Shaman Pathways - The Celtic Chakras - Elen Sentier 2011

Elen of the Ways

Who is Elen of the Ways?

This is an enormous question; in another book I give you a far deeper experience with her but, for the moment, we’ll stay with her work with the Celtic chakras.

Sir John Rhys calls her the goddess of Twilight because her times are the dawn and dusk. She is goddess of “between the two lights”, gateways to the ways between worlds. She is often portrayed as an antlered woman. Amongst deer only reindeer females carry antlers and reindeer once ran on British soil. They also pull the gift-bringer ’s sledge at the Midwinter festival.

Elen is best known through the Mabinogion tale, The Dream of Macsen Wledig. Macsen was also known as Magnus Maximus, called the British emperor of Rome, and is an actual historical figure. He wedded a British princess, Elen, who was one of the Faer, an otherworldly woman, not human but goddess and sovereign in her own right and thus able to grant sovereignty to her partner, thus making him one of the symbolic guardians of the land.

The story of their union is told in the Mabinogion, the old Welsh collections of grammarye. Briefly it goes as follows …

Macsen was a Roman general of Spanish descent who dreamed of the most beautiful woman in the world, wished to find and marry her. It took a long time, the magical seven year quest, but finally he found her in her father ’s caer (stronghold) up on the northwest coast of Wales, by the otherworldly island of Mona and in the sacred land of the Eagle (Snowdon). He woos and weds her. As her wedding gift Elen asks him to build her three caers (castles, strongholds) with three roads linking them all together. The roads are called sarns in Welsh and there are traces of them still in the landscape at some of the sacred sites. After seven years, as the story tells it, Macsen goes to conquer Rome and becomes emperor, with the aid of Elen’s brothers. Eventually, supposedly in 388AD, Theodosius I defeats Macsen’s army in battle; he is captured and executed at Aquileia.

However, the point of the old story is not to tell history but to teach grammarye.

Elen as Sovereignty

Elen is an otherworldly woman, a goddess; she is called Sovereignty in the British tradition. This signifies that she is the spirit of the Earth, of the Land in its totality; she holds the threads, the web that is the Earth. Macsen is her guardian, the husbandman who keeps the Earth for her.

All through the Celtic tradition goddesses and gods come in pairs; they hold the feminine and the masculine, the pairs of opposites out of which creation is made. This is duality … without which nothing is manifest and all remains potential. To use a correspondence with the Tao, Elen holds the Receptive principle while Macsen hold the Creative principle; to translate that across to the Celtic way, the receptive is the Cauldron or Grail, the Creative is the Spear or Sword. In British royal regalia the receptive is the orb and the creative is the sceptre which are funda- mental to the coronation of our sovereigns (note the use of the word again). The principle goes back to honouring the womb and penis of human creation and can be found all around the world.

The Celtic tradition holds this concept very deeply; this is why, to us, all things have spirits that hold each of the two energies … including the chakras. The Troy Town spiral holds this principle too; you go into the centre of the labyrinth, then you come out again by the same path but in the other direction; just like the male principle entering the vagina and the sperm entering the womb, then the created spirit emerges from that centre.

The following table of correspondences will give you some ideas …

Queen = Spirit-self

King = personal self for each incarnation

The Land

Guardian

Wife

Husbandman

The Field

Tiller of the Field

Duality: Queens & Kings

What are queens and kings in the British Celtic tradition?

Elen was always a queen, she didn’t have to wed with Macsen to become one. In fact he had to wed with her to become a king, before that historically he was military governor of the Roman province of Britannia This is how it is in the Celtic spirit tradition; the queen confers royalty onto her spouse, thus making him a king. The goddess, the Earth, gives life and regality to all of her creation, it comes out of the womb of Life. The king, the masculine principle, is guardian. You can, if you wish, follow through all the etymology of the many words for wife and queen through language, it’s a fascinating journey but not one I’m going into here. The point that we need to be clear about for the chakras is that …

✵ they contain the duality that is Life

✵ the queen, feminine, is paramount and the masculine is the guardian of this principle.

