The Quiet Celt

Welcome to this specific page! I was recently talking with Polyergic and Aredridel on IRC and I wanted to quote this. It's so long though, that I thought that it deserved a real page somewhere. I am a pagan, a Celtic one to be exact. I have never been able to explain what this means, in essence. Not what it isn't or how it isn't but what it is. Or when I do, I never seem to explain it all. I tell them that the Earth is our Mother, that she is Alive, that I know the seasons, that I walk around alot, that I know the land, that we are everything and nothing, that everything is everything and nothing. The following excerpt is taken from Twilight Of The Celtic Gods by David Clarke and Andy Roberts, and most of it is like what I believe or think is especially important. It's not the only part of the book that deserves quoting either, this book is full of things like this.

Oh, this excerpt is three and a half meatspace picture-book sized pages (in leetle italics!), so it will take me awhile to finish. Please keep checking.

The Guardian

My name is not really important but I think the story I have to tell is. Although I now live in North London, I spent my childhood and most of my adult life in the Wharfe valley area of Yorkshire, where I and a group of families I am related to originate. I come from am old tradition, a very old tradition if the learning passed down through our families is to be believed, a way of understanding the world which transcends, yet encompasses the mudanity of much of life. It's really a way of looking at the universe which includes human beings as a fundamental part of the whole process . Notice that I say tradition rather than religion, because I suppose that's what it is. We don't really worship, in essence, because we ourselves are part of the very thing that we would have to worship, and so instead, we revere, we stand in awe of, the powers that create and sustain us in the world.

I was always told that my family and its various branches and offshoots have lived in this part of the world since time began. This was the exact term we used, 'since time began', and we have worked with and on the land as farmers, craftsman, and in related professions, at least up to the 1960's, when things began to change and fragment. At that time, the last of the older generation diead and many if not most of the younger ones moved away, in some cases emigrating to America, and generally lost ineterest in what most of them had come to see as just an old family tradition which had less and less relevance to the 'modern world'. For my part, I think what I have been shown and taught have increased relevance in these times. but I have my own theories on these aspects of things, as you'll see. Yes I suppose we are 'pagans', but only in the sense that the world of paganism originally meant the beliefs and practises of those in the countryside.

From my early childhood onwards I was schooled in the family tradition - we actually called it 'the learning', and rather than a formal teaching such as exists in the Christian tradition, our teaching took a more relaxed yet somehow intense form. Instruction was the responsibility of older family members, who held no position or title as such, other than the respect we accorded them because of their knowledge and experience. They had lived, we hadn't, yet. They were, I suppose, our 'tribal elders' and I am one such now, or would be if there was anyone young or interested enough left in the families to pass my knowledge on to.

At the time of my 'awakening', as we called it, my maternal grand mother was responsible for passing on the teachings (it was intially passed on from grandparent to child, female to male, male to female) and this took the form of what might be called 'nature walks', (remember, I was only seven at the time) in which we would walk for miles in all weathers, at all times of the year, and all times of day and night. This was quite frightening, as I was often in unfamilar territory and we intially walked in total silence. If I tried to speak or ask questions I was hushed with a 'just look and listen' or something similar. Gradually, I became accustomed to these regular excursions and after a few months or so, when I could walk quickly and silently across most forms of terrain, my grandmother started the instruction proper. I suppose to most people, even now, it wouldn't seem very much, just a boy and his grandmother out for a walk albeit at some peculiar times.

She instructed me well and slowly I began to realize just what I was being taught. Slowly from being a series of roads, paths fields and hills, I began to see the general topography of the area in which I lived in a very different way altogether. There were no physical barriers to us and we would roam freely, paying little attention to the recognized rights of way or easy ways across the countryside, but instead payed total attention to the land and how it was formed, its shape, textures and hidden places./Instead of land to be swiftly passed through on the way to somewhere else, it was revealed to me as part of of the body of a lving thing whose mysteries were acessible if you looked in the right way, at the right time. And as we walked, she would point out and name certain landscape features which were important to the learning, and I came to to know them by those names. She would tell me stories about them and the powers that inhabited and protected them.-/-Giants, fairy-folk, spirits and more subtle forces and powers were everywhere, and what to me had once been, say, a hill was now a place full of possibilities, a hive of life and death both physically and non-physically, all of which were necessary for its continued existence and significance within our learning.-/

My grandmother explained to me what I see now was a simplistic form of ecology: that the Earth was a living, breathing entity and everythig was interrelated. Nowadays, that's a widely held idea, but held, I think more from an intellectual point of view. To us it was the experience that mattered and formed our ideas. /I was taught to look at anything from a hill to a stream to a leaf and in looking correctly to see both the physical processes and the higher meanings./It's not easily to explain really, it has to be experienced.

The results of all this teachings was what I came to know. And as a small child I didn't need too much persuading to enter this new awareness, this new form of consciousness. Everything pulsated with life and mystery at that age anyway and so the idea that the world, and more importantly for me at that time, my part of it, was alive on many levels was truly incredible yet somehow familiar. It just seemed right, like there was now other way. Like coming home.

