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Winter Solstice 2003
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Celtic and related spiritual traditions focus on aligning the self with the Sacred, making it possible for us each to manifest our divine nature through action in the world. The burning hand symbolises this concept.
Belated Solstice, Saturnalia, Christmas (Insert Festival of Choice!) and secular New Year greetings!
General News
I'm afraid this newsletter continues to be more irregular than I'd like, currently for health reasons. We're expecting our baby any day now, and unfortunately the pregnancy has been a lot harder than we would have hoped for. I've been mainly bed-ridden for the last two months with a wide assortment of symptoms (I'll spare you the details!) I don't want to discourage any of you who might be considering a family, so I'll also tell you that one of the hospital midwives said that while my individual symptoms and difficulties aren't unusual, having all of them at once is! David says I am an overachiever in all things.
A while ago, I started up a Druid choir in Edinburgh, with people coming from Glasgow as well as Edinburgh to learn and perform overtoning and Old Irish chant. We had our first performance on October 18th. This was also the first time Druids, or any other kind of European Pagan group, had been asked to perform at the Edinburgh International Centre for World Spiritualities' Peace and Justice Concert. This is a thrice yearly event where people of different faiths represent their traditions through music. The whole group did wonderfully and it was an honour and step in the right direction for the continuing movement for Druidry and Paganism to be recognised as being on a par with other major world religions.
The TV program on dragons, mentioned in my last newsletter, is currently in post-production but still doesn't have a US or UK air date. I'll be sure to let everyone know when it does. I have also appeared on a program called "Without Prejudice" to be aired on Channel 4 here in the UK. I'll let everyone know when it is to be shown and will write in more detail about my experience after it has aired.
I am also finally in print in a book! I wrote the section on Arthurian myth (with story synopsis contributions from David) for a beautiful 500 plus page coffee-table book on Mythology. The details are: Mythology, Myths, Legends and Fantasies, 2003, edited by Margaret Malone, Jody Lee, Helen Bateman, Jane Parker, Julie Stanton, (Kent: Grange Books), (Willoughby, Australia: Global Book Publishing) (Webmaster's note: See www.grangebooks.co.uk/ to order this book. — AWG)
Hereditary Traditions
For obvious reasons, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the idea of hereditary traditions and their significance to modern Paganism. It's come up more over recent years, as I've met others who come from hereditary traditions and have gotten more involved with the broader Pagan and Interfaith communities.
Indo-European Roots
In July of 2003 I went to an interfaith meeting organised under the auspices of the Edinburgh International Centre for World Spiritualities. There was a group of Hindus and Sanskrit scholars there, including Dr. Vijay Bedekar, President of the Institute For Oriental Studies, Thane; (near Mumbai, the former Bombay) and Deven Kainthola who runs tours in India (www.themetoursindia.com). As many of you know, I see Hinduism as a sister tradition to Celtic, since they both come in part from Indo-European roots.
The Indo-Europeans were a group of tribes, connected by a common language group, who originated in a central area that scholars place everywhere from the Russian Steppes to Anatolia in Turkey. Indo-European names first appear in Sumerian records around 5-6,000 years ago. They migrated out from their homeland, and some scholars including myself believe that some of the most archaic features of their culture were preserved at either extremes of their migrations, in Ireland on the one side, and in India where they founded the Vedic culture. (For more information, see Mallory, J.P., 1989, In Search of the Indo Europeans, (London: Thames and Hudson)
The meeting was fascinating, and, after looking at my website, Deven noted an interesting point about the word "Dravidian," which has often been used to refer to the ancient inhabitants of India. According to some, the "Aryans" (Indo-Aryans or Indo-Europeans) later invaded India, and were a different race from the Dravidians. Deven, however, thinks that the word might rather be related to the same Indo-European roots as Druid, and refer to social rather than racial distinctions.
He said that a scholar friend of his believed that "the word dra-vida is 'drashta vid' or seer of the knowledge. In fact — druid is dravida and they are both drashata vid, i.e. knowledge seers! So — whereas an arya is a civilised being, the dravid — far less in numbers — were scholars. They were not two races at all!" Druid comes from dru-vid, and can be translated as "one with great knowledge." The vid or *wid- component, comes from the same Indo-European root we get "witness" from. It relates to knowledge of things personally seen, giving the word a shamanic or experiential aspect, like the term gnosis as used in Christian mysticism.
