's going to Avalon--Voyage of Mael-Duin--Voyage of Teigue--Adventures of Art--Cuchulainn's and Arthur's Otherworld Quests--Literary Evolution of idea of Happy Other-world.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

THE Heaven-World of the ancient Celts, unlike that of the Christians, was not situated in some distant, unknown region of planetary space, but here on our own earth. As it was necessarily a subjective world, poets could only describe it in terms more or less vague; and its exact geographical location, accordingly, differed widely in the minds of scribes from century to century. Sometimes, as is usual to-day in fairy-lore, it was a subterranean world entered through caverns, or hills, or mountains, and inhabited by many races and orders of invisible beings, such as demons, shades, fairies, or even gods. And the underground world

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of the Sidhe-folk, which cannot be separated from it, was divided into districts or kingdoms under different fairy kings and queens, just as the upper world of mortals. We already know how the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe-folk, after their defeat by the Sons of Mil at the Battle of Tailte, retired to this underground world and took possession of its palaces beneath the green hills and vales of Ireland; and how from there, as gods of the harvest, they still continued to exercise authority over their conquerors, or marshalled their own invisible spirit-hosts in fairy warfare, and sometimes interfered in the wars of men.

More frequently, in the old Irish manuscripts, the Celtic Otherworld was located in the midst of the Western Ocean, as though it were the 'double' of the lost Atlantis; 1 and Manannan Mac Lir, the Son of the Sea--perhaps himself the 'double' of an ancient Atlantean king--was one of the divine rulers of its fairy inhabitants, and his palace, for he was one of the Tuatha De Danann, was there rather than in Ireland; and when he travelled between the two countries it was in a magic chariot drawn by horses who moved over the sea-waves as on land. And fairy women came from that mid-Atlantic world in magic boats like spirit boats, to charm away such mortal men as in their love they chose, or else to take great Arthur wounded unto death. And in that island world there was neither death nor pain nor

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scandal, nought save immortal and unfading youth, and endless joy and feasting.

Even yet at rare intervals, like a phantom, Hy Brasil appears far out on the Atlantic. No later than the summer of 1908 it is said to have been seen from West Ireland, just as that strange invisible island near Innishmurray, inhabited by the invisible 'gentry', is seen--once in seven years. And too many men of intelligence testify to having seen Hy Brasil at the same moment, when they have been together, or separated, as during the summer of 1908, for it to be explained away as an ordinary illusion of the senses. Nor can it be due to a mirage such as we know, because neither its shape nor position seems to conform to any known island or land mass. 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. Thus in the legend of Bran's friends, who sat over dinner at Harlech with the Head of Bran for seven years, three curious birds acted as musicians, the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which were said to sing the dead back to life and the living into death;--but the birds were not in Harlech, they were out over the sea in the atmosphere of Rhiannon's realm in the bosom of Cardigan Bay. 1 And though we might say of that Otherworld, as we learn from these Three Birds of Rhiannon, and as Socrates would say, that its inhabitants are come from the living and the living in our world from the dead there, yet, as has already been set forth in chapter iv, we ought not to think of the Sidhe-folk, nor of such great heroes and gods as Arthur and Cuchulainn and Finn, who are also of its invisible company, as in any sense half-conscious shades; for they are always represented as being in the full enjoyment of an existence and consciousness greater than our own.

In Irish manuscripts, the Otherworld beyond the Ocean bears many names. It is Tír-na-nog, 'The Land of Youth'; Tír-Innambéo, 'The Land of the Living'; Tír Tairngire,

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[paragraph continues] 'The Land of Promise'; Tír N-aill, 'The Other Land (or World)'; Mag Már, 'The Great Plain'; and also Mag Mell, 'The Plain Agreeable (or Happy).'

But this western Otherworld, if it is what we believe it to be--a poetical picture of the great subjective world--cannot be the realm of any one race of invisible beings to the exclusion of another. In it all alike--gods, Tuatha De Danann, fairies, demons, shades, and every sort of disembodied spirits--find their appropriate abode; for though it seems to surround and interpenetrate this planet even as the X-rays interpenetrate matter, it can have no other limits than those of the Universe itself. And that it is not an exclusive realm is certain from what our old Irish manuscripts record concerning the Fomorian races. 1 These, when they met defeat on the battle-field of Moytura at the hands of the Tuatha De Danann, retired altogether from Ireland, their overthrow being final, and returned to their own invisible country--a mysterious land beyond the Ocean, where the dead find a new existence, and where their god-king Tethra ruled, as he formerly ruled in this world. And the fairy women of Tethra's kingdom, even like those who came from the Tuatha De Danann of Erin, or those of Manannan's ocean-world, enticed mortals to go with them to be heroes under their king, and to behold there the assemblies of ancestors. It was one of them who came to Connla, son of Conn, supreme king of Ireland; and this was her message to him:--'The immortals invite you. You are going to be one of the heroes of the people of Tethra. You will always be seen there, in the assemblies of your ancestors, in the midst of those who know and love you.' And with the fairy spell upon him the young prince entered the glass boat of the fairy woman, and his father the king, in great tribulation and wonder, beheld them disappear across the waters never to return. 1

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THE SILVER BRANCH 1 AND THE GOLDEN BOUGH

To enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by death, a passport was often necessary, and this was usually a silver branch of the sacred apple-tree bearing blossoms, or fruit, which the queen of the Land of the Ever-Living and Ever-Young gives to those mortals whom she wishes for as companions; though sometimes, as we shall see, it was a single apple without its branch. The queen's gifts serve not only as passports, but also as food and drink for mortals who go with her. Often the apple-branch produces music so soothing that mortals who hear it forget all troubles and even cease to grieve for those whom the fairy women take. For us there are no episodes more important than those in the ancient epics concerning these apple-tree talismans, because in them we find a certain key which unlocks the secret of that world from which such talismans are brought, and proves it to be the same sort of a place as the Otherworld of the Greeks and Romans. Let us then use the key and make a few comparisons between the Silver Branch of the Celts and the Golden Bough of the Ancients, expecting the two symbols naturally to differ in their functions, though not fundamentally.

It is evident at the outset that the Golden, Bough was as much the property of the queen of that underworld called Hades as the Silver Branch was the gift of the Celtic fairy queen, and like the Silver Bough it seems to have been the symbolic bond between that world and this, offered as a tribute to Proserpine by all initiates, who made the mystic voyage in full human consciousness. And, as we suspect, there may be even in the ancient Celtic legends of mortals who make that strange voyage to the Western Otherworld and return to this world again, an echo of initiatory rites--perhaps druidic--similar to those of Proserpine as shown in the journey of Aeneas, which, as Virgil records it, is undoubtedly a poetical rendering of an actual psychic experience of a great initiate.

