The Song of Creation

I have written a lengthy and detailed essay/study of Creation Incantations in Irish and Welsh tradition. I have created a sub-site on my website to house it, with art and other things to make the reading experience more pleasant. It is a major work of mine, covering much ground and clarifying my own spiritual path.

You can view it by clicking here: The Song of Creation

The Living Presence

It is true that the Gods appear to us in dreams, at times. I can recall such blissful memories of dream, when I have rendered due service to the Ancestral Way, pouring out libation and making offerings to the thirsty ground, that my visions in sleep the following night have featured gray-cloaked, dark eyed huntsmen and fair ladies, from below the earth. I think of the eye of dream as one of the last open portals of communion with the Gods, for these days. But there are more ways of encountering the company of the ever-living: the capacity of sacred feeling has not abandoned us yet, and can be cultivated to great and powerful effect, if one can become a channel for the proper poetry.

I believe in my Gods because I feel them- they are living presences, extending down the ages and appearing in our modern times as the great spiritual beings they are; I feel them as alive and potent, dwelling in a misty border-place that I cannot name or grasp easily. But I know when the feeling becomes strong and extends over the hills and forests of my homeland. It is impossible not to believe as I do, if you feel as I do. No being is worth the name "God" if its living presence cannot be felt, over vast distances of space and time.

Anything that lives extends a presence about itself, and into the web of life; the Gods live and live timelessly and their living presences are like suns amid the stars of other living things. That they are unseen by our eyes of water and salt, but captured in the insubstantial eyes of dream and the feeling self means little or nothing- for many beings share the same condition. In death, even mortal creatures enter the same state and extend whatever presence they can manage.

The great dead are like that. The well-memoried dead, alive still with the impact of their great deeds, always extend a presence that the living can feel. But the Gods are not living then dead; they are ever-living. Thus, they are ever-present. Far from the glamour of statue or temple, their sacred places are everywhere. The Gods are shape-shifters; the ancestral tradition does not leave a doubt open about this. What another may experience as a tree or a hill, I experience as a Goddess- sometimes. At other times, there is just a radiant, living tree, or a hill that conceals the treasures of the under-earth. What you may discover as a gurgling stream in a forest, I can experience as the rush of a spirit or a God, flowing out the life-force of divinity.

And again, sometimes, it is a stream. The presence never dies.

When that presence is of the mighty Gods, religion is effortless; the Ancestral Way is the way of simple living. When the presence is of a lesser star in the earth, and we desire a religious communion with them, I have found a soul-trodden path to meeting those same powers.

To their homes I go, a walk or a ride from my home to theirs; and there I sit, fastening my mind on the sense of the non-humanness of this person, this living being I wish to communicate with. Many do not understand the point of this portion of my exercise, but the point is crucial: to know spirits, non-human persons, one must first know that they are not "humans writ invisible". They do not conform to our human notions, and the more we find that we envision them as us, instead of as the flexible, non-human mysteries that they are, the more we know that our heads are confusing our hearts.

When I have created in myself that needful sense of the non-humanness of those powers I wish to commune with, I create a sense of kinship- never a hard exercise for a spiritual ecologist and animist, but one that requires sincere effort for most. The subtle beings know our hearts, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on their power. To make a heart of respect creates a bridge for communication. In the force of that respect, given freely as a cousin-being in the web of life, I let the poetry in my soul and in the land stir, making an enchanter's call for the attentions of that power. Song is often the most powerful way to make this call. The trance arises naturally on the back of such a song.

Finally, a sense of passive openness ends the entire technique of spirit-speech: offering the power that I desire a chance to approach me, as I approached it. For we cannot approach them alone; real communion is two-way. And real communion always includes the possibility that the powers desire not to speak. We must offer them that possibility, as our last sign of respect. The communion, if it will be, will come afterwords, in the many ways it can. You will see- or feel- what you will see or feel.

The Healing Radiance: A Song of Thanks

Recently, I was contacted by an associate online with regards to the case of an infant who was about to undergo a heart transplant in Miami, Florida. She asked me and my other associates to rattle, drum, chant, and do whatever it is we heathens do to encourage our Gods and Spirits to help us and other people in need.

As the father of a toddler and an infant, I was especially moved to help, and immediately put aside time for a sacrificial offering to Belenos, the God of the healing radiance. This British deity (as mentioned below) was identified with Apollo, and it is no surprise, for Apollo was the "Hyperborean God"- Hyperborea being Britain- who was likely the same God worshiped at the site now called "Stonehenge". Recent scholarship has moved towards accepting Stonehenge as an ancient site of healing, which my own spiritual vision and intuition encourages me to also believe.

Belenus (also Belinus, Belenos, Belinos, Belinu, Belanu, Bellinus, Belus, Bel) was a deity worshipped in Gaul, Britain and Celtic areas of Austria and Spain. He had shrines from Aquileia on the Adriatic to Kirkby Lonsdale in England. His name means "shining one" or "henbane god" and he is associated with heat and healing. He may be the same deity as Belatu-Cadros. In the Roman period he was identified with Apollo. His consort was Belisama. His name has been found on around fifty inscriptions. The legendary king Belinus in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain is probably also derived from this god. The name of the ancient British king Cunobelinus means "hound of Belenus".

One of the promises I made to the Radiant Lord was that, in exchange for his help, I would write him a song of praise- and now, a few weeks later, the good news is back that the little girl had the heart transplant, and is doing well. I did the sacrifice and prayer on the very night of her surgery; now she is soon to be discharged. I respectfully and gratefully now keep my promise to the God of the Therapeutic Radiance.

* * *

"I sing a song of praise to the radiant light of the north lands,
The God that diverts the waters of pain and pestilence:

Gentle since time's cold beginning, bringing gold to trees,
And strength and sturdiness to human bodies,
The Godly light of healing has shone from beyond the wind
Onto the homes of the people of mountain and forest,
Onto the homes of the people of lake and river.

The good master of the healing radiance fills the skies;
He is wise, a shape-shifter and a speaker in dreams.
To all creatures, Lordly Belenos, you give release from pain
And freedom from the dark powers of injury and disease!

Warm like the springs of helping water from below,
As clear-minded as the physician and seer, you bless us.
To those in the cold grip of unhealth, you are the saving sun:
A young girl's life you have helped preserve,
In response to my sincerest prayers.

Far-shooter of arrows that disperse hateful illness,
Fair and wholesome like the joyful hearth in every home;
Light-spear and light-arrow, hunter and healer,
Great God that mankind forever relies upon:
Hear this thankful song in your honor,
And continue to bless us."



Here is the little girl: May all of her days be blessed.