Shaman Pathways - The Celtic Chakras - Elen Sentier 2011

Brighid

Brighid is known in the Celtic worlds as Brigantia, Brid, Bride, Briginda, Brigdu, and Brigit. She is goddess of fire and hearth, and of childbirth and inspiration; she is said to lean over every cradle. One of the meanings of her name is Exalted One: her lore and customs continue to this day. Her name in Wales is Fraid.

Three Faces

Brighid has three faces that correspond to the three cauldrons and the three caers. They are …

SMITH

HEALER

POET

Fire of the Forge

Fire of the Hearth

Fire of Inspiration

Cauldron of Warming

Cauldron of Vocation

Cauldron of Wisdom

Crown/Base

Heart/Solar Plexus

Throat/Sacral

Caer y n’Arfon

Caer Leon

Caerfyrddyn

Central points - Brow Chakra

These diagrams illustrate Brighid’s triplicity; in each of them the three circles, points, threads come together at the centre; that centre is the brow chakra. In the first drawing that is shown by the place numbered 7 … the 7 th chakra, the brow chakra.

The brow is the place of integration, of synthesis, where the threads blend; where the three colours of white light — red, blue and green — come together into white light; the synchronised and integrated personality.

What are the Smith, Healer and Poet? These three crafts hold all the things that make up life; they are overlighting job descriptions for each of the three pairs of chakras. The energy of each of these faces, job-descriptions, gives us deeper insight into what each cauldron and caer is about.

I’m using the word craft here in talking about each of the faces for the reason that craft is about skills. The thesaurus gives us the following suggestions for the word craft … ability, artistry, technique, system, practice. Craft is also about cunning, and cunning folk is what we who follow the old ways call ourselves in Britain. Cunning is about … wiliness, shrewdness, guile, astute, canny, foxy, smart, perceptive, judicious, incisive, wise, perspicacious, of good judgment — a host of words that speak of how we are. Note I’ve included foxy for Fox is our Trickster-in-Chief, similar to coyote in America, and Tricksters are the very best Teachers in all the worlds, the ones we should learn from most closely.

Smithcraft

Smith — warming : blacksmith, maker, forger, creator, fire-worker, iron-worker.

The word Smith comes from an old Teutonic word, smeithan , which means to forge .

Smithing is about making; smiths are makers.

As blacksmiths, they turn up all the time in songs about the goddess-chase, where the goddess makes her “lover ” chase her, if he cannot catch her then she doesn’t want him. Two fairly well know such chase songs are the Fith Fath song and the Twa Magicians; despite Victorian romanticism, these are not rape songs but tests, chases set up by the goddess to find a guardain worthy of her. Remember the Troy Town labyrinth chase.

In English the suffix, -smith , implies a meaning of specialized craftsmen, for example, wordsmith and tunesmith are synonymous with writer or songwriter, respectively.

The smith is a creator. Smith correlates with the Cauldron of Warming, Caer y n’Arfon and the Crown-Base pair of chakras.

The Crown connects us with otherworld, it is the rainbow bridge between the worlds; our main line back to base. As such it’s an information highway for our inspiration … and for us to send feedback, upload new files we’ve made from our work- experience here on Earth that will be useful to otherworld. That’s a thing about the Celtic tradition; we know information needs to pass in both directions, part of the work is as Ursula le Guin puts it in her novels of the Ekumen, “ The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life.” Uploading what we learn and discover in each incarnation helps the whole of otherworld to grow too, nothing stands still.

The Base connects us similarly to the Earth, to the planet on which we have chosen to incarnate and where we have a job; connecting through to our base helps us find out what our job is this lifetime; most of us get a severe dose of spiritual amnesia on being born so we have to work at finding out — a bit like the Swarzneggar film “Total Recall”.

Connecting upwards and downwards to Spirit and Earth helps us to do the basic job of being co-creators with otherworld, the job of the Smith.

In Britain, forges were often at crossroads or places where rivers and roads cross; this placing on highways, pathways, has a spiritual connotation as well as an ordinary, everyday obvious ones. On the physical level, business for the smith will be good where there are a lot of travellers; blacksmiths often combined their trade with that of farrier — horse doctor and shoe-smith — so being at a crossroads is a good idea. The paths of Elen of the Ways have crossroads too and their physical counterparts often coincide with our everyday crossroads. Similarly, both Crown and Base chakras are at crossroads between worlds, thresholds, gateways; we can learn to use them as places to exchange wisdom.