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In Virgil's classic poem the Sibyl commanded the plucking of the sacred bough to be carried by Aeneas when he entered the underworld; for without such a bough plucked near the entrance to Avernus from the wondrous tree sacred to Infernal Juno (i. e. Proserpine) none could enter Pluto's realm. 1 And when Charon refused to ferry Aeneas across the Stygian lake until the Sibyl-woman drew forth the Golden Bough from her bosom, where she had hidden it, it becomes clearly enough a passport to Hades, just as the Silver Branch borne by the fairy woman is a passport to Tír N-aill; and the Sibyl-woman who guided Aeneas to the Greek and Roman Otherworld takes the place of the fairy woman who leads mortals like Bran to the Celtic Other-world. 2

THE OTHERWORLD IDEA LITERALLY INTERPRETED

With this parallel between the Otherworld of the Celts and that of the Ancients seemingly established, we may leave poetical images and seek a literal interpretation for the animistic idea about those realms. The Rites of Proserpine as conducted in the Mysteries of Antiquity furnish us with the means; and in what Servius has written we have the material ready. 3 Taking the letter Υ, which Pythagoras said is like life with its dividing ways of good and evil, as the mystic symbol of the branch which all initiates like Aeneas offered to Proserpine in the subjective world while there out of the physical body, he says of the initiatory rites:--'He (the poet) could not join the Rites of Proserpine without having the branch to hold up. And by "going to the shades" he (the poet) means celebrating the Rites of Proserpine.' 3 This passage is certainly capable of but one meaning; and we may perhaps assume that the invisible realm of the Ancients, which is called Hades, is like the Celtic Other-world located in the Western Ocean, and is also like, or has its mythological counterpart in, the Elysian Fields to the West, reserved by the Greeks and Romans for their gods and heroes, and in the Happy Otherworld of Scandinavian, Iranian, and Indian mythologies. It must then follow that all these realms--though placed in different localities by various nations, epochs, traditions, scribes, and poets (even as the under-ground world of the Tuatha De Danann in Ireland differs from that ruled over by one of their own race, Manannan the Son of the Sea)--are simply various ways which different Aryan peoples have had of looking at that one great invisible realm of which we have just spoken, and which forms the Heavenworld of every religion, Aryan and non-Aryan, known to man. And if this conclusion is accepted, and it seems that it must be, merely on the evidence of the literary or recorded Celtic Fairy-Faith, our Psychological Theory stands proven.

The Rites of Proserpine had many counterparts. Thus, to pass on to another parallel, in the Mysteries of Eleusis the disappearance of the Maiden into the under-world, into Hades, the land of the dead, was continually re-enacted in a sacred drama, and it no doubt was one of the principal rites attending initiation. In our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, we shall return to this subject of Celtic Initiation.

THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, SON OF FEBAL

We are well prepared now to enjoy the best known voyages which men, heroes, and god-men, are said to have made to Avalon, or the Land of the Living, through the invitation of a fairy woman or else of the god Manannan himself; and probably the most famous is that of the Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, as so admirably translated from the original old Irish saga by Dr. Kuno Meyer. 1 Perhaps in all Celtic literature no poem surpasses this in natural and simple beauty.

One day Bran heard strange music behind him as he was alone in the neighbourhood of his stronghold; and as he listened, so sweet was the sound that it lulled him to sleep. When he awoke, there lay beside him a branch of silver so white with blossoms that it was not easy to distinguish the blossoms from the branch. Bran took up the branch and carried it to the royal house, and, when the hosts were assembled therein, they saw a woman in strange raiment standing on the floor. Whence she came and how, no one could tell. And as they all beheld her, she sang fifty quatrains to Bran:--

A branch of the apple-tree from EmainI bring, like those one knows;Twigs of white silver are on it,Crystal brows with blossoms.

There is a distant isle,Around which sea-horses glisten:A fair course against the white-swelling surge,--Four feet uphold it.

When the song was finished, 'the woman went from them while they knew not whither she went. And she took her branch with her. The branch sprang from Bran's hand into the hand of the woman, nor was there strength in Bran's hand to hold the branch.' The next day, with the fairy spell upon him, Bran begins the voyage towards the setting sun. On the ocean he meets Manannan riding in his magic chariot over the sea-waves; and the king tells Bran that he is returning to Ireland after long ages. Parting from the Son of the Sea, Bran goes on, and the first island he and his companions reach is the 'Island of Joy', where one of the party is set ashore; the second isle is the 'Land of Women', where the queen draws Bran and his followers to her realm with a magic clew, and then entertains them for what seems no more than a year, though 'it chanced to be many years', After a while, home-sickness seizes the adventurers and they come to a unanimous decision to return to Ireland; but they depart under a taboo not to set foot on earth, or at least not till holy water has been sprinkled on them. In their coracle they arrive before a gathering at Srub Brain, probably in West Kerry, and Bran (who may now possibly be regarded as an apparition temporarily returned from the Otherworld to bid his people farewell) announces himself, and this reply is made to him:--'We do not know such a one, though the Voyage of Bran is in our ancient stories.' Then one of Bran's party, in his eagerness to land, broke the taboo; he 'leaps from them out of the coracle. As soon as he touched the earth of Ireland, forthwith he was a heap of ashes, as though he had been in the earth for many hundred years. . . . Thereupon, to the people of the gathering, Bran told all his wanderings from the beginning until that time. And he wrote these quatrains in Ogam, and then bade them farewell. And from that hour his wanderings are not known.'

CORMAC'S ADVENTURE IN THE LAND OF PROMISE 1

In Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise, there is again a magic silver branch with three golden apples on it:--'One day, at dawn in May-time, Cormac, grandson of Conn, was alone on Múr Tea in Tara. He saw coming towards him a sedate (?), grey-headed warrior. . . . A branch of silver with three golden apples on his shoulder. Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded, or women in child-bed, or folk in sickness, would fall asleep at the melody when that branch was shaken.' And the warrior tells Cormac that he has come from a land where only truth is known, where there is 'neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness'. On his promising the unknown warrior any three boons that he shall ask, Cormac is given the magic branch. The grey-headed warrior disappears suddenly; 'and Cormac knew not whither he had gone.'

'Cormac turned into the palace. The household marvelled at the branch. Cormac shook it at them, and cast them into slumber from that hour to the same time on the following day. At the end of a year the warrior comes into his meeting and asked of Cormac the consideration for his branch. "It shall be given," says Cormac. "I will take [thy daughter] Ailbe to-day," says the warrior. So he took the girl with him. The women of Tara utter three loud cries after the daughter of the king of Erin. But Cormac shook the branch at them, so that he banished grief from them all and cast them into sleep. That day month comes the warrior and takes with him Carpre Lifechair (the son of Cormac). Weeping and sorrow ceased not in Tara after the boy, and on that night no one therein ate or slept, and they were in grief and in exceeding gloom. But Cormac shook the branch at them, and they parted from [their] sorrow. The same warrior comes again. "What askest thou to-day?" says Cormac. "Thy wife," saith he, "even Ethne the Longsided, daughter of Dunlang king of Leinster." Then he takes away the woman with him.' Thereupon Cormac follows the messenger, and all his people go with him. But 'a great mist was brought upon them in the midst of the plain of the wall. Cormac found himself on a great plain alone'. It is the 'Land of Promise'. Palaces of bronze, and houses of white silver thatched with white birds' wings are there. 'Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which are in the fountain sever them, and send their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than any music that [men] sing.' Cormac having entered the fairy palace at the fountain beholds 'the loveliest of the world's women'. After she has been magically bathed, he bathes, and this, apparently, is symbolical of his purification in the Otherworld. Finally, at a feast, the warrior-messenger sings Cormac to sleep; and when Cormac awakes he sees beside him his wife and children, who had preceded him thither to the Land of Promise. The warrior-messenger who took them all is none other than the great god Manannan Mac Lir of the Tuatha De Danann.

