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Reviving the Sacred Land
By R J Stewart © March, 2001
(Originally written for Wolfhound Press, Dublin, Ireland)
One of the most fascinating discoveries of
my life has been that most of what we are accustomed to call
spirituality would have been meaningless to our ancestors.
By spirituality I mean the entire range, orthodox religion,
New Age alternatives, and revival paganism and magical arts.
This conclusion did not come easily, nor was it a sudden revelation:
it crept up on me over the years, as a result of research,
study, and inner experience. Many of my suspicions have been
confirmed through long talks with elders from tribal cultures
around the world, with whom it was possible to compare contemporary
ethnic practices and shamanism to the modern artificial substitutes
so widely sold . In Ireland, it seems clear that the traditional
wisdom of the elders, handed down by word of mouth, through
songs and stories, is often radically different to “Celtic
revival” modern spirituality.
Most recently I have been impressed (though
not always convinced) by the writing of Ronald Hutton, a British
academic who has explored many aspects of both historical
and revival paganism. Hutton challenges some of the basic
modern assumptions about ancient paganism and old religions
in a thought provoking manner. Thus he also challenges many
of the foundations of revival paganism (His books include:
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles : Their
Nature and Legacy and The Triumph of the Moon : A
History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft).
In some my own books over the last 20 years
or so, I have explored the practical, transformative, magical
effect of working with the UnderWorld, the older spiritual
traditions of the sacred Earth, and how to make such traditions
vivid and contemporary for us today (These include:The
UnderWorld Initiation; Earth Light; Power
Within the Land; The Living World of Faery).
In many ways I consider historic accuracy to be essential,
but it need not be the ultimate goal. Historical accuracy
in restoring old spiritual traditions is less important than
effective inner transformation: if it works, well and good;
if it don’t work, don’t do it.
Remember that some of the material in older
traditions is totally unworkable and inappropriate; we do
not have mate with a mare (as reported in the 12th century
by Giraldus Cambrensis) to tap into an ancient Irish tradition
of sacred kingship and fertility. We do not need to sacrifice
a bull and wrap ourselves in the skin in order to gain prophetic
visions (another ritual reported in the Middle Ages) . These
old practices are historically significant, but invalid or
inappropriate for 21st century people. I merely cite these
dramatic examples as obvious methods that are historically
reported, but not necessary today. Many other lesser examples
could be discussed, but we do not have the space in a short
article of this sort.
Yet we do need a consistent accuracy in our
understanding of ancestral history, mythology, legends. If
we do not do our homework, we can easily become lost in a
morass of trivia and wishful thinking. What has happened,
of course, is a series of fakes, fads, and fashions, from
the 18th century to the present day. Today there is so much
fantasy, falsehood, and fakery in publication on ancestral
magic and pagan practices that we need rigorous application
and research more than ever.
In my lifetime, and during my own career
working and recording with Irish musicians, Celtic tradition
and music has become ruthlessly emasculated and utterly pulverized
by commercial interests. Finding accurate information is not
an easy task, but the solid basics are defined in a small
number of trustworthy reference sources…the rest is
down to common sense and inspiration (in that order).
I should add one mildly uncomfortable fact
about Celtic tradition (as the examples I quoted above come
from Ireland and Scotland): there are many hundreds of ancient
manuscripts, especially in Ireland, that have not been translated.
There are far more medieval Irish and Latin texts unassessed
untranslated and unpublished than there are in print. A strong
voice on this subject is the Irish writer John Minahane (The
Christian Druids, on the filid or philosopher- poets
of Ireland ), who, like Ronald Hutton, takes a fresh
look at old material, and scoffs at many of the assumptions
that we have inherited. Like most modern writers, I have used
the trusted translations and sources, with a lot of individual
research, retranslation, and so forth. But on dark storm tossed
nights, I awaken suddenly and scream “ What if…what
if…all those other Irish, Welsh, and European source
materials, actually tell us something different ? What if
they all say that the UnderWorld was the propaganda of only
a few druids in a remote part of Kerry ?” I suppose
we can always assert that these new translations are forgeries,
or suppress them somehow. That’s the usual method.
Some of my own inspirations and insights
have come through visions while living on a powerful sacred
site: others came through my early teachers at a time when
esoteric training was still hidden and secretive in Britain.
And, as must always be the case, I have developed my understanding
through long study, research, consideration and comparison.
But ultimately, in spiritual arts or disciplines, it is only
the doing that counts, not the reading about, writing
about, or thinking about.
We do not have to accept everything in
a religion or in an old tradition to respect its inner truths.
Like many other people in Western culture,
I absorbed certain typical ideas in childhood: mostly of the
kind that tell us that spirit is elevated, up there, in the
light. Later I found that these ideas, so ingrained in our
culture, were the decadent end of a propaganda program, started
by political religions, by the various branches of Christianity,
but also found in Judaism, and in Islam.
