The Preserving Shrine

[wren]

The Sacred Dreamtime

The Preserving Shrine: The Memory of the Land

by Jason Kirkey (www.druidcircle.net, http://www.betweenthemists.org)

Early law text, the Senchus Mor, which encodes the Brehon Law system of the Irish, asks the question, “What is the preserving shrine?”. It then goes on to give two answers: “Not hard: it is memory and what is preserved in it,” and then, “Not hard: it is nature and what is preserved in it.” There is a deep and abiding connection between memory and nature in the Celtic cosmology.

We can see it in the practices of the druids, as well as the filidh, or vision-poets. It is evident in their stories, which present to us a profound connection of history, myth, and their landscapes. Through an in-depth look at these things, it becomes clear that the wisdom and the sacred landscape of Ireland has the power to connect us to what is called “the spirit of place”. The spirit of Ireland is deeply connected to the Otherworld and the Celtic “dreamtime” history. By connecting with this spiritscape we are entering into the preserving shrine, and all that is preserved within it.

There exists a vast collection of place name stories called the dindshenchas. These are myths detailing the mytho-historical explanation of why certain places are named as they are. The tradition of the dindshenchas is a valid one, but the problem arises with the actual stories we have. As Seán Ó Tuathail explains in his article, Power and Landscape in Ireland, “Their compilers sought to include as many places as possible, and as with all such ‘quantity over quality’ attempts, the result is a farce.

Many of the ‘explanations’ given are early medieval or Norse, others are the result of the local people in one township bearing a grudge against those living in the neighboring township...and a large number are pure invention by the compilers themselves, taking the actual name and inventing stories (often directly
contradicted in valid seanchais) to explain the name”. One of the stories from the dindshenchas that we can assume with some certainty to be authentic is the one that recounts the way in which the Boyne river got its name.

The story goes that after coupling with the Dagda and having a child, Oengus Mac Og, the goddess Bóand went to the Well of Segais in the Sidhe of Nechtan. Her plan was to walk widdershins about it three times, a regenerative circumnambulation ritual to restore herself to state of purity and virginity; walking in the opposite direction of the sun’s course and thus turning back time. But only Nechtan and his three cupbearers were allowed to go to the well, and it was said that anyone else who went would be maimed. When Bóand did her ritual, the waters of the well rose up, taking one of her eyes, a foot, and a hand. These injuries resemble the crane posture taken by Lugh at the second battle of Magh Tuireadh, closing one eye, standing on one leg, with one hand behind his back.

There seems to be a “shamanic” significance with this posture, and idircheo, being “between the mists” of the Otherworld. Bóand fled the well, towards the sea to escape her shame, but the waters followed her. When finally she reached the edge of the sea, the water, behind her forming a great river, swallowed and killed her. The river has ever since been named Boyne, and Bóand has been its spirit.

This is a perfect example of the way in which myth, landscape, and an saol eile (the Otherworld, which is a spiritual landscape that is “present but not present” at all times) interact with one
another. It is the very character of myth to connect us to this realm. Beyond the function of explaining the unknown, myths are made to make it easier for us to slide into these liminal states of awareness, where we can access the Otherworld. Myths launch us into the misty threshold that is between this world and an eile, the other. This story is just one example of a story-telling tradition that is clear evidence of a connection in the Celtic consciousness between their myths and landscape, and the
connection to the Otherworld they give us together. The dindshenchas are comparable to the Australian Aboriginal concept of songlines and their own dreamtime.

History and myth are not separated by the Celtic mind. By not keeping written historical records they resisted, as Alexei Kondratiev says, “being dragged into the continuum of history, held on to the Dreamtime, the eternal present, and the certainty of an unchanging pattern”. Like with all things, the Celts preferred to keep both history and myth in the threshold between each other. It is evident in their mythology, as they include various historical or supposed historical events. After all why should history be forced to conform to so-called fact and rational theories of what constitutes the past. That
would assume that there is only one past, rather than a multitude of realities and ways in which such things can be experienced or perceived. To keep history and myth unseparated is to do exactly what Kondratiev says, to remain within the dreamtime; to remain in a constant threshold experience where
they are in the constant presence of the Otherworld.