With hindsight I can see now that the time of my 'awakening' was carefully timed to just catch the young ones at a time when the processes of discrimination and intelligence were developing and could be harnessed without much trouble. Too early amd the child would be too young to understand what was being taught and perhaps be put off later, too late and the capacity for awe and wonder would be already dulled by the world's complications and distractions. That was one significant part of our learning: it enables the awe and mystery inherent in the world as a child to be kept for life and uses as a basis for everything which follows.

After awhile I was fully conversant with the Wharfe Valley from the town of Ilkley up to its source in the high Dales and I happily accepted it as an embodiment of the power from which life comes. Occaisonally my elder brother or male cousins would come out with us, but they were already at the end of their instruction in the tradition and practising alone or with their families. But it was fun and we would test each other on landscape names, retell stories and legends of the area and continue to absorb the awesome mystery that we had so suddenly found ourselves a part of.

During this time my grandmother also began teaching me about the workings of the natural world, which at school was limited to walks and nature tables, in itself far removed form the knowledge most of us country kids already had. But her instruction went deeper still. I had to learn all, and I mean all, the names, local names, that is, for every single plant, tree, type of stone, animal, bird, insect, fish and so on. I had to know where they could be found, what they looked like at any given time of year, and what, if any, their uses were - medicinal, practical or whatever.

This was no mere book learning, it was out in the field work: touching, tasting, sitting, watching, until I could distinguish between a beech and alder twig by feel alone in the middle of the nigh, in a snow storm is necessary! I had to be able to correctly identify a heron's cry and feather, tell just by sense of smell where a fox had crossed the path and so on. This was deep learning. I was taught about specific times of the year, month and day and what they meant and could be used for and how the weather and its patterns indicated certain things to come with crops and animals. The sun, moon and night sky became a different place, populated with heroes and villians, gods and goddesses.- So far away, yet still a part of the one power I was being slowly exposed to./

It didn't seem to matter to her that I didn't actually use much of this information, but she was satisfied that I knew it in a far deeper sense than just, say, repitition or lip service, and she knew when I didn't.

During the first few years of instruction in the natural world I was also being eased into the fundamental belief of our tradition: that the land is sacred. And to that end we thought of ourselves as stewards, guardians of the area where members of our family dwelt, people who could be of some use to others who had forgotten or never knew what we still held on to. It seemed as though we did too, because farmers, stockmen, gamekeepers and many ordinary countryfolk all knew of our knowledge of plants and animals, and certain memebers of our family would help them with natural and herbal remedies for both animal and human problems alike. This just seemed to be accepted and excepted. Nor were we considered out of the ordinary for holding these beliefs and knowledge. It was as though it was once widely held and accepted but was now just the province of only a few.

None of this seemed particularly strange to me, and as things were revealed it all just seemed to slip into place and become a part of me, and I in turn felt a part of it, together with a renewed sense of community with members of my family wherever they were scattered. I suppose it was a tribal thing, really...That's the best way of putting it, tribal.

Did we worship? No, not really. To us being alive and part of the body of the mother was worship for us, staying true to the tradition and marking the special times, being open to the natural powers was enough. The powers that we held in awe were locked inside the landscape, inherent in the power of the weather and manifest in the cycle of the changing seasons, and in the end they in turn ran through us. It was nothing compicated, nothing super natural and to me, at least, the way people were supposed to live.

As I grew older and read widely in mythology, legend and history, I came to realize that many of the things I had been taught, and which had subsequently become part of me, had also been understood and practised by my ancestors, possibly for many thousands of years. Even back to prehistoric times. I wouldn't go so far as to say we were specifically 'Celtic', or indeed any race or culture. That sort of thing is for others to work out. We are just, as some Indian tribes call themselves, I beleive, the people of the land, and this was the reason, I think now, why we didn't see ourselves as special or different in any way. I also came to the realization that all the learning and specific ways of looking and seeing we had were a form of initiation into the true mystery of life.

Why am I telling you these things? Well, I suppose that even though I've been aware for sometime that our learning was not solely confined to the area I was from, It was only when I read about the traditions of Derbyshire and elsewhere that I realized just how widespread and similar our beliefs were across the whole country. At one time, I think it's feasible to suggest that everyone thought in this way and that time and progress have eroded the small pockets of belief being carried on in small communities, families, and individuals who can still find some value in what they have been taught, and who can't forget.

Like yourselves, I share the feeling that we are at an end of something that may never be rekindles. I think the time has come when it needs sharing beyond the boundaries we have always kept to in my lifetime and learning. I don't think that I am giving away any secrets for the simple reason there are none! Mystery, yes, but secrets, no. It's all an open book if you are prepared to read it correctly. To me that was all obvious, and anyway I believe that you can reveal matters of this nature to people but in the end, you have to experience, know and ultimately understand, in that order, these things, and I think the time has come now when we have to understand them quickly, before it is too late.

Okay, so here it ends. Any comments? Thoughts?