Caer y n’Arfon, the fortress and the bridge across the worlds, the cauldron of Warming, will manifests out in the world once we have learned to work with it … with Brighid’s help.

Healer craft

Healer — vocation : calling, talent, art, passion, foster, nurture, cherish, protect, shelter.

The word Heal is related to the word whole for which the thesaurus offers us entire, complete, unabridged, intact, unbroken, healthy, sound, fit, well and unity to expand our ideas about what the word means. It’s very much about making whole, bringing together, synthesis, fusion. Curing is not really what it’s about, nor the concept of “put back together ” particularly because of the word “back”. There is no return, you can never go back to what was, only to something that looks similar to what you remember; the way, the path, is always forward, onwards. The path forward is always built on the way we have already gone, the past is the rock on which we build the future.

Brighid’s face of healer includes the concept of fostering … caring for little ones that are not your own; this is a teaching role, a healer is a teacher in our tradition. Healing in this way is about putting things together and about finding the roots of things.

The Heart connects to our centre, the very centre of the Troy Town labyrinth through which it connects us to the centre of all things. It’s about consciousness, the centre of knowing which does not depend on reason or mind-games but knows because it is connected to the essence. It is very much about the collecting, inward, centripetal energy that draws all things inwards to itself to bring them together, making whole from the outside in.

The Solar Plexus connects us to the rest of creation all around us, on the horizontal axis, the world guarded by the Midguard Serpent who twines around the trunk of the tree. It spins with the expansive, centrifugal energy that goes outwards, into everything else, linking and joining, making whole from the inside out.

Caer Leon, the place of the flowing waters, the cauldron of Vocation, manifests out in the world once we have learned to work with it … with Brighid’s help.

Wordcraft

Poet — wisdom : lore-keeper, history-keeper, ritual-keeper, wordsmith, bard, cyfarwydd

Keeping the word is keeping the lore; we still use the phrase “will you keep your word?” meaning keep your promise. In the old Gaelic ways, the old traditions, the promise was the geis, meaning duty, job and obligation as well as promise. In Welsh we say tynged (plural tynghedau) meaning doom, fate, destiny, similar to some of the concept of wyrd from the Northern tradition. The most famous tynghedau were those that Arianrhod placed on her son Llew Llaw Gyffes.

The poet is both wordsmith, a maker of words, sayings and poems that strike straight through to the heart; and word-keeper, holding the words of the cunning folk and knowing ones of the past and bringing them forward into the present to add to the foundations of the future. She or he carries the songs and stories in the heart and is also able to tell them in a way that moves their listeners, enabling them to journey through the story as well as listen to it.

The Throat is where our voice sings out from, it’s the wonderful wind-harp that we can learn to use to communicate with others, and not just human others either. It is the instrument of the singer, the taleweaver and even the writer, for good stories when you read them also sing in the ear of the mind. It carries the expansive, outward pouring centrifugal energy that communi- cates in the world.

The Sacral carries the inward-winding, spiralling centripetal energy of the creative principle. This can appear simply as a new child in the world; it can also appear as wonderful song, picture, statue, poem, story, scientific discovery, mathematical insight, dish of food, piece of technology, philosophical insight … any creative thing that will reach out to others.

Caerfyrddyn, the sea fortress, the cauldron of Wisdom manifests out in the world once we have learned to work with it … with Brighid’s help.

Brigands & Warriors

Brighid is also patron of warfare (Briga) and her soldiers were called Brigands. Like most old words their origin and meaning is overlaid with centuries of “Chinese whispers”; it seems that we can go back through the Middle English brigaunt, from Middle French brigand, from Old Italian brigante, from brigare to fight, from the Celtic briga meaning strife and akin to Old Irish bríg meaning strength. Tossing this word around reminded me of the word assassin , coming to us through the legends of the mystery- warriors, the Hashishin, who journeyed with the gods using the sacred weed. They were an order of Nizari Ismailis from Persia and Syria living and working from around 1092 to 1265, and posed a strong military threat to Sunni Saljuq authority within the Persian territories. They captured and inhabited many mountain fortresses under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbah. Chinese whispers set in again here because, according to texts from Alamut, Hassan-i Sabbah called his disciples Asasiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the Asās, faithful to the ’foundation’ of the faith. It’s said the word was misunderstood by foreign travellers because it sounded similar to hashish. It just goes to show how we need to think and consider words and their meanings to see if there is more than just what we’re given on the surface … often there is.

