The Ceile De – The Living Spiritual Tradition

The Celtic Heart-Journey

Perhaps we can say the same for all traditions in the world, but certainly on the Celtic path, the story of the individual’s journey towards the One is reflected in the spiritual history of the people. But, with regard to our individual progression, rather than thinking of our history as being a linear movement from Pagan (magical, nature-oriented, many gods) to Christian (mystical, heaven-orientated, one god) the Ceile De view is that our journey is through a holistic series of worlds within worlds, leading towards unitive consciousness at the centre. It is possible to view these planes of consciousness as levels of awareness that co-exist within our psyches. Although we will inevitably as individuals have a natural disposition towards one, we will experience each of them at different stages on our journey… The ultimate goal is to live simultaneously in them all, but for one’s impelling force to come from the centre.

What is Spiritual Transformation? It is the shifting of one’s over-riding impulse, in stages, from the outer circle of consciousness to the inner. And it must begin with an awareness of the different levels of one’s being.

The Druids and The Otherworld

For the pre-Christian, the Gods and Goddesses were the invisible qualities and powers that inhabited both our natures and Nature Herself. As such, they were known as the children (aspects) of the Mother Goddess – the Earth. The Gaels call these luminous beings the Sidhe – the people of the hollow hills, or the people of peace. Because the Celtic eye is so brim-full with the pageant and detail of Nature, the Sidhe in Celtic myth do not descend to us, like the Angels and Gods of many other cultures, from the Heavens above. They come from the Otherworld – a land intermingled with this world. Our psyches have been formed by twilights that are long and slow, casting dim lights and shadows that move in firelight. Nature has formed us into a visionary people, whose culture has been richly coloured by this Otherworld – ‘Tir na n-Og’ – the mundus imaginalis of the Celt… But this world is not imaginary in the sense of fictional. To the Celt the imagination is a boat, in which our seeking hearts may sail from the land of outer cares, concerns and illusion to the shores of Beauty. The first call to journey is the call of Beauty… Ultimately we will discover, with heart-breaking simplicity, that the highest Beauties and the highest Truth are one.

In legend, the Sidhe appear to us through the green veil of a forest, or the glimmer of moon on wave. Their emergence in our dreams and sacred imagination disturbs our complacent, habitual selves with a numinosity hitherto unknown. They shapeshift like the landscape we inhabit and so one of the lessons we learn from them is that our experience of life is ephemeral. They hint to us that there is something more enduring than the pleasure of the passing moment we chase. They offer us an experience of otherness… of magic.

The Sidhe bring us wonderful gifts from their world. Legend tells us they brought art and science to humankind. The doorway to the Otherworld is in the mind… both our minds and the mind of Nature.

When we first enter the world of the spiritual seeker, we cross the borderlands into Tir na n-Og in the sense that our consciousness begins to partake of its character – one that seeks for the beauty in things. There, we leave behind some of the values of the mechanical, ‘mundane’ world. We have entered the world of the Sidhe. We sense marvels, miracles and have visions. Our inspiration and creativity increases.

Most artists inhabit this plane of consciousness when they are creating. Their daily life, whether they are aware of it or not, is an ongoing relationship with the Otherworld. This is the realm of the Muse who teaches us new, deeper ways to perceive life. When art is used with spiritual intent it becomes a powerful tool for transformation. It is, after all, how the Sidhe want us to use their gifts – to grow and change.

Tir na n-Og is the secret, enchanted inner life of Nature. It is the intuitive land frequented by artists, inspired scientists, magicians, seers, shamans and spiritual seekers. All who work in these fields have some degree of interaction with this level of consciousness. Within the Celtic tradition, because this world is known and visited, natural gifts often become heightened through working with the Sidhe.

Many people stay there forever, partaking of the nature of the Gods, weaving beautiful spells over the world with the dreams they dream. But for some even this is not enough. A longing for something beyond this realm troubles their hearts. For them the gifts of the Sidhe are like the rainbow, hinting at something forever just out of reach, forever luring them toward an impossible beauty. The Sidhe offer us, the legends say, feasting without satiation.

What does this say to us about their role in our spiritual journey? It tells us, as the druids hinted, that there is something beyond both the everyday world and theirs. That perhaps the role of the Sidhe is to bring us to a point where we can no longer be fulfilled solely by the aspects of life that they represent… They have initiated in us an unbearable hunger that no thing or idea can satisfy. They have made our hearts ache for some new understanding that can bring us closer toward the core of reality. As they first lured us out of the mundane into the magical, something else calls to us from a new horizon… It is time to leave.

Our journey has taken us far. We have known ourselves as children of both the Earth Mother and of the Transcendent Father. We have one final task. We must reconcile this duality and embody it. How can we achieve this? It happens when we bring our invisible treasures back to the threshold we left behind all those journeyings ago. We must accept the challenge to live in all worlds at once, led from the Heart’s Core. Then these imperceptible treasures become manifest – in us.

Then:-

Our Heart (for now we know there is only one Heart) is the marriage bed of the visible and the invisible faces of the One – of Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Our Heart is the immaculate conception of that sacred union.

Our Heart is the womb of our spiritual re-birth.

We become the incarnation of the Divine Child.

Two thousand years ago, these islands were awash with an awareness of the Divine Child. In the Brythonic tongue he was called Mabon ap Modron – ‘Son, son of Mother’. In Gaelic he was Oenghus – ‘The Chosen one’. Beings of Unconditional Love, these divinities were the earliest native mythic depictions of what we now call the Christ Consciousness. Myths carrying the story of the possibility of this level of attainment for human beings abound in all parts of the world. It is both stirring and significant that Druidism was moving over the brink of its own Mythic exploration of the Christ at the same period in history as Middle-Eastern scriptures and the mystery traditions of the Mediterranean were finding their fulfilment.

Myth has it that those Druids who wished to journey beyond the realm of the many gods – to find the place where all Gods become one – called themselves the Companions, or Spouses of God… The Ceile De.