Conference Presentations
Conference Presentation
The Irish Otherworld: The Other Side of Knowing
John Carey, Ph.D.
What is the medieval Irish “Otherworld”? Although this seems like a familiar concept, it proves to be elusive when we try to pin it down. For one thing, there is no medieval Irish word which can be simply translated “Otherworld;” the closest such term is síd, but this designates not so much a world as a special kind of hill or mountain or mound – the dwelling place of supernatural beings, or perhaps a gateway leading from here to somewhere else. Paradoxically, then, a síd belongs both to the physical landscape and to a wholly different reality. Its inhabitants are both the powers of earth and water and the land’s fruitfulness, and at the same time utterly removed from the conditions of mortality. This paradox, like most paradoxes, may exist only within our own minds; as we explore the old stories, the difference between “worlds” emerges ultimately as being not one of “here” and “there”, but of different modes of consciousness.
Conference Presentation
The Irish Otherworld: The Other Side of Being
John Carey, Ph.D.
Together with anomalies of space, descriptions of the Otherworld confront us with anomalies of time. A short time “there” may correspond to a long time “here”, or vice versa; or a visitor to the síd may return to the same moment from which he or she had departed – or to a different version of that moment. This bewildering variety suggests something radically different from our own experience: the Otherworld’s freedom from old age and death may, more fundamentally, be an expression of being outside time altogether. The Otherworld is also associated with inspired knowledge, and with the power of poetry; and there is an idea that its divine inhabitants, besides being powers of nature, are also the originators and practitioners of the arts. There appears, indeed, to have been a fundamental connection between the Otherworld and the imagination – not in the sense that the Otherworld is ‘only imaginary’, but as a conception of the imagination as our way to a deeper reality.
Conference Presentation
The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death-Messenger
Patricia Lysaght, Ph.D.
A supernatural female being popularly known as the banshee (Irish: an bhean sí) figures prominently in Irish folk belief. This being is usually considered to be a messenger of death and is said to be connected to certain families. Traditions relating to the banshee have been located throughout Ireland, mostly in rural but also in urban settings, and have been collected over a period of more than sixty years. This rich and representative body of traditional material enables us to ascertain the profile of the banshee in Irish folk tradition, to attempt to trace its age and origin, and to establish the social contexts and functions of belief in such a being. In analyzing this material, it becomes evident that many family and community attitudes to life and death, grief and mourning, and changes in these attitudes over time, are expressed through the banshee tradition.
Conference Presentation
The Emerald Way: The Spiritual Ecology of Prehistoric Ireland
Leonard George, Ph.D.
Humans have lived on “the Emerald Isle” for ten thousand years. Over the vast span of Irish prehistory, indigenous people and migrants left traces of rich spiritual lives centered on the interdependence of humanity and all who dwell in the land, sea and sky. This spiritual ecology manifested in brooding mounds and standing stones, wooden effigies and golden hoards, myths of shape-shifting deities and legends of spell-casting druids, and echoes in Ireland’s art and literature that have endured to the present. In the modern age, when our dulled attunement to the natural world threatens our well-being and even our existence, we can draw valuable lessons from the legacy and rebirth of the Emerald Way.
Conference Presentation
The Hibernian Mysteries: Their Presence in the Landscape
Alan Potter
The ancient sacred sites of Ireland are deeply woven into the landscape in which they are set. In locations such as the Boyne Valley and the Sligo basin, the temples of the pre-Christian Hibernian mysteries sit as altars amidst their surrounding precincts. These sites also have a relationship to the movements of the starry world, as in the astronomical alignments of passage cairns, or graves, that date from 6000 BC to 3000 BC. To get a sense of these ancient mysteries, we will draw on the investigations of the spiritual seer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and consider his insights into the question of Atlantis and its possible connection to Ireland. We will also examine his research into the schooling for initiation into the Hibernian mysteries, and how traces of this can still be seen in today’s ruins.
Conference Presentation
Early Irish Christianity in the 5th to 9th Centuries AD:
Preserving Civilization on the Western Edge of the Known World
Alan Potter
Christianity was already widely established in Ireland when St. Patrick arrived in 432 AD. At least four Irish church bishops were active and there was a blossoming monastic life, unrelated to that of Rome. Its origins were in the Hibernian mysteries and in the two mythological streams recorded as the Ulster and the Fianna Cycles. These early developments led to a flowering of both monastic settlements and a culture of hermits.