Deven also mentioned that on my website "one word — Dagda / Dagda De caught my eye. In Garhwali — our mother tongue; dagdya is a friend and dagdya deo would be a 'friendly god!'" In Old Irish, of course, it means the "Good God."
But even more than these kinds of connections, there was a real commonality of belief and world view between the Hindus at the discussion and myself. I joked that we were the Indo-European side of the table! One point of comparison was the implications of the idea that God created the universe out of Itself, part of both Hindu and Pagan Celtic tradition. There can be a greater acceptance of the idea of pain and suffering in the world if God's in here with us, rather than only above us. In this view of the world, life is not something God did to us. Deven and Vijay were talking to me about visiting India one day, but were stressing the intensity of some spiritual traditions in the Himalayas. I reassured them that I understood that Lord Shiva is not for the squeamish...any more than the Dagda is! The Indo-European creation view isn't for the squeamish either, it's about trying to accept what life throws at you as part of creation's process, even as you work to improve matters.
This is obviously easier said than done, especially when one's suffering is acute. However, an intellectual belief that pain is part of the process can bring some comfort, even when we are emotionally incapable of wanting anything other than respite.
This meeting affirmed what I'd felt for a long time, and it does beg the question of quite how far back aspects of a hereditary tradition can go!
Other Hereditaries
On August 23rd I spoke on Druids and totems at DruidCon in Glasgow, a great event organised by Caer Clud, a Druid group there (www.caerclud.vscotland.org.uk/ ). I met another Uí Néill descendant whose family had preserved elements of Druidic tradition, a German hereditary whose group has been accepted as the first Pagan and Celtic church in Germany, and others who grew up in families that were believed to have the "two sights." (This is a more accurate translation of the term dà shealladh, usually translated as "second sight." The Scottish Gaelic gives neither "sight" precedence.) (Webmaster's note: There's a writeup of DruidCon 2003 at www.druidcon.vscotland.org.uk/2003/, in which the reviewer mentions that a ritual led by Geo "raised hairs on the back of a lots of people's necks, mine included, as the power it raised was quite immense, and had to be seen and experienced." — AWG)
Genetic Research
Certain families have always been held to have spiritual abilities in Celtic tradition. Recent research by Dr. Shari Cohn-Simmen, a colleague at Edinburgh University's Dept. of Celtic and Scottish Studies, on people from families with the dà shealladh seems to back up the idea of a genetic component in some cases.
It makes sense. I mean, if you want to play a violin, you buy a violin, not a bassoon. If you want to be a great athlete in a particular life time, you might choose to incarnate into a family, and into a body, that had the best genetics for that, in short, you'd want to buy the appropriate instrument. The same goes for certain kinds of spiritual abilities. If you want to be a shaman you might try and incarnate into a family who are "hard-wired" for it, radios to the Netherworld.
There are aspects of brain structure, chemical balance and so on that seem to run in families and produce creatively and otherwise "inspired" people. Of course, absolute nutters tend to emerge from the same families!
A study in Iceland focussed on families in which schizophrenia occurred. Iceland is an especially good place for such a study because the relatively isolated population has kept excellent records. Researchers can trace both the "insane" and creative over a span of centuries. The researcher, Horrobin, noted that the thing which stood out most clearly in this study was that the families "where one or more members were schizophrenic were also the families in which almost all other psychiatric disorders were found. However, these families were also the ones that contained many of the high achieving Icelanders. Madness, badness, creativity and leadership all seemed to go together in the same family trees." Genetic research around these topics is in its infancy, but certainly provides food for thought. (see Horrobin, David F., 1999, "A Speculative Overview: the Relationship Between Phospholipid Spectrum Disorder and Human Evolution," in Phospholipid Spectrum Disorder and Psychiatry, ed. by Malcolm Peet, Iain Glen, and David F. Horrobin, (Lancashire: Marius) pp. 299-318 )
By discussing the genetic element, I'm not meaning to limit the practice of any tradition to those who are its "genetic inheritors." After all, if you go back around 40,000 years we're all Africans. I'm also not saying that you need "shamanic" genetics to be a great shaman! Genetics, like the stars, incline, rather than determine.
Of course, the question of what makes a hereditary practitioner is also a broad one that extends well beyond genetics, since spiritual traditions can be transmitted along spiritual lineages via reincarnation, thought and practice as well as blood. Additionally, many more people are being raised in Pagan traditions by their parents now in the modern Western world.