The queen in the Celtic physical world is the representative of the goddess, priest if you like; she carries the energy for us. The king is her guardian, not her lord. One British tradition that shows this — although well hidden in the modern day, as are many spirit- truths — is the Morris Dance tradition. The Morris side, the dancers, are the queen’s men, “Mary’s men” with the name “Mary” signifying water, the sea, the life-principle … we cannot live without water! John Matthews’ work on this concept is enlightening if you want to follow the idea further.

Troy Town

One of the old testings in Britain was running the labyrinth, the Troy Town. It’s a labyrinth of seven turns that takes you both widdershins and deosil from the outside to the centre … and then from the centre back to the outside.

The Troy Town labyrinth is the spiral that also holds the duality of the Lady and the Lord, the goddess and the god. The goddess’ priestess would run to the centre then the candidates for her guardian would run the labyrinth to find her. This is told in songs like the Fith Fath song or the Coal Black Smith; they are not rape-songs but tell of the goddess setting tests for the god; if he can catch her then she will keep him.

This spiral occurs in the Celtic chakras. As I said, many people find their way through the chakras from bottom to top, or top to bottom, but that’s not the Celtic way; the Celts start at the centre and spiral their way outwards. As you found in the journey, the Celtic way begins at the heart and threads its spiral way down through the solar plexus, up to the throat, down to the sacral, up to the crown, down to the base and finally up to the brow.

Lemniscate

The brow is the meeting place that holds all the energies of the chakras. It’s often drawn as a lemniscate. This is about the duality again, two petals, one holds the energy of the Lady and the other holds the energy of the Lord. The spiral winds in and out, turning, turning, widdershins, deosil, carrying the duality, the coming together of the two that makes the One.

Duality & Spin in the Chakras

D UALITY ; centripetal/centrifugal, masculine/feminine, is a basic part of the structure of the chakra. Each chakra holds the two poles, the queen and king, the duality that enables life to manifest. They are two sides of one coin. In our everyday world the spirit-self carries the queen-energy, our personality-self carries the king-energy.

Chakra

This diagram is a good functional map of a chakra and shows the duality (it’s not what a chakra actually looks like but it is how it works). The two spinning cones meet at their points; each cone spins in the opposite direction from the other — duality again.

Through the centre of the cones passes what appears as a rod. Like the double helix of DNA it, too, spins in both directions at once and each end of the rod spins in the opposite direction to the cone it passes through. It is a multiple expression of duality. It reminds me of the figure “the hay” in country dances where the men and women go round the circle in opposite directions and weave in and out of each other as they go round, touching hands as they pass. The old dances hold the old grammarye-knowing too.

The rod carries the inward spin of centripetal , masculine, energy; it pulls the spin inwards in a tight, one-pointed, penetrating way, like a spear. The cone carries the centrifugal, feminine, energy which throws outwards in an expansive, inclusive way like a great whirlpool, cauldron or cup.

The meeting of the energies at the central point to be causes that point to be both still and chaotic at the same time. It is the place of change … and of wholeness.

Bob Toben’s book “Space-Time and Beyond” has a couple of excellent diagrams that expand on this idea of the chakra.

Herman Weyl - Double Cone

The 20 th century German mathematician, Herman Weyl (1885-1955) says “ Every world point is the origin of the double-cone of the active future and the passive past ... so that, in principle, it is possible to experience events now that will in part be an effect of my future resolves and actions.”

So you have past-and-future, unconscious-and-conscious, inner-and-outer world, all connected through the rods and the cones. The central point is the place of interchange; the black hole, the centre of the chakra; as the old rede says, “As above, so below”.

It is a gateway of consciousness that the cunning folk, the awenyddion, the British spirit-keepers, along with all shamans, use to walk between worlds. It seems very similar to how scien- tists describe the black-hole/white-hole phenomenon; you pass through what, from this side, appears to be a black hole then, when you view it from the other side, it appears as a white hole. As you pass through this door/gate your perspective is reversed.