There in the Otherworld, Cormac gains a magic cup of gold richly and wondrously wrought, which would break into three pieces if 'three words of falsehood be spoken under it', and the magic silver branch; and Manannan, as the god-initiator, says to Ireland's high king:--'Take thy family then, and take the Cup that thou mayest have it for discerning between truth and falsehood. And thou shalt have the Branch for music and delight. And on the day that thou shalt die they all will be taken from thee. I am Manannan, son of Ler, king of the Land of Promise; and to see the Land of Promise was the reason I brought [thee] hither. . . . The fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is obtained (?). And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams. The folk of many arts are those who drink of them both.'

'Now on the morrow morning, when Cormac arose, he found himself on the green of Tara, with his wife and his son and daughter, and having his Branch and his Cup. Now that was afterwards [called] "Cormac's Cup", and it used to distinguish between truth and falsehood with the Gael. Howbeit, as had been promised him [by Manannan], it remained not after Cormac's death.' 1

This beautiful tale evidently echoes in an extremely poetical and symbolical manner a very ancient Celtic initiation of a king and his family into the mystic cult of the mighty god Manannan, Son of the Sea. They enter the Otherworld in a trance state, and on waking are in Erin again, spiritually enriched. The Cup of Truth is probably the symbol of having gained knowledge of the Mystery of Life and Death, and the Branch, that of the Peace and Joy which comes to all who are truly Initiated; for to have passed from the realm of mortal existence to the Realm of the Dead, of the Fairy-Folk, of the Gods, and back again, with full human consciousness all the while, was equivalent to having gained the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, the Cup of Truth, and to having bathed in the Fountain of Eternal Youth which confers triumph over Death and unending happiness. Thus we may have here a Celtic poetical parallel to the initiatory journey of Aeneas to the Land of the Dead or Hades.

THE MAGIC WAND OF GODS, FAIRIES, AND DRUIDS

Manannan of the Tuatha De Danann, as a god-messenger from the invisible realm bearing the apple-branch of silver, is in externals, though not in other ways, like Hermes, the god-messenger from the realm of the gods bearing his wand of two intertwined serpents. 1 In modern fairy-lore this divine branch or wand is the magic wand of fairies; or where messengers like old men guide mortals to an underworld it is a staff or cane with which they strike the rock hiding the secret entrance.

The Irish Druids made their wands of divination from the yew-tree; and, like the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are believed to have controlled spirits, fairies, daemons, elementals, and ghosts while making such divinations. It will help us to understand how closely the ancient symbols have affected our own life and age--though we have forgotten their relation with the Otherworld--by offering a few examples, beginning with the ancient Irish bards who were associated with the Druids. A wand in the form of a symbolic branch, like a little spike or crescent with gently tinkling bells upon it, was borne by them; and in the piece called Mesca Ulad or 'Inebriety of the Ultonians' 1 it is said of the chief bard of Ulster, Sencha, that in the midst of a bloody fray he 'waved the peaceful branch of Sencha, and all the men of Ulster were silent, quiet'. In Agallamh an dá Shuadh or the 'Dialogue of the two Sages', 2 the mystic symbol used by gods, fairies, magicians, and by all initiates who know the mystery of life and death, is thus described as a Druid symbol:--'Neidhe' (a young bard who aspired to succeed his father as chief poet of Ulster), 'made his journey with a silver branch over him. The Anradhs, or poets of the second order, carried a silver branch, but the Ollamhs, or chief poets, carried a branch of gold; all other poets bore a branch of bronze.' 3 Modern and ancient parallels are world-wide, among the most civilized as among the least civilized peoples, and in civil or religious life among ourselves. Thus, it was with a magic rod that Moses struck the rock and pure water gushed forth, and he raised the same rod and the Red Sea opened; kings hold their sceptres no less than Neptune his trident; popes and bishops have their croziers; in the Roman Church there are little wandlike objects used to perform benedictions; high civil officials have their mace of office; and all the world over there are the wands of magicians and of medicine-men.

THE SICK-BED OF CUCHULAINN

We turn now to the story of the Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn. 1 And this is how the great hero of Ulster was fairy-struck. Manannan Mac Lir, tiring of his wife Fand, had deserted her, and so she, wishing to marry Cuchulainn, went to Ireland with her sister Liban. Taking the form of two birds bound together by a chain of red gold, Fand and Liban rested on a lake in Ulster where Cuchulainn should see them as he was hunting. To capture the two birds, Cuchulainn cast a javelin at them, but they escaped, though injured. Disappointed at a failure like this, which for him was most unusual, Cuchulainn went away to a menhir where he sat down and fell asleep. Then he saw two women, one in a green and one in a crimson cloak; and the woman in green coming up to him laughed and struck him with a whip-like object. The woman in crimson did likewise, and alternately the two women kept striking him till they left him almost dead. And straightway the mighty hero of the Red Branch Knights took to his bed with a strange malady, which no Druid or doctor in all Ireland could cure.

Till the end of a year Cuchulainn lay on his sick-bed at Emain-Macha without speaking to any one. Then--the day before Samain (November Eve)--there came to him an unknown messenger who sang to him a wonderful song, promising to cure him of his malady if he would only accept the invitation of the daughters of Aed Abrat to visit them in the Otherworld. When the song was ended, the messenger departed, 'and they knew not whence he came nor whither he went.' Thereupon Cuchulainn went to the place where the malady had been put on him, and there appeared to him again the woman in the green cloak. She let it be known to Cuchulainn that she was Liban, and that she was longing for him to go with her to the Plain of Delight to

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fight against Labraid's enemies. And she promised Cuchulainn as a reward that he would get Fand to wife. But Cuchulainn would not accept the invitation without knowing to what country he was called. So he sent his charioteer Laeg to bring back from there a report. Laeg went with the fairy woman in a boat of bronze, and returned; and when Cuchulainn heard from him the wonderful glories of that Otherworld of the Sidhe he willingly set out for it.