A Worldview that Need Not Be Transcended
One of the hereditaries I know is the grandson of McGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the Golden Dawn. While the Golden Dawn was part of the great magickal revival at the turn of the last century, the practices have now come through his family for three generations. How many generations makes a hereditary? As modern Pagans raise their children in shamanic and Pagan traditions, they are becoming the new hereditaries, with all the advantages of having a world view that supports their magickal practice, rather than growing up with a world view that has to be overcome in order to practice magick.
This was one of the greatest advantages of my upbringing within the tradition. I've learned over the years that my spirit journeys and experiences are a lot more vivid and intense than they are for many other people. I attribute this in part to the fact that Spirit was always part of my day to day reality. My mother talking to my dead great-grandfather was no more unusual than her talking to the neighbour.
I was also used to seeing spiritual work have a practical impact on physical reality day to day. I'll give you an example of the kind of "practical magick" I grew up with, albeit a recent one.
I was on the phone with my mum, who lives in the Washington D.C. area right now. When Hurricane Isabel went through a few months ago they had 100 mile per hour winds, floods, power outages, 3,000 trees down, etc. She did some work and gave thanks to the tree spirits and other spirits in the area. (We tend to have good fortune with the storm spirits, one of the oldest names for Clan Cameron translates to "Children of the Servant of the Storm.") After the storm, everywhere around was blacked out, except the row of houses she was on. She has lots of big trees in her garden, the neighbours on either side have no trees, the houses on either side of them have trees. Trees from those two gardens fell into my mother's immediate neighbours gardens, but none of hers fell.
You can imagine why I had no intellectual resistance to spiritual phenomena. I had nothing to overcome in order to have my experiences. There was little "impedance in the line" to use an electrical engineering term. "Impedance" is the resistance a material offers to electrical current. Due in part to my upbringing, the material of my being offers little resistance to Spirit.
The Need to Make a Statement
As for myself, it's come to my attention lately that I should make some kind of statement about what I mean when I say I come from a hereditary tradition of Celtic Shamanism / Druidry. It's not my intent to be defensive, but to make my case clearly, once, with feeling, so I don't have to go back over it again and can refer any queries about my pedigree to this newsletter, my bio, and my upcoming resumé and testimonial pages! :-)
When I say that my family comes from a hereditary tradition I mean that we always felt the wisdom and spiritual purpose of our ancestors as a living presence in our lives. We preserved the essential matrix of their spiritual tradition; their world-view, their way of being, their cosmology — in short, the big picture, along with various rituals, prayers and spiritual techniques.
This "matrix" gave me a frame for later research, both academic and spiritual, so when I found other information and techniques I could see where they fit within the structure I grew up with. Some of my training within my family was more by example and osmosis than by didactic methods. (Like that of other hereditary practitioners I now know, in Celtic and other traditions.)
Some teachings were very simple. For example, as I mentioned above, I grew up with the idea that God is immanent in Creation, having created the universe out of Itself. While the idea is simple, the theological implications are vast.
I have just written an article called Heaven in Here: The Sacramental Cosmos in Celtic Christianity, for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, that barely scratches the surface of this concept. Exploring just this idea that God is "with us and within us" to paraphrase the Old Irish prayer The Cry of the Deer, could be a lifetime's work for a Druid or shaman. (For details of ERN see www.religionandnature.com)
However, while my family preserved some information and traditions, no one family can be said to have preserved Druidic or Celtic shamanic tradition entire for many reasons.
First, Celtic tradition was never monolithic. Of around 400 deity names in Romano-Celtic inscriptions, about 300 appear only once. This points to a high degree of regional variation, to tribal Gods and tribal differences in how the Sacred was perceived. The Celts were always eclectic in their practice, as in their art. For example, there was a temple to the Goddess Isis in Massillia (modern day Marseilles) in Celtic Gaul.
There are strong underlying threads of belief and practice that mean we can speak meaningfully of strands that run through Celtic culture as a whole, but we cannot say that it, or Druidry, existed in any one form. Therefore, what came down in my family can be only one branch.
Second, a Druidic college would have had many specialists, from herbalists and healers to ritualists, specialists in chant, oracles, lawgivers and those whose focus was more shamanic. My family fell into the oracular, shaman priest specialties, and we obviously couldn't preserve all the aspects we didn't know.
Third, shamanic traditions, even in the absence of repression, change over time. What came down through my family cannot fail to be different from Druidry as practiced by my ancestors 1500 years ago.