I don’t know where truth lies for the assassins as I’ve not journeyed with them. The truth about Brighid and her brigands takes us back to the Rainbow Warriors again. There are, and were, real physical people who were brigands in the current common usage of the word but way, way back if we care to take the journey there are deeper meanings.

TS Eliot put it very well for me — this whole problem about what is real, what is true — when he wrote, in Burnt Norton, “ Humankind cannot bear very much reality ”. We really do need to stretch our boundaries and climb out of our boxes with regard to reality; it’s good to learn to bear more reality and realise it may set all our current mores and ideals on their heads … often this is good thing. Brighid and her brigands do this for me, stretch my boundaries and I really enjoy this, it’s like going anew into the Enchanted Forest by a route I’ve not done before and finding new places.

Warriors, soldiers, brigands … this takes me to Morris Dancing, one of our ancient customs here in Britain. The Morris traditions get diminished to a manageable size when people think of them only as a bit of fun, a good excuse for downing some nice ale, a way of attracting the girls, etc, etc, but they are far more than that. John Matthews has done some excellent research on the old ways and I remember what I was told when I was a child in my home village on the edge of Exmoor. The cunning folk remember but it’s not some “big deal” to us mostly but just “how it is”, how life is and a part of us that holds and carries on the continuity of tradition that’s been overlooked and diminished in this country for a long time.

Likely you’ve seem Morris sides dancing, men with bells on their legs, in funny clothes, waving sticks and handkerchiefs; sometimes there’s a Beast, Dragon or Fool with them and, around Beltane there may well be a Fair Maid. Old ways that are still carried on now include the Bride; women who marry at this time may well ask the Morris side to come to the wedding to carry them in and out, as the representative of Brighid, for their own wedding. I’ve done handfastings where this tradition has been included. Who and what are the Morris Men? There’s all the usual academic discussion about where the word Morris comes from — Moorish, Mary’s men, just to put up a couple of currently perceived pieces of wisdom, both of which have strains of truth within them.

The name Mary has strong Christian connotations nowadays but comes from far older words; one of which is a word for sea . Lady of the Sea is an ancient concept, it seems our ancestors knew very well that we came from the sea and (unlike the dolphins) didn’t go back to it. It takes us to one of the bases in creation myths and the ultimate in magic — bringing together fire and water — perhaps the best known is the Northern story of fire and ice.

For us, the lady of the sea (water|) wedding the lord of the sun (fire) certainly makes sense of what science tells us too about how life comes about. Our ancestors didn’t talk as we do, riddling and story were their way, along with songs; we should not denigrate them because they are not like us, perhaps they were even wiser?

Remembering Elen and Macsen, the goddess and her guardian, we can take another look at Morris Men. The hints and stories suggest to me, as they do to John Matthews, the goddess’ band of guardians … her Brigands and her warriors. I do tai chi; when I got to being able to begin the stick work I was immedi- ately struck by how similar many of the exercises are to the dance moves of a Morris side. Carry this idea on into the work with handkerchiefs and you have a technique of martial arts that can be practiced as dance and, in the dance, is also a commemo- ration and glorification of the goddess. We dance the goddess, show her how we are able to be her soldiers, guard her, and give her praise and honour too.

You’ll not likely find many sides that will talk much to you about this although some may; here in Britain we don’t advertise or proselytise, we just get on with it. If you are polite and not pushy, just keep on going to dances, buy the men a beer, chat about dogs or daffodils or something and are generally respectful and amusing then you’ll gradually come to see things as you watch; and maybe they’ll even talk to you too.

So, Brighid’s brigands may well also be in the Morris sides; they’ll be in other things too. Another thought from John Matthews is about the Robin Hood connections and the Green Man. The thing everyone remembers about Robin Hood is that he robbed the rich and gave to the poor; we all still love this concept. The idea of brigands may well hold this too; a rebalancing of the resources so everyone has enough. It’s interesting to realise that, until farming, there was no concept of land ownership — we were owned by the land, we were the servants of the land. That changed with farming and the loss of the ways (and respect) of the hunter-gatherers. Perhaps the brigands were trying to rebalance this too, to open up Elen’s Ways again that had been taken from us by the land-owners and farmers? It’s all specu- lation but wandering paths in this way takes one’s head out of the box.