After Cuchulainn had overthrown Labraid's enemies and had been in the Otherworld a month with the fairy woman Fand, he returned to Ireland alone; though afterwards in a place agreed upon, Fand joined him. Emer, the wife of Cuchulainn, was overcome with jealousy and schemed to kill Fand, so that Fand returned to her husband the god Manannan and he received her back again. When she was gone Cuchulainn could not be consoled; but Emer obtained from the Druids a magic drink for Cuchulainn, which made him forget all about the Otherworld and the fairy woman Fand. And another drink the Druids gave to Emer so that she forgot all her jealousy; and then Manannan Mac Lir himself came and shook his mantle between Cuchulainn and Fand to prevent the two ever meeting again. And thus it was that the Sidhe-women failed to steal away the great Cuchulainn. The magic of the Druids and the power of the Tuatha De Danann king triumphed; and the Champion of Ulster did not go to the Otherworld until he met a natural death in that last great fight. 1

OSSIAN'S RETURN FROM FAIRYLAND 2

Ossian too, like Cuchulainn, was enticed into Fairyland by a fairy woman:--She carries him away on a white horse, across the Western Ocean; and as they are moving over the sea-waves they behold a fair maid on a brown horse, and she holding in her right hand a golden apple. After the hero had married his fairy abductress and lived in the Otherworld for three hundred years, an overpowering desire to return to Ireland and join again in the councils of his dearly beloved Fenian Brotherhood took possession of him, and he set out on the same white horse on which he travelled thence with the fairy princess, for such was his wife. And she, as he went, thrice warned him not to lay his 'foot on level ground', and he heard from her the startling announcement that the Fenians were all gone and Ireland quite changed.

Safe in Ireland, Ossian seeks the Brotherhood, and though he goes from one place to another where his old companions were wont to meet, not one of them can he find. And how changed is all the land! He realizes at last how long he must have been away. The words of his fairy wife are too sadly true.

While Ossian wanders disconsolately over Ireland, he comes to a multitude of men trying to move an enormous slab of marble, under which some other men are lying. 'Ossian's assistance is asked, and he generously gives it. But in leaning over his horse, to take up the stone with one hand, the girth breaks, and he falls. Straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian became aged, decrepit, and blind.' 1

THE GOING OF LANVAL TO AVALON

The fairy romances which were recorded during the mediaeval period in continental Europe report a surprisingly large number of heroes who, like Cuchulainn and Ossian, fell under the power of fairy women or fées, and followed one of them to the Apple-Land or Avalon. Besides [paragraph continues] Arthur, they include Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawayne, Ogier, Guingemor and Lanval (see pp. 325-6). The story of Lanval is told by Marie de France in one of her Lais, and is so famous a one that we shall briefly outline it:--

Lanval was a mediaeval knight who lived during the time of King Arthur in Brittany. He was young and very beautiful, so that one of the fairy damsels fell in love with him; and in the true Irish fashion--himself and his fairy sweetheart mounted on the same fairy horse--the two went riding off to Fairyland:--

On the horse behind herWith full rush Lanval jumped.With her he goes away into Avalon,According to what the Briton tells us,Into an isle, which is very beautiful. 1

 

THE VOYAGE OF TEIGUE, SON OF CIAN

There is another type of imram in which through adventure rather than through invitation from one of the fairy beings, men enter the Otherworld; as illustrated by the Voyage of Mael-Duin, 2 and by the still more beautiful Voyage of Teigue, Son of Cian. This last old Irish story summarizes many of the Otherworld elements we have so far considered, and (though it shows Christian influences) gives us a very clear picture of the Land of Youth amid the Western Ocean--a land such as Ponce De Leon and so many brave navigators sought in America:--

Teigue, son of Cian, and heir to the kingship of West Munster, with his followers set out from Ireland to recover his wife and brethren who had been stolen by Cathmann and his band of sea-rovers from Fresen, a land near Spain. It was the time of the spring tide, when the sea was rough, and storms coming on the voyagers they lost their way. After about nine weeks they came to a land fairer than any land they had ever beheld--it was the Happy Otherworld. In it were many 'red-laden apple-trees, with leafy oaks too in it, and hazels yellow with nuts in their clusters'; and a wide smooth plain clad in flowering clover all bedewed with honey'. In the midst of this plain Teigue and his companions descried three hills, and on each of them an impregnable place of strength. At the first stronghold, which had a rampart of white marble, Teigue was welcomed by 'a white-bodied lady, fairest of the whole world's women'; and she told him that the stronghold is the abode 'of Ireland's kings: from Heremon son of Milesius to Conn of the Hundred Battles, who was the last to pass into it'. Teigue with his people moved on till they gained the middle dún, the dún with a rampart of gold. There also 'they found a queen of gracious form, and she draped in vesture of a golden fabric', who tells them that they are in the Earth's fourth paradise.

At the third dún, the dún with a silver rampart, Teigue and his party met Connla, the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles. 'In his hand he held a fragrant apple having the hue of gold; a third part of it he would eat, and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished.' And at his side sat a young woman of many charms, who spake thus to Teigue:--'I had bestowed on him (i.e. felt for him) true affection's love, and therefore wrought to have him come to me in this land; where our delight, both of us, is to

continue in looking at and in perpetual contemplation of one another: above and beyond which we pass not, to commit impurity or fleshly sin whatsoever.' Both Connla and his friend were clad in vestments of green--like the fairy-folk; and their step was so light that hardly did the beautiful clover-heads bend beneath it. And the apple 'it was that supported the pair of them and, when once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could affect them'. When Teigue asked who occupied the dún with the silver rampart the maiden with Connla made this reply:--'In that one there is not any one. For behoof of the righteous kings that after acceptance of the Faith shall rule Ireland it is that yonder dún stands ready; and we are they who, until such those virtuous princes shall enter into it, keep the same: in the which, Teigue my soul, thou too shalt have an appointed place.' 'Obliquely across the most capacious palace Teigue looked away' (as he was observing the beauty of the yet uninhabited dun), 'and marked a thickly furnished wide-spreading apple-tree that bare blossoms and ripe fruit both. "What is that apple-tree beyond?" he asked [of the maiden], and she made answer:--"That apple-tree's fruit it is that for meat shall serve the congregation which is to be in this mansion, and a single apple of the same it was that brought (coaxed away) Connla to me."'

Then the party rested, and there came towards them a whole array of feminine beauty, among which was a lovely damsel of refined form who foretold to Teigue the manner and time of his death, and as a token she gave him 'a fair cup of emerald hue, in which are inherent many virtues: for [among other things] though it were but water poured into it, incontinently it would be wine'. And this was her farewell message to Teigue:--'From that (the cup), let not thine hand part; but have it for a token: when it shall escape from thee, then in a short time after shalt thou die; and where thou shalt meet thy death is in the glen that is on Boyne's side: there the earth shall grow into a great hill, and the name that it shall bear will be croidhe eisse; there too (when thou shalt first have been wounded by a roving wild hart, after which Allmarachs will slay thee) I will bury thy body; but thy soul shall come with me hither, where till the Judgement's Day thou shalt assume a body light and ethereal.'