Now I am not going to waste your precious
reading time bashing these religions, as many people have
done this, often with justification. I think that there are
truths and insights in all orthodox religions, Western or
Eastern, and that these truths are good, valid, and trustworthy.
But… and this is the big one, we do not have to accept
everything in a religion in order to respect its deep inner
truths. Indeed the deep truths are often in conflict with
the politicized dogma, for the deep truths are eternal, unbound
by time and history, and have no connection to human power
plays or politics.
The main aim of religious propaganda…has
been to tell us that Below is Bad, Above is Good. Celtic tradition
tells us something different.
The main aim of religious propaganda in our
culture has been to turn humanity away from the Earth, telling
us that Below is Bad, Above is Good. Why ? Well, historically,
this was to get customers away from the pagan religions and
sacro-magical practices, and into those early and poorly funded
churches. Such outer evangelizing hides a more subtle inner
campaign, for power at a spiritual level. Ancient pagan practices
were substantially based upon Earth powers, prophecy, healing,
and the widespread worship of goddesses whose divine attributes
were founded in the land, the ocean, the Earth . The evidence
for this in Ireland is widespread, and central to many ancient
Irish manuscripts, and permeates many aspects of folkloric
tradition. To the early Christians, any masculine deity became
a deo falsus, a false god. Deo falsus has
often been proposed as the origin of diabolus or “devil”.
“Let no man indulge in that most filthy
habit of dressing up as a stag” thundered St Augustine
: but he did not reveal the real reasons why. Animal/human
magic, horned deities such as Pan or Cern, are manifestations
of UnderWorld power, and drawing that power up to the surface
was central to the old ceremonies. Likewise, the goddess powers
of wells, streams, rivers, and sacred mounds, were repudiated
and often transformed into semi-historical figures or amalgamated
with saints.
To this day a most potent figure in Irish
legend is the feminine Sovereignty or goddess or fairy queen
of the Land.
What do the Romans tell us ?
Paradoxically, the Romans, who destroyed
so much as they homogenized Europe, have left us some evidence
of UnderWorld magic, in typical crass Roman style. Roman images
of Celtic horned gods, in the conquered territories of Gaul
(homeland of Getafix the Druid, and shame on you if you do
not know who he is ), sometimes hold a pot of coins….to
symbolize the wealth of power in the UnderWorld. We still
call a wealthy man a “plutocrat”…. from
the classical god Pluto, lord of hidden wealth in the UnderWorld.
This concept is far more than one of mineral wealth…it
is about power, fecundity, and regeneration. No wonder the
developing and controlling new religions wanted people to
stay away from goddesses and gods of a realm that granted
independent power ! When religion and politics, temple
and state, march hand in hand, their marriage is about control
of power , not love and compassion, and certainly not freedom
of thought, vision, worship or inspiration.
And in the 19th century ?
Back to the idea of elevated spirit, and
UnderWorld spirit. We now leap forward in time a thousand
years or more . This is a crucial period, for it was when
many old manuscripts, especially those of Ireland and Wales,
were translated for the first time with some measure of accuracy,
and given serious study and publication.
In the 19th century anthropologists, the
newly burgeoning Theosophists, and professors of comparative
religion in the West, ingrained with Christian conditioning,
suddenly discovered (wait for it) “sun gods”.
The spiritual idea of elevated light was associated, by a
kind of Christianized reductionism, with the notion of pagan
“sun worship”. Every ancient religion, every pagan
motif of the past, every folk tradition just had to relate
to solar worship and the Wheel of the Year.
When modern writers in revival paganism took
up this Wheel idea, they merely copied it from Victorian sources,
and developed it. But it is not ancient: it is a romantic
fabrication with a traceable literary history. And yet, we
find its basis in the annual cycle of the seasons , and the
fourfold glyphs, mandalas, and yantras of our worldwide spiritual
traditions, so it contains a powerful pattern of truth.
I am not suggesting that there were no sun
gods : that would be absurd, given the widely varied evidence
from the ancient world. What happened in 19th century literature,
in both academic and esoteric studies, was something subtle
and pernicious : all ancient magic and religion was examined,
discussed, and interpreted in a solar (usually male) context.
Thus the 20th century inherited an imbalanced set of ideas
on ancestral religion, magic, and metaphysics. Much of our
revival paganism and new spirituality has an invisible Christianized
foundation that has to be excavated, considered, and rebuilt
in a new way without letting the edifice above it collapse
altogether.
Despite all the solar phallic wheel twirling,
there is ample evidence to show that the ancestors in Ireland,
Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, all believed, knew
would be a better word , that life is regenerated beneath
the Earth, in the UnderWorld. (As a small aside: I coined
this spelling of UnderWorld back in the late 1970’s
in my early book The UnderWorld Initiation: I wanted
the publisher to grasp that it was not a book about the Mafia).
Only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have we started
to reconsider the profound implications of this enduring idea
that Life comes Up from Below, and not Down from Above.