My mother and grandmother were, like those Gauls in Massilia, eclectic in their practice. They revered Isis, and my mother and I were both named for the Greek Goddess of wisdom, Athena (Minerva in the Roman pantheon). (My mother's first name, my second.) I grew up with a shrine to her in my room. I have also connected powerfully with Egyptian and Sumerian traditions. As I noted in my Lugnasad newsletter, I see Celtic tradition as a frame for my experience, not a wall to keep out other kinds of experience. The iconographic evidence clearly shows that the ancient Celts were equally flexible, as shamanic cultures tend to be, and I continue to explore many intriguing historical connections between Celtic traditions and those of the ancient near East. But this quality of flexibility and the capacity for direct revelation means that our family tradition never ossified, but changed over time.
Finally, many years of repression have taken a toll on all aspects of the tradition. There were rituals my family could preserve in memory, but didn't have the numbers to perform. There is no doubt that some knowledge was wholly or partially forgotten along the way. Some things were just pulled back from the brink with help.
For example, my Great Aunt Polly used a divinatory system that my mother only remembered fully when she read an account of the Stones of Lir, a system that the wonderful spiritual teacher Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki received from Irish gypsies. (see, Ashcroft-Nowicki, Dolores, 1994, "The Gypsy Runes," in The Golden Dawn Journal, Book 1, Divination, ed. by Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, (St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn), pp. 231-238). I have since discovered that Carroll, Polly's surname, is also a well known name amongst Irish Travellers (or Gypsies).
Dolores and I met at last when we were both speaking at a Scottish Pagan Federation Conference a year and a half ago. It was fantastic to discover still more paralells between what she learned from the Gypsies and from the village of hereditaries she met who taught her the Craft, and the traditions and world view I grew up with. I find it very affirming when teachers like Dolores feel a connection with me and the tradition I grew up with.
The Truth of the Matter
This brings us to another issue: am I telling the truth? If I am telling the truth as I understand it, how do I know the tradition is truly as old as I believe?
First things first. I know there are some folk who out and out say I am a liar. Now, in ancient Irish culture, this would be an enech greiss, literally an attack upon my face and honour, even though none of these accusations have been made to my face so far! Even the message board entries to this effect have so far been anonymous.
Obviously no one teacher or tradition will appeal to, or work for, everyone. While I may object to the manner in which people criticise me, I have no problem with people not liking me — no one is liked by everyone! And I certainly have no objection to people not believing me.
In fact, as a shamanic teacher I encourage all my students not to believe a word I say.
What I know is ultimately only true for me. I would never want my students to be satisfied with blind faith when they can have experience. I want them to try out anything I say for themselves, to think about it, journey on it, and see what value it may have for them. Being a Druid (remember the *vid root) is all about acquiring personal knowledge of the Sacred, not about blindly believing Geo or anyone else. I agree with the film Dogma that it's better to have an idea than a belief, because an idea can be changed where a belief is thought of as permanent. There's no loss of face in changing your ideas in response to your experience.
This brings me to another point. Demonstrable knowledge is what ultimately matters.
Evidence
First, say I had an absolutely unimpeachable genealogy and volumes of Druidic tomes (which according to most traditions, would have been an oxymoron since they never wrote sacred teachings down) carbon datable to two thousand years ago. In short, say I had absolute proof. That would not mean I was a good teacher! I might be lousy at journeying, morally reprehensible and shamanically incompetent, despite my heritage. What matters to my students and clients is that I help them connect with the Sacred and they have found that the framework my family preserved is a useful way of organising their spiritual understanding and experience.
(After the baby is born, I'll be adding a full resumé and testimonial section to this site to enable other teachers and students to give their impressions. That way, you're not just taking my word for this!)
The way I've expressed teachings have opened doors even when the people concerned didn't know who I was or claimed to be. When I went to the Scottish Pagan Federation conference in Edinburgh in 2001, a shaman, Gordon the Toad, gave a talk on his inspiring work using shamanic techniques to teach youth in the cities to engage with their environment and a variety of other topics. At the end someone asked him for a nutshell definition of shamans and shamanism. Obviously a hard call! Anyway, due to having given tons of short talks over the years and developing the "art of the pitch" in the service of my writing and film work, I'd developed a handy potted definition of both which I proposed as a solution.