As the party led by Teigue were going down to the seashore to depart, the girl who had been escorting them asked 'how long they had been in the country'. 'In our estimation,' they replied, 'we are in it but one single day.' She, however, said: 'For an entire twelvemonth ye are in it; during which time ye have had neither meat nor drink, nor, how long soever ye should be here, would cold or thirst or hunger assail you.' And when Teigue and his party had entered their currach they looked astern, but 'they saw not the land from which they came, for incontinently an obscuring magic veil was drawn over it'. 1

THE ADVENTURES OF ART, SON OF CONN

This interesting imram combines, in a way, the type of tale wherein a fairy woman comes from the Otherworld to our world--though in this tale she is banished from there--and the type of tale wherein the Otherworld is found through adventure:--

Bécuma Cneisgel, a woman of the Tuatha De Danann, because of a transgression she had committed in the Other-world with Gaidiar, Manannan's son, was banished thence. She came to Conn, high king of Ireland, and she bound him to do her will; and her judgement was that Art, the son of Conn, should not come to Tara until a year was past. During the year, Conn and Bécuma were together in Tara, 'and there was neither corn nor milk in Ireland during that time.' The Tuatha De Danann sent this dreadful famine; for they, as agricultural gods, thus showed their displeasure at the unholy life of Ireland's high king with the evil woman whom they had banished. The Druids of all Ireland being called together, declared that to appease the Tuatha De Danann 'the son of a sinless couple should be brought to Ireland and slain before Tara, and his blood mingled with the soil of Tara' (cf. p. 436). It was Conn himself who set out for the Otherworld and found there the sinless boy, the son of the queen of that world, and he brought him back to Tara. A strange event saves the youth:--'Just then they (the assembly of people and Druids, with Conn, Art, and Finn) heard the lowing of a cow, and a woman wailing continually behind it. And they saw the cow and the woman making for the assembly.' The woman had come from the Otherworld to save Segda; and the cow was accepted as a sacrifice in place of Segda, owing to the wonders it disclosed; for its two bags when opened contained two birds--one with one leg and one with twelve legs, and 'the one-legged bird prevailed over the bird with twelve legs'. Then rising up and calling Conn aside, the woman declared to him that until he put aside the evil woman Bécuma 'a third of its corn, and its milk, and its mast' should be lacking to Ireland. 'And she took leave of them then and went off with her son, even Segda. And jewels and treasures were offered to them, but they refused them.'

In the second part of this complex tale, Bécuma and Art are together playing a game. Art finally loses, because' the men of the sidh (like invisible spirits) began to steal the pieces 'with which he and the woman play; and, as a result, Bécuma put on him this taboo:--'Thou shalt not eat food in Ireland until thou bring with thee Delbchaem, the daughter of Morgan.' 'Where is she?' asked Art. 'In an isle amid the sea, and that is all the information that thou wilt get.' 'And he put forth the coracle, and travelled the sea from one isle to another until he came to a fair, strange island,' the Otherworld. The blooming women of that land entertain the prince of Ireland during six weeks, and instruct him in all the dangers he must face and the conquests he must make.

Having successfully met all the ordeals, Art secures Delbchaem, daughter of Morgan the king of the 'Land of Wonders', and returns to Ireland. 'She had a green cloak of one hue about her, with a gold pin in it over her breast, and long, fair, very golden hair. She had dark-black eyebrows, and flashing grey eyes in her head, and a snowy-white body.' And upon seeing the chaste and noble Delbchaem with Art, Bécuma, the banished woman of the Tuatha Dc Danann, lamenting, departs from Tara for ever. 1

OTHERWORLD QUESTS OF CUCHULAINN AND OF ARTHUR

There is yet the distinct class of tales about journeys to a fairy world which is a Hades world beneath the earth, or in some land of death, rather than amid the waves of the Western Ocean. Thus there is a curious poem in the Book of the Dun Cow describing an expedition led by Cuchulainn to the stronghold of Scáth in the land of Scáth, or, as the name means, land of Shades, where the hero gains the king's cauldron. 1 And the poem suggests why so few who invaded that Hades world ever returned--perhaps why, mystically speaking, so few men could escape either through Initiation or re-birth the natural confusion and forgetfulness arising out of death.

In the Book of Taliessin a weird poem, Preiddeu Annwfn, or the 'Spoils of Annwn', describes, in language not always clear, how the Brythonic Arthur made a similar journey to the Welsh Hades world named Annwn, where he, like Cuchulainn in Scáth, gained possession of a magic cauldron--a pagan Celtic type of the Holy Grail--which furnishes inexhaustible food though 'it will not boil the food of a coward'. But in stanzas iii and iv of Preiddeu Annwfn, Annwn, or Uffern as it is otherwise called, is not an underground realm, but some world to be reached like the Gaelic Land of Promise by sea. Annwn is also called Caer Sidi, which in another poem of the Book of Taliessin (No. XIV) is thought of as an island of immortal youth amid 'the streams of the ocean' where there is a food-giving fountain. 2

LITERARY EVOLUTION OF THE HAPPY OTHERWORLD IDEA

We have now noticed two chief classes of Otherworld legends. In one there is the beautiful and peaceful Tír Innambéo or' Land of the Living' under Manannan's rule across the seas, and its fairy inhabitants are principally women who lure away noble men and youths through love for them; in the other there is a Hades world--often confused with the former--in which great heroes go on some mysterious quest. Sometimes this Hades world is inseparable from the underground palaces or world of the Tuatha De Danann. Again, it may be an underlake fairy-realm like that entered by Laeghaire and his fifty companions (see p. 302); or, as in Gilla Decair, 1 of late composition, it is an under-well land wherein Dermot has adventures. And, in a similar tale, Murough, on the invitation of a mysterious stranger who comes out of a lake and then disappears 'like the mist of a winter fog or the whiff of a March wind', dives beneath the lake's waters, and is escorted to the palace of King Under-Wave, wherein he sees the stranger as the water-king himself sitting on a golden throne (cf. pp. 63-4). In continual feasting there Murough passes a day and a year, thinking the time only a few days. 2

As a rule the Hades world, or underground and under-wave world, is unlike Manannan's peaceful ocean realm, being often described as a place of much strife; and mortals are usually induced to enter it to aid in settling the troubles of its fairy inhabitants.

All the numerous variations of Otherworld tales now extant in Celtic literature show a common pre-Christian origin, though almost all of them have been coloured by Christian ideas about heaven, hell, and purgatory. From the earliest tales of the over-sea Otherworld type, like those of Bran, Maelduin, and Connla, all of which may go back to the early eighth century as compositions, the christianizing influence is already clearly begun; and in the Voyage of Snedgus and of Mac Riagla, of the late ninth century, this influence predominates. 3 Purely Christian texts of about the same period or later describe the Christian heaven as though it were the pagan Otherworld. Some of these, like the Latin version of the tale of St. Brandan's Voyage, greatly influenced European literature, and probably contributed to the discovery of the New World. 3

The combination of Christian and pagan Celtic ideas is well shown in the Voyage of the Húi Corra 4:--'Thereafter a wondrous island was shown to them. A psalm-singing venerable old man, with fair, builded churches and beautiful bright altars. Beautiful green grass therein. A dew of honey on its grass. Little ever-lovely bees and fair, purple-headed birds a-chanting music therein, so that [merely] to listen to them was enough of delight.' But in another passage the Christian scribe describes Otherworld birds as souls, some of them in hell:--'"Of the land of Erin am I," quoth the bird, "and I am the soul of a woman, and I am a monkess unto thee," she saith to the elder. ... "Come ye to another place," saith the bird, "to hearken to yon birds. The birds that ye see are the souls that come on Sunday out of hell."' Still other islands are definitely made into Christian hells full of fire, wherein wailing and shrieking men are being mangled by the beaks and talons of birds.

