of danger!
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A colorful assortment of seers dance through the world of Celtic myth. Merlin the Magician and Taliesin the Bard were both renowned for their prophetic gifts, while the Mórrígan—one of the most frightening of Celtic goddesses—speaks about a grim future in one of the most chilling passages of Irish myth. A seer named Finnéces spent years trying to catch and eat the salmon of wisdom thanks to a prophecy that a person named Finn would gain the world’s wisdom from eating the fish; unwittingly, he sets the stage for the prophecy to come true—only it would be his servant boy, Fionn mac Cumhaill, who would eat the salmon and gain the wisdom. Later stories recount one of Fionn’s comrades in the Fianna, Diorruing, as a seer gifted not only with prophecy but also clairvoyance that he accessed merely by closing his eyes. This gift was not always a blessing, however: once when Diorruing commented to Fionn about the one woman who would be a worthy mate for him, great tragedy ensued when she chose to give her love to another member of the Fianna.
Such prophecies could be in the myths only as literary devices—to help move the stories forward. But it’s just as easy to see in them how they indicate the importance of prophecy—and therefore, of the seer—in the world of Celtic wisdom.
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Especially in Irish tradition, the roles of the seer and the bard are closely related. In Irish society even after the arrival of Christianity, thefilidh or “seer-poet” provided both spiritual guidance and artistic vision to the community. Modern artists, whose work today is aimed at making people think, or inspiring revolution, or otherwise impacting society beyond the sheer aesthetic value of the work, are continuing this tradition of visionary creativity.
So when we consider the function of the seer in the world of Celtic wisdom, bear in mind that the seer’s role may extend far beyond the trade of psychics and soothsayers. Sure, you can visit your local metaphysical bookstore and book a session with an astrologer, clairvoyant, or tarot reader, and if the person has a whit of talent you’ll get an insightful and perhaps even healing reading. But they are not the only visionaries who embody the living tradition of the seer. You can cultivate the spirit of the seer within yourself even if you have no desire to practice divination or fortune telling. Perhaps in today’s societies, seers can be found everywhere: as schoolteachers, librarians, software designers, nurses, engineers … yes, even politicians and lawyers could be susceptible to the power of the spiritual world to erupt into their lives and provide guidance and insight into the direction best for them (and others) to follow.
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Among shamans of old, it was sometimes believed that a person didn’t opt to be a shaman, but rather became one when they were so chosen by the spirits. I think it may be wise to keep this in mind, and always allow for the possibility that the true seer is not made, nor necessarily even born, but is chosen.
Thanks to an ancestor, an angel, a spirit guide, or a fairy presence, we might find doors into eternity opened for us not of our own choosing, and signifying a path which no one else can see, let alone follow. Especially for a child or a teenager, such unfolding of visionary or spiritual talent can be unsettling and could be mistaken for madness. To become a seer requires not only a gift for spiritual insight (what has been called “second sight” or simply “the sight”), but also a mentor, a guide, who can help that budding visionary discern their singular destiny. This is not to say that one who desires to serve Spirit as a visionary might not also be called. If you should feel such a yearning, then it only makes sense to learn all you can about psychic and intuitive skill, to develop a meaningful, committed practice of prayer and meditation, and to develop your mental capacities to the fullest. All this, and then asking for spiritual guidance. In other words—perhaps you cannot choose to be a seer, but you can always ask to be chosen.
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One might well ask, why would anyone want to be a seer? Consider the life of poor Thomas the Rhymer: he could not say anything other than the truth. One hopes that he was gifted at keeping his mouth shut, for otherwise he would be forever getting into all sorts of trouble, by both frightening and angering those who may not appreciate the truthful words spoken by him. Such a person might not always make for cheerful dinner conversation, and could certainly gain a reputation as being dour and pessimistic! Of course, with the discipline of a well-shut mouth, he could learn to speak only about the good things due to happen, but even that would exact its toll—for, after all, we cannot always tell if something is good or bad, even as it happens, and perhaps not even for years afterward. A seer like Thomas could survive only by warning his listeners that, like a good referee, “he calls them likes he sees them”—and leave the value-assessment up to others.
The role of a seer is essentially social. There’s no point in visionary ability strictly for yourself (sure, there’s the idea of being able to clean up at the stock market, but what good is that, if there’s no one to share it with?). The only sustainable and meaningful reason to access hidden wisdom and spiritual vision would be to give it away.
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Scientific tests have revealed that if subjects who are familiar with a standard deck of playing cards are given a deck with a “wrong” card (such as a red ace of spades or a black queen of hearts), only a small number of those who examine the cards quickly will catch the mistake. Apparently, we are such creatures of custom and convention, trained to see what we expect to see, that even an erroneous playing card can slip by our powers of observation. So how many other anomalies or “paranormal” (beyond normal) events simply fail to catch our eye? Herein enters the true task of a seer: to be the one who sees the wrong-colored card at first glance, who notices the glitches and gaps that invite us into the places where “reality” is simply not so tightly sewn up as we might wish to believe. This function of the seer is not meant to foster chaos, but rather, liberation. We catch what Joseph Chilton Pearce called “cracks in the cosmic egg” so that we might be more truly faithful to things as they are—not as we might wish, hope, or be trained to believe they are.
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The concept of the seer ought not to be taken too literally. One might “see” mystical and extraordinary things, but there are many ways to approach the threshold of spiritual mystery. The French word clairvoyant is familiar to most people with an interest in psychic phenomena—it is basically the French equivalent of seer, meaning “clear watcher”—but there are also clairaudients (clear hearers), clairsentients (clear feelers), and even clairscentrists (clear smellers), clairgustants (clear tasters) and clairtangents (clear touchers, or psychometrists). Many ways to access spiritual information exist; and anyone who is chosen to be a seer may find that their guidance comes in any of a variety of (extra) sensory ways.
The key point here is for all of us—even if we have no concept of ourselves as “seers” or “psychics”—to remain open to receiving guidance and insight through intuitive means that can reach us in an almost endless variety of ways. Celtic wisdom reminds us that the spirit world is always nearby—and so, the ways of communicating with it are always within reach.
In MacLennan’s A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, the word neart is defined as “force, pith, power, might, energy, vigor; vast quantity; number, superabundance.” As the dictionary attests, it’s a wonderful word that represents how a variety of spiritually-meaningful