Seán:
"A Bealtaine reflection
Lá Bealtaine is not just a day of bright blossoms and blazing fires. It is also a day when worlds end and begin. It was at Bealtaine that the Tuath Dé, the Irish
people who had gone north to learn the mysteries of the world returned, riding the Black North Wind. And the Hawthorn bloomed at Uisneach. It was also at Bealtiane that the invaders from Galatia triumphed against the Tuath Dé, causing those Shining Ones to go beneath the hollow hills and become the Daoine Sidhe. And the Hawthorn bloomed at Uisneach.
On a day when the roads here are washed out by
floods, and the news is filled with omens of financial collapse, I cannot help but think of this aspect of Bealtaine. Many of us have known for a long time that the world as we know it is fading. So what is to be done?
The old stories also tell us how to summon new worlds. When the sons of Mil. the invaders from Galatia, came to Ireland, their poet, Amergin stood atop the hill and spoke to the
spirit of the land about his kinship with all things. How he had been a Stag of seven battles, a wave upon the sea, a Hawk above the cliff at Achill, a Salmon in a Pool. And then he sang of mountainsides covered with fruit trees, of great streams of birds in the sky, of a fish-rich sea. And having summoned himself, he summoned them too.
The Irish way of saying "it is fated" is to say "tá sé
i ndán." "It is in a poem." Druidic magic was the magic of rewriting the poem of fate.
But that poem, rewritten, has to bear the meter of the poem as it was. There are things that can be changed and things that cannot. To understand the difference, you have to understand how life flows through the world, and recognize what is and is not in the nature of the
flow.
An end to our way of life? Tá sé i ndán.
But an end to life on Earth? An end to humanity? Suffering for our children's children's children? This need not be.
What is necessary is for us to come again to know the nature of the flow
of life, and our right place in relation with all of life, human and wild, in this world and the Otherworld. Through this we remember who we are. And when we remember who we are, we speak in a voice whose meter and timbre match the meter and timbre of the voices singing things into being.
This is our task:
Mura bhfuil sé i
ndán, scríobh dán nua. Chun dán nua a scríobh, déan staidéar ar an seandán. Agus ansin can focail nua le seanamhrán.
If it is not in the poem of fate, write a new poem. To write a new poem, study the old poem. Then sing new words to an old song.”