Black Hole

Duality in the chakras

Coiling your way along the quicksilver paths through the pairs of chakras is the reason you travel through them in a spiral, starting from the centre and working outwards and inwards, outwards and inwards, outward and inward to arrive at the place (the brow) where the three pairs combine into the seven-fold energy, into oneness.

Your journey takes you from …

✵ Heart to Solar Plexus to

✵ Throat to Sacral to

✵ Crown to Base to

✵ Brow … where all are integrated, again into the duality of the pairs of opposites.

QUEEN KING

Heart

Solar Plexus

Throat

Sacral

Crown

Base

Brow: where the Queen and King are wed

Pairs of Chakras

One of the principles Elen holds for us is Duality, we’ve explored her relationship with Macsen Wledig — where she holds the spirit-self principle while he holds the guardianship of that spirit-self, the jobs of the queen and the king. We’ve talked about how this principle of duality is carried in the chakra, how it spirals in with the masculine, penetrating energy, and spirals out with the feminine, expansive energy; and how this is shown in the Troy town labyrinth.

The Celtic tradition is about the wedding of the pairs of opposites. This picture comes from a Celtic gold ornament discovered in a woman’s tomb at Bad Durkheim in the Hunsruck-Eifel area, Germany dating to the late 5th century or early 4th century B.C. It expresses the lady/lord very well. If you look at the picture one way up you see the face of an old man; if you turn the picture the other way up you see the face of a young woman. Always there is the lady and the lord. This is the basic duality through which our Earth works; goddess and god, holding the pairs of opposites. Our ancestors didn’t separate off the life of spirit as we do nowadays; everything was part of Life, part of the whole, not one bit for Sundays and another style for the rest of the week.

It’s worth looking at the pairs of opposites again, they come in everywhere. The pairs of opposites are each side of one coin … as our ancestors showed in the engraving on the ornament, the old man who becomes the young woman who becomes the old man, again and again as you turn the brooch.

Dark/Light

Feminine/Masculine

Receptive/Creative

Womb/Phallus

Orb/Sceptre

Stigma/Stamen

Cup/Athame

Grail/Spear

Inner/Outer

These are just a few examples, I’m sure you can find more for yourself. Each chakra holds this duality, and each pair of chakras holds it too.

3-ness: Caers, Castles & Cauldrons

So, back to Elen …

As her bridal gift, Elen asks Macsen to build her three Caers; he does this and the caers are said to be at what are now Caer y n’Arfon (Caernarvon), Caer Leon (Caerleon) and Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen). They symbolise the three pairs of chakras each of which holds this creative/receptive energy which enlivens us all. This energy is the same triple energy that Brighid holds — Blacksmith, Healer and Poet which we’ll talk about in her chapter later on.

Elen’s three Caers symbolise the three pairs of chakras and carry the energy of the Three Cauldrons of Poesy …

Caer y n’Arfon

Crown/Base

Life

Caer Leon

Heart/Solar Plexus

Vocation

Caerfyrddin

Throat/Sacral

Wisdom

Caer y n’Arfon is the castle that looks across the worlds, to Mona, one of the Isles of Glas (like Glastonbury) and a place of the Faer. It spans between heaven and earth, enabling us to walk between the worlds, as do the crown and base chakra pair; they give life.

Caer Leon is the place of the flowing waters. It is built at the lowest crossing point of the sacred river Usk. The flowing of the waters and their regular flooding is about how our love can enable us to do the job we promised our spirit-totem-group we would do in our current incarnation. This is our vocation , our life- path.

Caerfyrddin is the stronghold by the sea, the castle that holds and stores the wisdom of the ages. Myrddin (spelled fyrddin here) is another spelling of Merlin. One of the old names for the island of Britain was Clas Myrddin, the place of Merlin; Britain is the stronghold surrounded by the sea, another form of this Caer. Merlin is the wise one who knows and guides the kings.