But sometimes, like the legends about the Tuatha De Danann, the legends about the Otherworld were taken literally and most seriously by some early Irish-Christian saints. Professor J. Loth records a very interesting episode, how St. Malo and his teacher Brandan actually set out on an ocean voyage to find the Heaven-world of the pagan Celts:--'Saint Malo, when a youth, embarks with his teacher Brandan in a boat, in search of that mysterious country; after some days, the waves drive him back rebuffed and discouraged upon the seashore. An angel opens his eyes: the land of eternal peace and of eternal youth is that which Christianity promises to its elect.' 1

Not only was the Celtic Otherworld gradually changed into a Christian Heaven, or Hell, from the eighth century onward, but its divine inhabitants soon came to suffer the rationalization commonly applied to their race; and the transcribers began to set them down as actual personages of Irish history. As we have already observed, the Tuatha De Danann were shorn of their immortality, and were given in exchange all the passions and shortcomings of men, and made subject to disease and death. This perhaps was a natural anthropomorphic process such as is met with in all mythologies. Celtic myth and mysticism, wherein may yet be read the deepest secrets of life and death, supplied names and legends to fill out a christianized scheme of Irish chronology, which was made to begin some six thousand years ago with Adam.

A few of the pagan legends, however, met very fair treatment at the hands of poetical and patriotic Christian transcribers. Thus in Adamnan's Vision, 1 though the Celtic Otherworld has become 'the Land of the Saints', its primal character is clearly discernible: to reach it a sea voyage is necessary; and it is a land where there is no pride, falsehood, envy, disease or death, 'wherein is delight of every goodness.' In it there are singing birds, and for sustenance while there the voyagers need only to hear its music and 'sate themselves with the odour which is in the Land'.

Again, in the Book of Leinster, and in later MSS., there is a dinnshenchas of almost primal pagan purity. It alludes to Clidna's Wave, that of Tuag Inbir:--To Tuag, daughter of Conall, Manannan the sea-god sent a messenger, a Druid of the Tuatha De Danann in the shape of a woman. The Druid chanted a sleep spell over the girl, and while he left her on the seashore to look for a boat in which to embark for the 'Land of Everliving Women', a wave of the flood tide came and drowned her. But the Oxford version of the same tale doubts whether the maiden was drowned, for it suggests, 'Or maybe it (the wave) was Manannan himself that was carrying her off.' 2 Thus the scribe understood that to go to Manannan's world literally meant entering a sleep or trance state, or, what is equivalent in the case of the maiden whom Manannan summoned, the passage through death from the physical body. And still, to-day, the Irish peasant believes that the 'good people' take to their invisible world all young men or maidens who meet death; or that one under a fairy spell may go to their world for a short-time, and come back to our world again.

We have frequently emphasized how truly the modern Celtic peasant in certain non-commercialized localities has kept to the faith of his pagan ancestors, while the learned Christian scribes have often departed widely from it. The story of the voyage of Fionn to the Otherworld, 1 which Campbell found living among Scotch peasants as late as the last century, adds a striking proof of this assertion. So does Michael Comyn's peasant version of Ossian in the 'Land of Youth' (as outlined above, p. 346), which, though dating from about 1749, has all the natural character of the best ancient tales, like those about Bran and Cormac. We are inclined, therefore, to attach a value even higher than we have already done to the testimony of the living Fairy-Faith which confirms in so many parallel ways, as has been shown, the Fairy-Faith of the remote past. Mr. W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet, adequately sums up this matter by saying, 'But the Irish peasant believes that the utmost he can dream was once or still is a reality by his own door. He will point to some mountain and tell you that some famous hero or beauty lived and sorrowed there, or he will tell you that Tir-na-nog, the Country of the Young, the old Celtic paradise--the Land of the Living Heart, as it used to be called--is all about him.' 2

At the end of his long and careful study of the Celtic Otherworld, Alfred Nutt arrived at the tentative conclusion which coincides with our own, that 'The vision of a Happy Otherworld found in Irish mythic romances of the eighth and following centuries is substantially pre-Christian', that its closest analogues are in Hellenic myth, and that with these 'it forms the most archaic Aryan presentation of the divine and happy land we possess'. 3

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/ffcc260.htm

Celtic Tree of LifeBeloved, gaze in thine own heart,The holy tree is blooming there.                                               -- W. B. YeatsYou know you have arrived at the Center because the world is more alive here than you have ever imagined it could be: colors burn and flicker; sounds vibrate like plucked strings and each breath you draw makes you feel a little giddy and light-headed as if you are inhaling a purer element. Before you in the great square courtyard stands the Well, a full moon of silver water encircled by a low stone wall. Five channels cut into the flagged stones of the enclosure radiate out from the Well and carry the overflow beyond the courtyard to join other streams.

Over the well hang the branches of nine slender hazel trees, their branches swaying like hair in an invisible currents of air. Every now and then, purple-husked nuts are shaken loose into the water below. A flash of light - and a fish with glittering scales leaps up and catches one in its jaws. Now and then the discarded husks can be seen floating away down one of the streams.

You are not alone. A procession of pilgrims approach the Well in silence. Their sandalled feet make no noise. One by one, they stoop and drink the water in cupped hands. When each arises, they appear to glow with an inner radiance, as if refreshed by the Water of Life itself.......

In the days of the Celts, Northern Europe was covered with forests so thick it was said a squirrel could hop from branch to branch from one end to the other without touching the ground. Italy was covered from coast to coast with dense woods of oak, elm and chestnut; the great Hercynian forest rendered Germany impenetrable in Caesar's time; Scotland was clothed with the magnificent Caledonian, Ireland with oak-woods, the whole of Southern England with the ancient trees of Anderida.

In this environment, it is no wonder the forest was perceived as the matrix of a tribe's sustenance, culture and spirituality. A food-store of nuts, berries and game, a pharmacopeia of medicines, wood supply for shelter and the kindling of sacred fires – the forest was all of these to the early Celtic peoples.

When a tribe cleared the land for a settlement, they always left a great tree in the middle, known in Ireland as the "crann bethadh," or Tree of Life, that embodied the security and integrity of the people. Chieftains were inaugurated at the sacred tree, for, with its roots stretching down to the lower world, its branches reaching to the upper world, it connected him with the power both of the heavens and the worlds below. One of the greatest triumphs a tribe could achieve over its enemies was to cut down their mother tree, an outrage punishable by the highest penalties.

For trees not only provided earthly sustenance: they were regarded as living, magical beings who bestowed blessings from the Otherworld. Wood from the nine sacred trees kindled the need-fire that brought back the sun to earth on May Eve; tree names formed the letters of the Ogham alphabet which made potent spells when carved on staves of yew; rowan protected the byre; ash lent power to the spear’s flight.

An early tale of the founding of Ireland tells how a giant came from the Otherworld bearing a branch on which grew apples, nuts and acorns at the same time. His name was Treochair (Three Sprouts)and he shook the fruits onto the ground where they were taken up and planted in the four corners of Ireland, with one in the center, where they grew into the five sacred trees, great Guardians of the land.