Two key individuals steered its destiny – St. Columba, considered the founder of Celtic Christianity, and St. Brendan who, legend has it, reached the North American continent. This was the period when Ireland is said to have “saved civilization” by preserving classical learning and spirituality. The Roman Church increased in power and influence while the Celtic church began a slow decline after the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD, when Roman practices were given precedence over the older Celtic traditions. A new Europe was awakening in the 9th century as Viking raids destroyed many of the remaining monastic communities.
Conference Presentation
The Celtic Muse: Awakening the Creative Spirit
Jennifer Murphy
The Old Irish word dán can mean the poetry that is alive within us, a creative or artistic skill, a calling, destiny, or fate—a soul’s unique gift. It is described both as a gift bestowed upon us by the divine and as a gift that we offer back to the divine by being our creative selves. The Greeks called the art of bringing our dán into being poiesis, the mother of the word “poetry”. This concept was so vital that the Greeks prescribed poetry as a form of medicine, a practice also endorsed by the ancient Irish, who saw incantation as a necessary part of healing. Modern science reveals that poetry transcends language, stimulating areas of the brain associated with meaning-making, reward, and inner peace. Translating this back to the dán, this invites us to consider how answering our soul’s call through our creativity—whatever form it may take—could enhance our well-being. In this session, we will draw on the dán, the living wisdom at the turning of the Celtic year, and the dreaming rituals of our ancestors — to inspire, navigate, and breathe fresh life into our modern creative practice.
Conference Presentation
Tending the Three Cauldrons
Jennifer Murphy
The early medieval Irish text, the mystical Cauldron of Poesy, serves as a wonderful metaphor for the creative calling, or dán, alive within each one of us. It reveals three stages of tending to our dán represented by the Celtic symbol of the cauldron: the “Cauldron of Warming”, the “Cauldron of Vocation”, and the “Cauldron of Wisdom.” It also issues a powerful warning about unfulfilled creative potential: “For the origin of poetry and knowledge is in everyone physically, but in every second one it does not shine forth.” We will embark on an inner imram, a guided journey into the Otherworld of the unconscious to meet our three cauldrons, receive guidance for our lives at this juncture, and ensure that “the origin of poetry and knowledge” within us, our creative spark, shines forth.
Conference Presentation
The Esoteric Quest of W.B. Yeats for the Soul of Ireland and Other Visionary Spheres
Paul Bembridge, M.Phil.
If only we could make contact with the hidden forces of the land, it would give us strength for the freeing of Ireland. Most of our talk centred round this and it led us both into strange places…(Maud Gonne on her friendship with Yeats, around 1900)
One of the foremost writers of the 20th century, a high-ranking member of the Theosophical Society and the Golden Dawn, a founding Senator of the Irish Free State, and a Nobel Prize-winning poet, W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was no stranger to success in his chosen fields. But could he become the poet-mage who would awaken the soul of Ireland and re-enchant the modern world? This talk explores the life and ambitions of one of the greatest Irish poets of all time, one of a very small group of poets – alongside Shakespeare and Wordsworth – who attract massive, continuous global scholarship.
Conference Presentation
William Irwin Thompson’s Quest: From Easter Rising to Gaian Cultural Ecologies
Ralph Peters, Ph.D.
William Irwin Thompson (1938-2020) was a prominent Irish-American writer who is best known today as the founder of the Lindisfarne Association (1972-2012) which was dedicated to the realization of an emerging planetary culture. In this workshop, we will discuss Thompson’s first book, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916. We will consider this Easter Rising from poetic, mystical and naturalistic perspectives. Then we will look at the 1971 book that brought Thompson to the attention of the wider public, At the Edge of History: Speculations of the Transformation of Culture, which became a National Book Award nominee and a top ten bestseller. Finally, we will examine Pacific Shift, where Thompson first presents his mature perspective on the evolution of Gaian cultural ecologies. Thompson’s rich sense of Celtic animism underlies this evolution of thought and remains profoundly relevant today.