In Ireland, the entire island is spoken of as a goddess, and there is a rich tradition of honoring the land in this way, and how it is interacted with. The Goddess of the Land is actually a triple goddess, appearing in myth as the sisters, Banba, Fódhla, and Ériu. When the Milesian Gaels invaded or migrated to Ireland, they encountered each of these goddesses in turn. Each one asked for them to name the island after them, and in return they would not hinder them. To Banba and Fódhla they agreed. When
they reached Ériu though, she too asked this question and Amhairghin Bright-Knee responded, saying that the island would be named for her as well. But because, as Patricia Monaghan says in, The Red-haired Girl from the Bog, “the words of a poet can never be reversed, the land would be called Éire”.
This Goddess of the Land forms the essential form through which the Irish Celts understand the land. In ancient times, when there were still kings, there was a custom of the king symbolically marrying the Goddess of the Land. This was to ensure that the king was sensitive to her sovereignty, so there would be a good harvest, and of course, to retain the necessary balance between tribe and land.

There is a story surrounding this custom. One day, Niall (of the Nine Hostages) was hunting in the forest with his brothers. The day was unlucky though, and they brought back nothing. They
wandered the forest, and became quite thirsty. When finally they came upon a spring, there was a gruesomely hideous hag, serving as its keeper. She offered them all the water they could drink, in return for a kiss. His brothers all refused, but Niall did not. He went to her, and going beyond a simple kiss, he made love to her. When they were finished, Niall opened his eyes to find that the ugly hag was now a beautiful goddess. He asked what her name was, and in response, she said, “Flaitheas”, which means sovereignty. After he proved himself to her, he was made ard-rí , High King of Ireland. This is also a good example of how myth and history have a tendency to entwine, as Niall of the Nine Hostages is recorded as one of the most powerful High Kings of Ireland around 400 A.D.

Although this explains the important role of the landscape in the Irish Celtic tradition, it does not address the issue of memory and its connection to the land. Memory is something that was held of the highest importance in Celtic society. Celtic society, because of its oral nature, was fluid and unrestricted. It could evolve as was necessary without old beliefs and ideas persisting merely because they were written on the page of a book. Like all oral societies this demanded that the wisdom and lore keepers
develop memories of encyclopedic knowledge in a large variety of subjects. The cultivation of memory, however, is far more important than just being able to remember poems and stories.

As Searles
O'Dubhain states in his essay, The Traditional Roles of Druids, “The memory techniques are import for three reasons: To remember the truth when we experience it, to make the instantaneous associations that are necessary for creative thinking and production, to serve as a checking of truth in a matrix of facts and relationships”. Truth was of an extremely important value to the druids, and extended far beyond the
language game we have turned it into today. Greywind, author of The Voice Within the Wind, says that truth is, “a measurement of the degree of which a thing is rightly integrated with the underlying unity of all things”. Truth then, becomes a matter of integrating subjective reality with objective reality, as evidenced
by the old saying, the Truth against the world.

It was the Earth though that held the greatest memory. John Mathews, in The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom, says, “The earth remembers everything and is witness to history in a way we cannot fully appreciate. In Celtic tradition, the land is characterized by spiritual manifestations of its power: by
the Goddess of the Land, by the appearance of warring dragons, by the flowing of rivers of mystical properties. It is the shaman’s task to read and know the land, to be so part of it that any imbalances within it registers in a conscious manner”. This is where memory and land interact. The poet Amhairghin, first of the Gaels to set foot on Ireland uttered a well know poem in which he recounts a series of images, claimed that he is them. Amongst these images are, the wind of the sea, a stag of seven
tines, a tear of the sun, and a hill of poetry. This is reminiscent of the poetry of the Welsh bard Taliesin, who has similar lines of poetry claiming memory of similar experiences.

Erynn Rowan Laurie recounts in an essay titled, The Preserving Shrine, “Because of their identification with nature, both of them know deep secrets. ‘In what place lies the setting of the sun?’ asks Aimirgin, and it is apparent that he knows the answer”. It is exactly this memory of the earth that allows one to identify so completely with all aspects of nature, that such secrets become revealed, and memory again that allows one to recall the
experiences, and make the instantaneous associations between them and other facts and relationships. These techniques were employed widely by both the druids, and the filidh, or vision-poets, who took their place after the coming of Christianity.

It is this memory connection that allows for the obtaining of such wisdom. When we are able to develop such a deep connection of remembrance with the earth and our landscapes, we become
recipients of its stored knowledge. This is just what the preserving shrine is. It is nature, memory, and what is preserved within them.

