Blessings of the Celtic Year Part 1A

THE GIFTS OF THE YEAR: Preparing the path

NOTES FOR PART 1A:

This initial post is one of 4 preparatory parts, to help you get things into place before you start your yearly round at Samhain. Each post you receive may seem a lot to go through, so read and work with it slowly as the material is there for you to study and make use of over the whole year. Parts of it you will need again. This part contains the following:

WITHIN ONE WORLD

THE THREE CANDLES

THE CELTIC PEOPLES

BRIGHID AND THE LIVING WISDOM

THE THREE CAULDRONS OF THE SOUL

WITHIN ONE WORLD

Just as a lantern lifts its light in a darkened house,

So, truth arises in the midst of a person’s heart. 

         – Colum Cille: Apgitir Chrábad

It has been my pleasure to introduce the Celtic Wisdom traditions to many people over the last forty years, so I welcome you now to the blessings of the year’s unfolding. Living every day as a sacred blessing, brings us in to an ethical engagement that includes your whole life and the rest of our world also. The sacred blessing of each day may be small but, as the Midwinter Wren song from Ireland goes, ‘although it is small, its wisdom is great.’ That touch of daily blessing colours and sustains the whole of our lives.

The aim of this unfolding series is to provide an outline that will support your journey around the year, as you connect with the seasonal blessing of your region: what nature and your own practice will reveal to you will change everything. Through your own participation, the things you know and did not know you knew will join up within you as you follow the seasons’ round. 

Wherever you live, whatever your background, you are an inhabitant of the living earth.  You do not need to be a descendant of the Celtic peoples of Europe to understand this, although you are most intimately related to the peoples on earth through distant, common ancestors whom we all share. The most respectful manner of walking the earth is found in the treasury of wisdom of the root traditions of the world, those that were here before the major religions came along. Every country on earth has its own wisdom: Celtic Wisdom, like Aboriginal, European, American, African or Asian Wisdom, is part of the heritage of all beings. But, just as we eat the staple fruits, grains and foodstuffs of our part of the world to best nourish our bodies, so it is most helpful to draw upon the wisdom traditions of our ancestry to nourish our souls.  (That’s not a mistake, I really mean souls, plural: we will speak more about them as we go on.)

Finding ways of co-existing peacefully with our world neighbours remains a challenge, wherever and whenever we are living. We may find the wisdom to understand our neighbours’ ways if we faithfully live according to the hospitable traditions of our ancestors, remembering that our world is not here solely for the benefit of just human beings.  Every creature, rock, tree, lake, season, and being has its wisdom.  Our beautiful earth is not just the environment in which we live, it is also our teacher, if we will heed its wisdom.  We are all finally learning that the earth does not belong to us, but rather, that it is we who belong to the earth. How can we learn that so that we both remember and live by that understanding?