Brighid’s warriors, brigands, were said to be inhabitants of mountain places; this brings me back to the idea of caers and mountain corries. Myths all over the world tell of those who live in the mountains; they work in the high places, making contact with the spirits who live and work beyond our Earth; they come down into the everyday world and give us the wisdom they’ve collected. The shaman’s job is to go out across the worlds, gain wisdom and bring it back to their folk.

The chakras and their warriors are like this. We go to the warriors to learn from them and give them our experience (exchange, again), then we bring this wisdom out into our lives and those we touch. It’s worth remembering again — from the last chapter — that warrior has meanings beyond our everyday ones … soldier, fighter, opponent, combatant, challenger, partaker, accomplice, member, contributor, participant, rebel. We need to take each of these concepts within us, sit with them and find out how they work with us; then we are working with the warriors.

Brighid and the Brow Chakra

[Fig 15 — to left of next para and list: Brow Chakra]

This diagram expresses how the Brow chakra works very well.

✵ 6 lines come together at the central point.

✵ Each of these lines has a different start/end point: one end emerges or finishes from an angle, a corner of the triangle; the other end emerges or finishes at a straight line.

✵ The angle and the straight line symbolise pairs of opposites that are each one half of the same thing.

✵ Each of the lines symbolises a Cauldron or caer and the pair of energies it holds.

✵ The three lines symbolise Elen’s ways between the caers, the connecting paths, deer-trods, that we follow to find our way.

The central point is the Brow chakra, where all these pairs of opposites come together.

Brighid shows us this through her three faces that are one face and one being, a synthesis of the whole. When we have spent a long time with the chakras, cauldrons, caers and the ways between them we come to our own knowing of how all the stories show us the many ways of seeing the wonderful web.

Journey: Rainbow Dance

Take yourself to the Brow centre.

✵ Settle yourself quietly there and wait; look around, get a feel for where you are and how this place is appearing to you at this time.

✵ Find yourself sat in the centre of a wonderful pyramid of light; all the colours of the rainbow play around you in shimmering shadows; they colour you as they flow over you.

✵ High above you, at the central point of the pyramid, is a sphere of white light spiralling and twisting.

✵ Out of the spiral flow 6 quicksilver threads.

✵ 3 go to the corners of the pyramid.

✵ 3 go to the middle of the long sides between the corners at the base of the pyramid.

✵ The threads are silvery but, at the same time, they shimmer with all the colours of the rainbow.

✵ As you sit there, in the middle of the pyramid, it feels like being the May Pole at the centre of the dance.

✵ 3 of the threads dance around you going widdershins.

✵ The other 3 threads dance round you deosil.

✵ They make rainbow patterns on and in you as they dance; you can sense the 6-fold energies of Warming, Vocation and Wisdom spinning through you in both their feminine and masculine forms.

✵ Enjoy this; allow the threads to caress you, stroke you, dance in you; allow yourself to absorb the energies; don’t try to understand or comprehend them yet, just allow them in.

✵ You may hear music or sound as you are danced by the threads, enjoy and allow this too.

✵ Gradually, you realise that the dance has ceased.

✵ The rainbow energies hang shimmering around you and you, at the centre-pole, are the still-point, the still point where the dance is; the dance is all inside you now.

✵ Be still with this stillness for a few moments.

✵ When you are ready to leave, thank the Rainbow energies of the white light in the Brow and say you will visit there again to learn more and enjoy.

Now it is time to come home, to return to the everyday world. Take a deep breath and sigh it out, take another and sigh that out too, and a third. Swallow, move your mouth, wiggle your fingers and toes, rub your hands together then rub your knees and legs and arms, have a good stretch and a yawn, then open your eyes. Blink a few times, move your head gently on your neck, hunch your shoulders and let go, rub your feet on the floor. When you feel that you’re safely back in your body thank your body for being there for you to return to.

Make a few notes and drawings to remind you of your journey then make yourself a warm drink and have something nice to snack on. You may not realise it but you’ve done a lot of work just in that simple-seeming journey and you need to replenish your body for the energy it gave you while you worked.