I asked, "Could you not say that shamanism is a body of techniques for bringing the self into contact with the Sacred, and that the shaman is the specialist in these techniques who acts in a specific sacrificial and intermediary role for his or her people?" Gordon agreed. Right after that, Kitty Macintyre, one of the District Managers of the Pagan Federation Scotland and Ireland asked me if I'd give a talk next year at the conference. When I said yes and gave her my name, she realised she'd talked to my husband David about me, but didn't know who I was before asking me to speak. (For more on the organisation, see: http://www.scottishpf.org)
Similarly, I was invited to be the first Pagan Celtic scholar to address the Trinity College, Dublin, Theological Society due to a conversation at a conference I attended. (I spoke on Irish shamanism, and a tape should soon be available of the lecture.)
When I met Ian Bradley, from the Divinity Department at St. Andrews, again, it was a conversation between us rather than any claims on my part that led to his asking me to speak to a couple of his classes at St. Andrews on shamanic healing, spiritual crisis and the Druid / Christian interface in early Ireland. The anthropologist and shaman, Larry Peters, at that time head of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, asked me to speak on spirit mates at their conference on Sacred Union in 1994 because he'd seen the effects of the practice on my work and had discussed it with me, not because of my family traditions. I could give many other examples, but you get my point.
Obviously, a shaman is a shaman first, because she (or he) clearly transmits the spirit's messages in ways that resonate with others. She is also a shaman because those messages, and her work with others, is of service to her community.
So...if I consider personal understanding, experience and the shaman's demonstrable ability to mediate between their community and the Gods and spirits to be the most important thing, why did I ever even mention my ancestry?
Simple: to give credit where it's due. It might have actually been easier for me not to say I am hereditary. To just focus on direct revelation and inspiration. But it would have been wrong not to acknowledge my ancestors' dedication over millennia to the tradition, in the face of great hardships.
Additions and Subtractions
I freely admit I don't practice all aspects of ancient tradition. I don't headhunt and steal the souls of my enemies. Luckily for any detractors, I don't curse people if they fail to acknowledge me as an oracle of the Deity, as the druid Máelchend cursed my ancestor, the Irish king, Cormac Mac Art for failing to worship him as a God. :-) I don't engage in human or animal sacrifice either, though I am a carnivore.
I also freely admit that some of what I teach comes from my research at Edinburgh University. For example, I never came across the great 9th Century Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena until I went to Edinburgh University. However, his work resonated with me so strongly because I grew up with a world view that held, like his did, that creation was a process of emanation. His theology profoundly expanded upon this simple point my family had made.
The relationship between what I learned as a child and the cosmology and shamanistic techniques I later discovered in early Irish sources is one reason I believe that there must be genuine, archaic, aspects to the traditions that came through my family.
The Likelihood of Continuities
The possibility has occurred to me that someone in the 17th or 18th century around the time of the "Druidic Revival" could have cobbled together a variety of folklore and religious ideas from various traditions and decided we were Druids. However, I think that the evidence makes this highly unlikely.
Growing up, I didn't realise my family was doing anything that unusual. As I got older I read everything I could find about magick and Druids. Where the Druidic books were concerned, I didn't find a lot that resonated. It wasn't until I read Michael Harner's book, The Way of the Shaman, that I recognised what the world called the family business. Studying with Michael and with Sandra Ingerman in the Foundation's Three Year and Masters programs made me realise both how clearly shamanic my family tradition was and how unusual it was in the modern Celtic context for someone preserving such traditions to be open about it.
I also freely admit that what I learned over all those years filled in some blanks for me in terms of my shamanic knowledge. The only reason I didn't emphasise my time with the Foundation more in the past is because I didn't want to give people false impressions. First, I didn't want people to expect to learn Core Shamanism from me (I'm much more religious in my approach!), and second I didn't want people to think I was associated professionally with the Foundation, again from a truth in advertising perspective. I'll always be grateful for the opportunity Michael and Sandy gave me to learn and practice my own tradition within the culturally neutral frame of Core Shamanism.
Intensive study with Dr. Rudolph and Sharon Bauer, including a One Year Advanced Psychotherapy Seminar and Professional Psychotherapy Training gave me a much greater understanding of how to guide people into alternate states of consciousness and work to help them energetically dissolve blocks that could not be intellectually resolved, as Rudy likes to say. They run the Gestalt Psychotherapy Training Center of Washington D.C., and the Washington Center for Meditation Studies and Rudy was formerly the Director of Psychology Training at the University of Maryland Medical School. His understanding of Shaivite Hinduism, (he studied in the Kashmir Shaivistic Tradition with Swami Muktananda for 25 years), Alchemy and Catholic mysticism helped me integrate my understanding of my family tradition into broader patterns of spiritual understanding.
