PATH OF NATURE
For many people, Celtic nature spirituality is mostly a romanticized kind of thing. We can travel to Tintagel or Glendalough or Iona and be enraptured by the many faces of the goddess—lush or austere, majestic or severe. We can find peace by a holy well or ponder the mysteries in a ring of standing stones. Our imaginations can be beguiled by stories of the fairy folk—never mind the ominous or dangerous edge to the fairy faith; we’ll just enjoy the idea of spirits inhabiting our gardens. It’s all lovely, poetic, and beautiful. But does it really make a difference in our lives? How does Celtic nature spirituality matter?
The question is a subtle pun. For “matter” comes from the same Latin root as does “matrix” (womb) and “mother.” To make something matter—anything, not just nature mysticism—means to imbue it with relationship, meaning, purpose, as symbolized by the most primal and powerful of all relationships, that between mother and child. Catholic Ireland is full of imagery of the madonna and child, but this is far more than just religious artwork. It’s truly an icon of the most profound relationship of all, that between the earth and her children. So how do we find, in our sentimental love for the glorious beauty of nature, a genuine relationship between humanity and the environment? As we answer that question, we will be taking an important step toward making the Celtic tradition come alive in our midst.
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THE PATH OF NATURE
Saying that the ancient Celts were pagan is kind of like saying that they were Celts: we’re using a word to describe them that did not originate with them. It was the Greeks who named the Celts, and the Roman Christians who coined the religious meaning for the word pagani, which originally suggested civilian or country-dweller. But the country-dweller sense of the word means that it is not entirely inappropriate—after all, the Celts had no cities until the Romans or Vikings or Normans came along and built them. As a rural people, they naturally found their spiritual compass in the waters of the sea, the whispers of the wind, the fertility of the land. Their faith certainly was not “pagan” in the later pejorative sense of amoral or superstitious, but rather embodied a profound sense of being held in the embrace of the wild earth, her raging seas, and her abundant life. The pre-Christian Celts were likely animistic—regarding everything as imbued with spiritual presence. This survived after the arrival of Christianity, where heaven and the presence of God were seen not as removed from the natural world, but intimately interwoven within it. Nature was seen not just as an image of beauty—she truly embodied Divine love and grace.
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THE PATH OF NATURE
The pagan spirituality of the Celts has been a significant inspiration to the neopagan (“new pagan”) movement that began in England in the mid-twentieth century and has since spread throughout the English-speaking world, as well as Europe and beyond. Although much of the modern pagan movement is undermined by an uncritical overemphasis on magic and psychic phenomena, the heart of the new paganism reflects a sincere effort to re-sacralize nature, to awaken the sleeping goddess of the land and restore a sense of humanity as living in relationship with her. Since this is such an integral, if not always conscious, part of the Celtic world, neopagans have embraced many elements of Celtic wisdom, from the myths, to the gods and goddesses, to Gaelic folk holidays and ceremonial customs. Some modern pagans carefully seek to integrate Celtic culture into their spirituality in respectful and considerate ways; others simply treat the Celtic tradition as a consumable resource (ironic, given how its greatest strength may be in the way it can teach us alternatives to the consumer lifestyle).
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THE PATH OF NATURE
The great achievement of Christianity in the Celtic world came not from how it triumphed over the pagan spirituality that existed prior to its arrival, but—on the contrary—how it more or less seamlessly integrated the earth-honoring traditions of the pagan Celts into its singular vision of faith. Celtic Christianity is nature Christianity. Nowhere is this more clearly set forth than in the Lorica of Saint Patrick, a poem-prayer that invokes Divine protection:
I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star-lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.
(Translated by Cecil F. H. Alexander)
The entire poem is primarily about protection in Christ (as befits a Christian poem). But as the above stanza clearly shows, the grace of Celtic Christianity is mediated as fully through nature as through church or word or sacrament.
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THE PATH OF NATURE
In the Carmina Gadelica, an anthology of Scottish folk prayers and poems collected in the late-nineteenth century, we see how Celtic Christianity carried its nature-positive spirituality into the modern world. The ordinary Christian folk of Gaelic-speaking Scotland offered prayers and the poetry of praise at every moment of the day, and in every setting—from rising out of bed, to stoking the fire, to milking the cow, to traveling or fishing or spinning thread. “Nature” in this rich spiritual tradition means more than just the environment. Arising out of the essential truth that all things are part of nature—including humanity and the culture of the world we’ve created—the Carmina Gadelica sings of the natural presence of God and Mary and all the saints (with the occasional pagan god or goddess thrown in) throughout the daily rhythm of life. There is no separation between nature and grace, or between nature and humanity—or between nature and the divine. All is interwoven. And that tapestry is held together in the language of devotion and praise.
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THE PATH OF NATURE
Relating to nature as a Sacred Other, not as an exploitable resource … allowing nature to function as a means of grace in our lives … recognizing that nature means more than just the unspoiled wilderness, but in a deeper and more real sense encompasses all aspects of the material world—these are but a few of the treasures revealed to us by the simple yet richly-textured tradition of Celtic nature mysticism. And as we conclude this path within the Celtic tradition, bear this in mind: just as you are not separate from God, or not separate from nature, or not separate from grace, so too are you not separate from the rich tradition of Celtic wisdom. Whether you are a Celt by ancestry or by the stirrings of your heart, if you embrace the Celtic tradition, you are part of it. Which means that the choices you make, the poems you write, the decisions you come to in your life to honor the natural world, are all part of the ongoing symphony of Celtic mysticism. Celtic spirituality is not a museum installation; it is a living path of insight and illumination. Consider how you can honor the goddess of the land and allow the grace of nature to flow in your life. Then you will become a living conduit of the Celtic way.
The tale is told that long ago, with the transition from oral tradition to the preservation of lore in medieval manuscripts, somehow the great Irish epic The Tain (the Cattle-Raid of Cooley) had been lost. Sadly, no one survived who knew the tale. Like a language that had died, the rich stories and myths surrounding the tale of the war in Ulster had disappeared, seemingly forever.
But not so fast. Around the year 600 CE, a great Irish bard named Senchán Torpéist attempted to gather the missing strands of the story together, so that it might be