Each specific place in nature has its indwelling spirit in the Celtic traditions. This animistic world-view, held by many native traditions, is the product of a belief in the sacredness of all things. Unlike many world religions which hold that divinity is entirely transcendent, animistic traditions believe that this
divinity is both imminent and transcendent. God does not only dwell in heaven, but within the Earth as well. This view was held by both the ancient Celts as well as the modern ones. While Celtic Christians speak of this as the imminence of God, Celtic pagans speak of this as the spirit of place. If human beings
can be conceived of having their own spirit, individualized as well as connected to the larger whole, then it would not be too far of a stretch to conceive all of the physical world as being possessed of the same spirit.

In Scots-Gaelic, one of the words for God is Cruithear, a word which means “shaper”. We see the same idea in Irish Gaelic with the word Cruthaitheoir, which means “creator”. However the
word cruth, means literally “to shape” and so this word for creator holds within it the root word that means “to shape”. Shaping and creating are two very different things. The Celts have no creation myth; no tales about how all this came to be. In their mind it has always been, and always will be. God is not
a creator, but rather a shaper; shaping that which already, and always has existed. This entity does not sit in golden throne in Heaven, taking no part in the supposed creation, but rather is constantly in a process of shaping. God is within all things, and therefore everything is a constant process of being shaped.

This adds an incredible dimension to the way in which landscape is interacted with. It is not just something that exists as our environment, a backdrop in which our lives play out like the scenery of a play. The landscape holds its own personality, grows as we grow, is shaped as we are shaped, and perhaps even more importantly, shapes as we shape. Shaping is not just the Shaper(s) elite hobby. When we realize that there exists a stream of shaping, then we have a choice to either engage in this flow, letting it take us on its currents, thus being shaped, or resist it and stagnate. To let it shape us though, we realize that we too have the ability to do this, and can then take our parts in this divine play. The landscape is the same way. The ability to recognize the shaping power of the land is the ability to be
shaped by it.

Similar to the Australian Aboriginal idea of songlines, the Celts too believed that the indwelling spirit of each place could be profoundly affected by song. The bardic tradition was a strong one in the Celtic lands, and in Irish the word for poet and seer are the same, establishing a mystical connotation to poetry and song. During training, a bard was expected to memorize vast areas of landscape in connection to myth, song, and poetry. To then recite the lore at their respective locations was a way of
recreating the events, and so also a way of recreating that place. It was a deviation of the practice of symbolic sacrifice to recreate the world in a more localized context.

This entire idea of the Earth as sacred, as well as all the practices, traditions, and beliefs that surround it, serve a purpose of allowing us to form a bridge between nature and the Otherworld. There is a tradition in Celtic Christianity referred to as Green Martyrdom. This is the wandering of a person who has given up their life to search for God in the wilds of nature. It is a symbolic act of letting go of one’s ego into the tangled “wilderness” of our deeper self, that core called the soul, which each of us possess. Our interaction with the landscape through these traditions, whether it is a Green Martyrdom or simply holding an awareness of the holiness of all the world and allowing that to be embodied in every
action, can lead us deeper into the spirit of the land, as well as into our own selves. As Frank MacEowen writes in The Mist-Filled Path, “your life is a gift and a pilgrimage; see every day, every
event, every moment, and every act as a renewable point in time offering you a new beginning”.

Each step we take, in either literal pilgrimage or the one that is our life, will lead us both deeper into both the spiritscape of the land and of ourselves. It is a constant rebirth of our selves and a renewal of the spirit of the land, a way of thinking and envisioning the world in which we are only the guests. To
realize this sets us down a stream that is the shaping power of landscape, divinity and ourselves. These are not independent of one another. We are the bridges between these two sacred dimensions, a threshold point between earth and spirit. It is exactly this that leads to the perpetual rebirth of soul and
nature, and to the opening of our holy senses which allows us to perceive their interconnectedness. This connection and dialogue preserves everything.

What is the preserving shrine? Not hard: it is memory and nature, and what is preserved within them.