I studied Old Irish with Dr. R. M. Scowcroft, probably the foremost living authority on the Book of Invasions, the Old Irish mythopoetic chronicles, and one of the few scholars who insist students learn Old Irish pronunciation, at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. (Obviously no one, even my family, continued to speak Old Irish. Using Old Irish as a liturgical language is therefore an aspect of family shamanic practice I have reinstated.) I then went into my Edinburgh University MSc and PhD.
I discovered that my shamanic knowledge helped explain many puzzling events and features in Irish literature. In fact, sometimes a shamanic explanation is the only explanation that makes total sense of the tales. For examples, see my MSc dissertation on this site, Spiritual Crisis in Early Irish Literature and Late Folk-Life. (The link is: www.celticshamanism.com/thesis.html)
As I noted in detail in my Lugnasad 2003 newsletter my interdisciplinary doctorate was examined in Anthropology and Celtic Studies, and encompassed the fields of psychology, theology and history of religion as well. It academically demonstrated for the first time the existence of, and some aspects of the significance of, shamanism in Celtic cultures. (I know the fact was demonstrated experientially to lots of us a long time ago!) Because it had to be totally unique work, my supervisor had to be sure no one at another university was covering the same exact research area. The enormity of the job hit home in my first week when the president of the University addressed the incoming post-graduate students, saying, "At the end of your Ph.D.s here you will be the world experts in your field." My first year concluded with an examination in Old Irish literature and translation which allowed no books or grammars, just me commenting upon and translating great swaths of Old Irish out of my head. I graduated MSc Magna Cum Laude, (with Distinction) and received two hotly contested Faculty of Arts Studentships for the next two years of my Ph.D., the remaining official period of study. While I am far from the only person in the world who knows about Celtic shamanism, I am, by the most rigorous standards of scholarship Academia can apply, the world expert. Whatever that may be. : - )
Those of you who know me well know that I'm generally quite reluctant to blow my own horn, but once again, the above is about truth in advertising. I also have to say that, after a lifetime of work in this area, and these last seven years of hard academic work, an intense Ph.D. viva (called a defense in the U.S.) and revisions...well, let's just say I feel I've earned it. Whatever anyone may feel about me personally, my academic credentials are beyond reproach. Beyond the academic cred, however, I learned something very important over all these years.
That is that the traditions that came down through my family bear a close relationship to Indo-European traditions, traditional shamanic practice in many cultures and practices described in Old Irish sources. But they bear little resemblance to most traditions begun during the period of the Druidic revival.
Any 18th century ancestor who decided to take up Druidry would simply not have had access to many of the Old Irish sources. At that time, most of them were unedited and untranslated. Yet it is in these sources that I found the closest paralells to the traditions that came down through my family. I grew up with a cosmogenic structure close to that described by the 9th century Irish theologian, Eriugena, yet his work was seldom referred to from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Then his work began to attract the interest of primarily French and German philosophers. English studies and translations weren't widely available until after the 1960's.
The Druid, Mogh Roith's dancing and spirit journeying is quite akin to my Great Grandfather's description of ecstatic Druidic rites, like the "Cairlin of the Mill-Dust." The Druidic rites of the revival tended to be more formal, processional and masonic by contrast. The Seige of Druim Damhgaire, the story that contains this account, was not translated into a modern European language (French) until 1926.
Given all the above, it seems unlikely that my ancestors would have had the necessary bricks to build as convincing a Celtic Pagan edifice as I grew up with. They also wouldn't have had much access to comparative sources from other shamanic cultures.
Double Standards
There does seem to be an interesting double standard in that Native American and other non-European spiritual practitioners are generally taken at face value, a phenomenon explored to comical effect in the film The Guru. Europeans claiming a hereditary background are by contrast generally greeted with scepticism.
This is curious, not least because we know that as late as Elizabethan times, individuals like John Dee were generally acknowledged to have ongoing interactions with spirits. The alchemists and ritual magicians of the Renaissance must have gotten their practices from somewhere, and scholars like Ginzburg have argued for archaic shamanistic elements in the witch cults of medieval times. There is much less time between the medieval witches, alchemists and magicians and ourselves than there was between them and the generally acknowledged period of the Pagan past.