This three-ness is told again in the Gaelic poem, The Cauldrons of Poesy, which we will explore with Ceridwen.

Caers are strong places where a people could hold together in times of stress (not always or necessarily war but also bad winters, drought, famine or disease). Back in ancient times our ancestors made enclosures; some contained in earth banks, some marked by stones, sometimes daub-and-wattle walls were built on the banks. Our modern, separatist natures lead us to jump to conclusions that these must have been defensive structures, built for war, but a little deeper thought shows that this is unlikely. Hunter-gatherer folk do not “own” land; they are guardians to the land but not owners; they work with the Earth rather than trying to control and manipulate her to make money and profit, and for their own small ideas of the common good. Hunter- gatherers know and respect the land and all her creatures and plants; they hunt for food, following the herds; they collect plants and fruits and nuts by season rather than trying to extend seasons and force the land to produce what they want. Until farming there was no need for war to take or hold land; and, until farming, the human population remained stable, in balance with the Earth and her seasons; until farming there was no need for more than replacement children who would be loved and respected rather than bred as a workforce. Even pastoralists worked this way, with the land rather than raping her; for a fairly recent example of how folks in touch with the land lived look at how the native tribes of Yellowstone lived before Cornelius Hedges, of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a National Park.

Caers are about places where folk gathered. From many years’ work (since the early 70s) with ley and energy lines I’ve found they occur at places where many earth-energy threads come together, a nexus of threads, making a strong place. They are like chakra points in the Earth. The chakras in our bodies, and in the bodies of all living things, are places where energy threads come together — a super Clapham Junctions of the energy tracks that make us.

So, Elen’s caers are symbols of the three main junction points where pairs of chakras meet, where the queen and king energy (feminine and masculine) meet. They are strongholds of this energy, refuges and retreats where this double-helix energy is held.

Elen’s Ways

When Macsen — the guardian spirit — had built the Caers, Elen made pathways between them. These roads are the pathways between each Caer, each holds one of the pairs of chakras; the paths are similar in function to the nadis and meridians of the eastern traditions. They carry the energy between each of the chakras in each pair and between one pair of chakras and another. In the body of the Earth herself they are the dragon, song and ley energy lines connecting the many chakra points of the sacred places.

The paths spiral. The spiral is fundamental to the Celtic tradition as it is in many others (e.g. the Navajo); it takes you there and back again like Bilbo; but you never return to exactly the same place but to a different turn of the spiral.

The caers are symbols for the three pairs of chakras, the three cauldrons; the roads between them symbolise the threads that link the chakras. Elen’s roads are the song lines that carry the energies of Life and Love and Light throughout the land, the energies of Warmth and Vocation and Wisdom … the energies of the Triskele. They carry them through our bodies; they carry them through the Earth’s body.

As you wander through the mythologies of the world you find similar concepts everywhere. Carlos Castaneda saw them as the web that makes our bodies and those of all living things, including the Earth. The Northern tradition calls this the wyrd. The Australian peoples see it as song-lines. Watkins saw the Threads as Ley Lines. Hamish Miller saw them as Dragon Lines. Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst called them the Michael/Mary lines, recognising their duality and that they carried the masculine and feminine energy, twin spiral lines that twined together, double-helix spirals like that of DNA. In the east the lines are known as meridians and nadis, again threads that carry the energy throughout the body.

The lines are, in fact, triple like the caduceus staff, with the two snakes twining in opposite directions up the vertical axis … back to 3-ness again. The triple lines carry the energies of Elen’s three caers, connecting everything to everything.

Elen’s roads, pathways, within the earth connect the sacred sites, and they are within our bodies too. They, and the spinning wheels of the chakras, are in all living things. Our British ancestors knew this; they knew and walked the energy lines of the antlered reindeer goddess, the most ancient goddess of our land.