Because trees have their roots in the unseen world of spirit, they are doorways into that world. That most magical of Celtic trees, the oak, derives its Gaelic name, (Old Irish daur, Welsh derw) from the Sanskrit word duir, that gives us "door." Many scholars believe that the Druids, who worshipped within sacred groves, derived their name from this word, combined with the Indo-European root wid, to know, becoming the "Wise Ones of the Oakwood."

Old ballads sing of those who have entered the Otherworld by the door of a sacred tree. Thomas the Rhymer, a bard who lived in 13th century Scotland, sat under the famous Eildon tree, and was taken away by the Queen of Elfland. The Eildon tree was a hawthorn, sacred to the faeries as most bards know, including modern poet Kathleen Raine who wrote:

A hundred years I slept beneath a thorn,Until the tree was root and branches of my thought,Until white petals blossomed in my crown.

In a number of early Irish tales of initiation into the mysteries of the Otherworld, the hero must carry a branch of a sacred tree. For, in keeping with other Indo-European traditions, at the heart of the Otherworld stands the World Tree, the axis mundi, from which the branch comes. In The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, the chieftain Bran is walking a little way from his palace when he hears the sweetest, most unearthly music he had ever heard. He is lulled to sleep by the sound of it, and wakens to find in his hand a silver branch of an apple-tree covered with white blossoms. That night a beautiful woman appears in the palace, dressed in shining clothes. She holds the company entranced with songs of her island country, in the heart of which grows an ancient apple-tree whose blossoms forever fall like snow on the plain below while birds sing sweet melodies in its branches. She invites Bran to sail over the western seas and join her there, for the silver branch has unlocked for him "magic casements/opening onto perilous seas of faery lands forlorn."

In Cormac's Adventures in the Land of Promise, Cormac is a High King of Ireland, who holds court at Tara.. One day when he is looking out over his domain, he sees a strange warrior approaching, bearing a silver branch on which hang three golden apples. When the branch is shaken, music rings out of such sweetness that it soothes all hearts, and lulls the sick to sleep. The warrior tells Cormac that he comes from "a land wherein there is nought save truth and there is neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred..."

The branch leads Cormac into the heart of the Otherworld, although in this story, the World Tree is not represented by an apple-tree, but by nine magical hazels that border a well. Cormac’s vision of this sacred center is perhaps the most powerful to be found in Celtic mythology because it embodies the central teachings of this wisdom tradition:

"Then he saw in the enclosure a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grew over the well. The purple hazels dropped their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which were in the fountain severed them and sent their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams was more melodious than any music that men sing."

At the heart of the Celtic Otherworld, the spiritual source of all life is discovered in the ecology of trees and water. No static image here, the deepest Mystery dances with life and motion, and many interchanges take place: water flows, nuts fall, the salmon leap. Where the waters emanate from hidden depths below the earth, the tree of life rises towards the power of the sky. The gushing well and its cluster of hazel trees show that this a place where the mysteries of earth converge with the heavens to form a dynamic interplay of the opposites. Where water suggests the potential for life on earth, the tree makes life manifest.

Throughout the ages seekers of truth—poets, philosophers, rulers and other pilgrims of the spiritual quest—have made the perilous journey to this sanctum. For the sacred nuts dropping from above to meet with the gushing waters below unite heaven and earth. The salmon in the well act as intermediaries—fishy priests!—by cracking the nuts. In the threefold shamanic universe, they make the knowledge of the upper and lower worlds available to our middle world, which is why seekers desired above all things to eat the Salmon or Hazelnuts of Wisdom.

A walk in any forest reveals the archetypal pattern of trees and water made palpable in the natural world, where they are partners linked in the dance of life. Streams and rivers are primary carriers of seeds while flood and rain soften the earth for their bed. Water moistens the seed-case, then unlocks the dormant powers of growth within so that they unfurl into sprouts. Swirling rivers carry minerals down from mountains to nourish their roots. One tree in full foliage may consume a ton of water a day.

Likewise, trees are guardians of water and soil. Their roots ensure that water from rain or snow is allowed to seep gradually into the earth. On deforested land, storms create terrible damage to the land as they remove topsoil, choke watersheds and cause floods. Paradoxically, this usually creates water shortages later in the drier season, because there is no reserve to keep springs, streams and rivers supplied. Wildlife, of course, suffers, too: The clear-cutting of forests in the Pacific North-West is destroying salmon-rearing habitats, and where the trees no longer form a shady canopy, water temperatures are rising and killing fish and insects in the rivers.

The sacred ecology of trees and water is enshrined all over the Celtic landscape, where hundreds of holy wells bordered by guardian trees still dot the countryside today – living temples where people have come for centuries to drink or bathe in the waters and leave a votive offering torn from their clothing on overhanging branches. Even today, the number of ragged pieces of material hanging from trees are testimony that pilgrims still follow the old tracks that lead to that mysterious beckoning water with its magical promise—of healing, of foretelling the future, of granting a wish. They still come because even the muddiest pool, choked with weeds or trampled by cattle, evokes the half-submerged memory of the Well of Wisdom, while the branches of the most spindly tree still seem to sway to winds that blow in another world.

This archetype is universal, found in the earliest of religious texts: the Rg Veda and the Upanisads of Ancient India. In Judeo-Christian traditions also, the same pairing is found in the description of the garden of Eden:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence itwas parted, and became into four heads. (Gen. ii. 9-10)

Tree and water converge at the center of the world’s beginning, and also at its end, for the same image appears in St. John’s vision of the Heavenly City in Revelations:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river,was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yieldedher fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of thenations. (Rev.xxii.1-2)

It is clear, then, that the archetypal ecology of tree and water is rooted in the most ancient religious traditions of the world, and one whose branches reach into our dreams today, both waking and sleeping. On the physical level, it serves to remind us to pay attention to the interconnectedness of the living world, if life on earth is to thrive. Within the psyche, water and tree represent the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the Self: the wellspring of the soul that nourishes the creative force within each of us that "drives the green fuse through the flower," to bloom and set seed in our own lives, so that we too become a door leading into many realms.

And now it is your turn to drink from the Well. As you step towards it, you are no longer aware of those who have gone before you, or those who wait behind. It is as if you are alone with a deep Presence, immensely quiet, pregnant with life. For a moment you look up into the gently swaying branches of the trees. It is as if they are being stirred by a wind from another world, and a part of you longs to be borne aloft into those regions of light and air. But now your feel yourself being drawn towards the pool below, and you stoop down and peer into the water. For what might be a moment or an eternity, you behold an abyss, a swirling vortex that spirals into untold depths of darkness. As you gaze transfixed, you become disoriented in time and space, and the force of its energy almost pulls you into the deep. There is a roaring like the sea. The next moment all is quiet again, and the water is a serene pool glowing with a gentle blue-green light, reflecting the overhanging trees. A fish glides like a shadow just beneath the surface. You cup your hands and drink.......it is like drinking light itself, and a feeling of deep, quiet well-being spreads through you as the water washes away the wounds of

the past and purifies your whole heart and mind. In forgotten dry ditches, seeds begin to grow, and luxuriant growth greens the bare earth. The roots of the Tree penetrate the soil of your soul. Strong stems and branches twine around crumbling old walls, and burst through the confines of the mind with green leaf and blossom.

www.chalicecentre.net/celtictreeoflife.htm

'Many of the islands off the west coast of Britain, including Lundy were known to the Celts as 'Isles of the Dead'. They were regarded as holy islands which formed gateways to the otherworld and to which the illustrious dead were ferried, there to be buried with solemn rite amid the spirits of their forefathers.' - A.F. Langham, The Island of Lundy.