Are survivals of Pagan belief and practice really surprising in this context? More recent folk traditions, such as those of the village where Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki studied, also argue for archaic European continuities, though of course, making this argument properly would require a book or books to itself.
Having made my point about the difficulty any of my ancestors would have had in manufacturing a tradition, I'll move on to myself.
The Way I Was Told To Work
When the Spirits began telling me I would teach, I asked how I'd know when and how they meant me to start. They said that until they told me otherwise, I should only go where I was invited. So far, I have only ever taught at places where I was invited, without my ever having solicited a workshop.
Those places include Esalen, Rowe, Findhorn and Naropa. The last one, a Tibetan Buddhist founded College, let me know that they invited me specifically because I came from a lineage, and the idea of knowledge being transmitted through spiritual lineages is very important to their tradition. I was the primary Celtic shamanic faculty at Omega Institute for ten years, before taking a break from travel this year for health reasons. Last year they invited me to be the Hermitage resident. As such, it was my role to hold the spiritual centre of Omega during my time there and work with the staff. During that week, Elizabeth Lesser, one of Omega's founders, invited me to close the 9/11 memorial ceremony with a Gaelic prayer.
I don't think it would make sense for all these organisations and individuals to invite me, purely through personal recommendations, if I was a total fraud. Surely some of the many spiritual organisations and the people in them would have picked up something awry. Either that or my peers would have.
Peer Review
Another kind of experience that has supported my understanding of my family traditions is that of my connections with other shamans and spiritual practitioners. Academics put a great deal of emphasis on "peer review," that is, your professional peers' asessment of your work. I've been blessed with lots of great feedback and connections with other shamans and scholars, sometimes both at once.
Dr. Roy Willis, an anthropology lecturer at Edinburgh and practicing shaman himself has invited me to speak to his classes on several occasions, and I also took his Anthropology of Consciousness class. He was one of my two Ph.D. examiners, and as a peer on two levels, his respect means a great deal.
Back in 1993 I was invited to be the Celtic shamanic faculty for Omega Institute's first Shamanic Studies Week. It was the first time I'd come into contact with a number of shamans from other traditions. I felt like a giraffe finding myself in a herd of giraffes for the first time! The commonalities were profound. Since then, I have been honoured to meet shamans from many traditional cultures, as well as gurus, teachers, priestesses and ritual magicians whose opinions and spiritual perceptions I value. For an example, see Mary Thunder's letter which will soon be posted on my testimonial page. I have had long standing close relationships with a couple of teachers who I respect profoundly, and I don't doubt that they would have let me know if they felt I was either overextending myself or claiming anything fraudulent.
In recent years I have also met other European hereditaries, and found our experiences with and ideas about the Sacred to be very similar. I have been fortunate to find a real kinship with these people.
Along with all the years of research I have done to find out everything I possibly could of what was left of the tradition in scholarly sources I truly feel I have done all I could to be a worthy inheritor of what was passed to me.
All the above leads me to believe that the traditions handed down to me, and my work within that frame, is genuine by any criteria.
A Sense of Responsibility
Of course, everyone who gets to any degree of prominence feels like a fraud from time to time. It's a well known phenomenon! Especially in the realm of spiritual teaching. Most teachers I've met don't have it all together personally all the time, no matter how well they might reflect the Creator's power in rituals and workshops. The enormous responsibility of teaching people about the Sacred has always weighed on me.
There's nothing more frightening to most people than public speaking; in fact, most people rank it higher than death on their fear list. With the enormity of speaking of God added to the general fear, I felt both incapable and unworthy when I was called by the Spirits to teach.
Finally, during one spirit journey, Anubis, the Egyptian God of transformation, picked me up by the collar and held me nose to nose with him. I was stunned to hear him forego his usual poetic, formal speech and say, "Who the fuck are you to tell me you're not worthy?" That was the end of that excuse.
Anyway, over all these years I've done my best to be true to God, the Mother, Father and Creator, true to my Spirits, true to my ancestors and true to the trust my students and clients have placed in me. It moves me very deeply that a student would trust me to guide them on the spiritual path. I never take the resposibility lightly.
In the end, the proof of any path is who it makes of us here and now. Over the years, I hope that for the most part I have become a better person through my practice. I have seen my family traditions and the teachings Spirit has transmitted through me transform students and clients, giving them new approaches to life and empowering them to meet it with greater love, courage and compassion.
Ultimately, that's the only proof any teacher can offer of their lineage, their tradition and their integrity.
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