Celtic tradition gives us a model
of UnderWorld religion and magic
Celtic tradition gives us a fine model of
UnderWorld sacro-magical understanding and practices . It
is not a coherent model or a “complete system”,
as this notion of completeness is entirely modern; instead
it is diffuse, organic, prolific, protean. The Celtic model
serves as an example to demonstrate traditions which are found
world wide; all spiritual and magical traditions begin with
the UnderWorld. All entrances to, and passages within, the
earth were sacred: caves, wells, springs, gorges, chasms,
volcanic craters. Each had its story, myth, or spiritual presence.
(Classic reference sources are Dr Ann Ross: Pagan Celtic Britain
; Alwyn and Brinley Ress: Celtic Heritage) We find
such traditions worldwide, at the root of every religion,
dating from older times before that religion was founded and
formalized. Often they are disguised, as in the typical examples
of local saints at ancient sacred sites, who were once gods
and goddesses of the shrines. Ireland, most of all, still
lives and breathes her own version of this ancient wisdom.
The legends that have been handed down in
ancient texts, and in oral traditions, all relate to themes
of transformation and growth through the powers of the UnderWorld,
and not through the influence of the sun and sky. Sometimes
such themes are on a large scale, the appearances of races,
orders of life, mountains, rivers, oceans and so forth. Sometimes
they are embodied in the life story of one individual…or
of a group of people on a journey. After certain mythic characters
have traveled through the UnderWorld, they often find a resting
place among the stars: but the UnderWorld of Earth comes first.
(Many examples are found in Robert Graves, Greek Myths)
The Cauldron of Regeneration, so central
to Irish and Celtic legends is nothing less than the regenerative
power of the Land, of the Planet Earth herself. Nothing could
be more important for us today than a sense that the Earth
is sacred, and a source of spiritual power. Indeed, we must
return to this: it is our greatest and most redemptive truth.
The time for either materialist indifference or ethereal escapism
is over and the time for realization is upon us. Kill the
earth, and we kill ourselves.
So what about the Light ? In the pagan myths
and legends, and in folk tales that persisted well into historical
times, the UnderWorld which includes but is not limited to
the Faery Realm, is a Place of Light. To reach this Light,
we pass first through essential nourishing darkness, sacred
to the Dark Goddess who is known by many names. As the Qabalistic
writer Dion Fortune said : we can only come to the White Isis
by way of the Black Isis.
This process of finding light within the
Earth, after passing through darkness, is also one of inner
regeneration for the individual. When the spiritual consciousness
is told that divinity, that the Source, is “up there”
and a long way away, we become closed to the nearest source
of light, grace, healing, regeneration, which is just beneath
our feet. This source of Earth light rises through the body,
and energizes our inner meditations, our vitality, our own
individual UnderWorld of consciousness, imagination, spirit.
If only we pay attention to it.
Our nearest star is not the Sun, but
the sun-stuff blazing just beneath our feet
Why is the UnderWorld and Faery Realm a place
of darkness then of light ? Because that is exactly what the
body of the planet is like : solid nourishing earth, then
radiant fire. Our nearest star is not the Sun, but the sun-stuff
still blazing just beneath our feet. And as our most advanced
biological sciences tell us, primal life is created where
those subterranean fires meet the waters of the deep ocean.
The physical organism is a mirror of the inner or spiritual
forces; this holds true for a planet just as much as for a
human, a tree, a slug, a tomato.
The modern discovery of primal and enduring
life forms in deep ocean volcanic rifts is significant indeed:
many creation myths assert that life comes up, in infinite
variety, from the UnderWorld. This is what our ancestors described
as the Cauldron of Regeneration ( I have discussed this important
theme in several books, including, Creation Myth,
Celtic Gods, Celtic Goddesses; Celtic Myths,
Celtic Legends; Celtic Bards, Celtic Druids
(with Robin Williamson). The ancestors did not have computers
or molecular biology, but they had the most powerful tools
of all: intuition and vision. Consider the Planet, and know
… this is what we are; we are a life form,
consciousness, with a body and energy that is nourished by
the earth and the inner fire. We have long acknowledged the
fire above, but forgotten about the fire below, which enables
our very being, our physical presence.
The Simplest UnderWorld Meditation
I feel that if we are to take any inspirations
from ancestral myths and magic, that we should begin where
they began (where all life begins), in the UnderWorld. The
simplest UnderWorld meditation is to sit quietly and slowly
let your awareness descend into the body of the land. Nothing
more, nothing less. Then slowly re-emerge. Later you may be
inspired to explore mythic patterns of UnderWorld descents,
embodied in Irish and other Celtic legends, and use their
imagery in visualization. I would add that it is important
to make such visions simple, direct, and contemporary. After
all, that is what they were to the ancestors, being utterly
of the present, and never remote or obscure.
So when you walk the green fields and the
bogs and the brown hills, remember that what is underneath
is sacred, was sacred to our ancestors, and will remain sacred
for the future, providing we open to our understanding of
the Land, and find a new love and respect and sense of relationship.
R J Stewart (Spring 2001)
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