[wren]

“There is a wood,” she whispered finally. “Deep in the hills and hidden from the world of men. A dark and ancient wood where little light finds its way through the thick canopy, so little grows beneath but bracken and moss. There are no voices of men there, so old and secret a place it is. No sound at all, except… that this wood is the place all the music in the world goes to wait until it is once again called out of the corners. All the memories of the world reside in its stones and its trees. It’s pools are filled with tears, both of joy and sorrow. This wood, it was… it is my home…”
wren, The Mountains of the Moon

I love the concept of the Aboriginal ‘songlines’ to describe the Preserving Shrine. Though far from Celtic lands, it seems a perfect Celtic concept to me. The poets sing the land into lushness, into being, and the lack of song leaves the land and its people barren. They traveled the roads from one place to another, their songs bringing news and stories and history. Those roads become the songlines of a land, no less than the original songlines of creation of the Aborigine. Those songs remain in the land and the world around us, though we may sing them no longer. Yet, if we open our hearts and close our mouths, we can hear them still.

In an unfinished novel I began about three years ago, a character talked of music and memories. She said that all the music in the world waits in a deep and ancient wood, far from the world of men. It waits there in the dark stillness, until it is called out into the open once more. The wood holds the memories of all the world, along with its tears. I wrote that long before I learned of the Preserving Shrine or dindshenchas. And, yet, she (and I) somehow already knew about them. Somehow, they spoke to me before I even knew their names.

Now, as I look back over many of the characters I’ve created, I see the voices of the land and of nature calling to me. I believe it was those voices I heard and those voices I wrote. Voices ancient and whisper-soft, yet preserved and waiting for someone to hear them. Places with stories to tell, waiting for feet to pass over them once more.

When I first heard the voice of Danu, even here in my New Jersey garden, I know it was an ancient voice I heard. The other voices that come to me now, when I meditate in my yard or when I journey into the woods are not just human voices of the past. They are other voices still here in the present. Others have walked those paths before me, their steps still there in the soil below my feet. And, as strongly as I heard them before, I hear them even more clearly now that my footsteps match theirs. I can feel them walking with me.

When I think of Scotland, though I have yet to make my pilgrimage there, it is as if I can hear the land calling back all those who left Her shores. I am certain it is the same in Ireland. So many forced to leave their homeland behind, so many who were so inextricably linked to that very land… their tears are heard even now. The little I know of Gaelic tells me it is a language of the landscape and perhaps that is why it did not survive the journey from that very land. And, yet, the longing for that land from those of us so far removed by distance and time is bringing a longing for the language back as well.

The memories of those people, I am certain, are preserved in the landscape of those ancient lands. The laughter and tears, the joy and sorrow, the pain and pleasure they lived and breathed and felt are still there, echoing among the hills and valleys. It is the same here, in the woods. The same kind of memory exists of those who once walked among the trees and along the creek (human and otherwise), who sat beside the pool where I love to sit. The land remembers them and the trees and rocks and water preserve that memory, while having memories of their own. It is their shared experiences that are etched in the stones, their laughter that fills the gullies long empty of streams, their tears that flow along the creek’s edge. All the Spirits of this land echo through it. All that is still here remembers, whether spirit or stone.

Houses, too, can have memories. My children always ask to ride by the houses of their grandparents, though they are all gone now. On the way there and after we’ve driven by, they tell stories about the times they spent there, bringing my parents back to life. The same is true of the houses where my children have lived. They remember and ‘preserve’ the landscape of those houses by connecting the stories of their own past with those very places. The same is true for my childhood home. There, however, are not only the happy memories of my own youth but the terrifying and tragic scars of the fire that almost completely destroyed the house. I carry those same scars inside me, something I share with that land. It will never forget that fire and neither will I.

I read recently of all the animals and birds and reptiles of our planet that have become extinct in this year alone. Those voices are silenced forever from our world, further tears in the fabric of our world. Yet, those voices and their memories will be preserved in the very land on which they lived. Just as those who have died before us, they can still speak to us, still teach us, if we but remember to listen for them.

The music and the voices of the land came to me this past Samhain night, as I spent the night alone in the darkness for the first time since becoming well and whole again. It was a big step for me, but I felt safely cradled in Danu’s arms as I listened and watched the turning of the world in the moonlight. They can be felt, as I did when I felt the notes of the music tickling my skin, as well as heard in the songs of those who come alive at night. These are ancient voices and it is like coming home to hear them.

Whether happy or sad, terrifying or joyous, any land upon which we step and the natural world around us have memories preserved within them. All events are recorded and remembered by the land and the natural world around us. Just as the rings within a tree record all that tree has experienced, we and the world around us, along with the land, record and remember.

What is the preserving shrine? It is memory and it is nature and it is all that is preserved within them.