The Celts believed in the "Otherworld." It exists alongside our world, separate from it but accessible from anywhere and everywhere. It is the realm of quest

and achievement, of challenge and encounter, of initiation and enlightenment. It is Arthur's Avalon, The Grail Castle ,the land of faery and enchantment where

time passes at a different speed. It is the land where the story never ends. The "Otherworld" is where the music takes us, it's the never-never land of books, artists enter and return to share their visions. Mystics travel there through

meditation.

The concept of the Otherworld was central to the religion of the pre-Christian Celts. - Islands were regarded as particularly sacred with their role as gateways to

the Otherworld.  Two common themes in many of the ancient legends are the occupation of the islands by priestesses Arianrhod, Ygerne, Morgan, Elaine. and

the presence on the island of a tower.

'One of the chief recurrent images of Celtic mythology and legend is a visit to or from the 'Otherworld' - a realm somehow detached from this present world, or at most times, to all but a chosen few, invisible. It may be visibly cut off by ocean, river, lake, by mountain rock, or by mist, or hidden within the mountain itself. Sometimes it can only be entered by the overcoming of a test or through the sustaining of a mortal wound. Always cut off by some sort of barrier from the

world of earthly existence.' - At The Table of the Grail     Hannah Closs  

There is something about the use of the word 'white' which denotes a special holiness above and beyond the colour. In the gospels, in Welsh legends the

Otherworld has been called GWYNNWESI - 'the WHITE or BLISSFUL ABODE' and ' GWAS GWYN' - THE WHITE MANSION, the mythical abode of the happy dead.

'All these facts point to a powerful belief that the islands not far from the British coast were regarded as the homes of the various gods of the sun.'   Celtic myth &

The pre-Christian Celts believed islands were sacred places. 

One theme common to many ancient legends about these isles is their occupation by by priestesses;  Arianrhod, Ygerne, Morgan, Elaine and the

presence on the island of at least one tower.

Islands were held to be major gateways to the Otherworld.

The Otherworld was, and is, accessible from anywhere, and everywhere. But at certain places it is easier to feel it, or to go there. 

Even in the twenty first century islands remain insulated from the mainstream world.

('Insulate' is derived from the Latin word for island.)

*** "The fact which most clearly accounts for the transformation of the sacred islands of the gods into the dwellings of monastic communities is the actual occupation of these sacred islands off the British coast by Christian monks.

Stories told about the divine inhabitants of these islands were naturally transferred to the human but still hallowed successors...In fact many a hermit,

anchorite, and venerable figure in religious garb who crosses our path in

Arthurian romance may be legitimately suspected of being a god or goddess in disguise."  from 'Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance.'

"We have seen the Guardians of the Grail assuming more and more distinctly the forms of the Welsh gods, Manawyd, Myrddin, Bran, Avalloch, Gwair, Beli, and

Llwch; and the castle of the Grail as distinctly rearing its crystal walls and phantom towers on Lundy."

The Britons were thus not unlike the Greeks in placing the enchanted abodes of the gods in islands of the sea. ****'Beheld in the glamour of distance, surrounde

above and below by an expanse of crimson and gold, brooded over by cloudy flames, every island became in the eyes of those on shore an unearthly paradise,

the home of their particular deity. - The Isle of Man named after Manannan or Manawyd (or the other way round!) - the Isle of Bardsey, trad. assoc. by the

Welsh as the place where Merlin retired to dwell in his glass house. - Grassholm, the site of the entertainment of the Noble Head; Bran - 

**** Rhys has pointed out that the Isle of Lundy off the Devon coast probably owes its Welsh name Ynys Wair to the localisation there of the imprisonment

there of Gwair or Gwri.  

All solar gods

***All these facts point to a powerful belief that the islands not far from the British coast were regarded as the homes of the various gods of the sun

Many classical writers stress the sanctity of islands and their inhabitation by priestesses with their strange rites and powers.

Demetrius (1st. C. BC);- describes the sacred isles lying off the coast of Britain and Ireland and imparts them with a an awesome gloom. He reports that few are

inhabited and some are named after gods and heroes

Strabo (dates) tells of an island of women near the mouth of the River Loire visited by Posidonius, a Greek who traveled in the first century BC. which was

forbidden to men. These women are represented as priestesses, and used to pay visits to men on the mainland but no men were allowed on the island. The temple

had a roof but it was unroofed once a year.

Pomponius Mela (---?ad.) speaks of nine Celtic priestesses who dwell on the island of Sena (Ile de Seine) off the SW tip of Brittany. The place from which the souls of

the departed were ferried to Britain. 'Sena, opposite the coast of the Osimi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenae, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts, to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal form they might choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. 'These holy women had many magical powers. They could raise storms, change themselves into bird or animal form at will, cure the sick, foretell the future, forecast the weather. They are, however devoted to

the service of voyagers only who have set out to consult them.

Tacitus (dates) writes of druidesses on Anglesey, a druid sacred island, the stronghold of druidic Britain, who fought beside their men against the Romans

Tir nan og, 'Land of youth' or Avalon, Insula Pomonum, Apple Isle; It is situated on an island, glimmering far out on the western ocean

The Romans called Ireland the 'Insula Sacra' - 'Sacred Isle.'

Remains of a wooden temple built circa 1 BC (is that right?) have been excavated on Hayling island. It was replaced with a stone temple by the Romans

The people of Armorica (Brittany) conducted the souls of their dead across the sea to Britain.

Evidence from recent archaeological excavations on the Isles of Scilly demonstrate that they were places of pre-Christian pilgrimage and veneration.

In early Irish legend the Hebrides of Scotland were the haunt of demons, shunned by mankind

 Legend tells how Fer Hi - 'Man of the Yew'. son of the sea god Manannan Mac Lir and a druid of the divine tribe, the Tuatha de Danaan of Ireland had his home in

the western isles.

The Gaelic hero, Cu Chulainn, son of the pan-Celtic god Lugh, sailed from Ireland to the spectral Isle of Skye to learn military secrets from the war-goddess, Sga

Thach, the shadowy one.

Bardsey Island (Ynys Enli) 2 miles off Caernarvonshire was a place of pilgrimage and sanctity in early times

 The church in Scotland was established by St. Columba on Iona. Columba found druids in possession of Iona when he landed there in 563 and banished the 'false

bishops.'

 In Christian times there was a Major monastic settlement on Lindisfarne - 'Holy Isle.'

http://www.lundyisleofavalon.co.uk/mythology/sacred%20isles.htm