When the Dagda heard this news, he sent a message to Yewberry's father asking that they meet, but he refused a meeting, saying that he would never give his daughter to Aengus. And so the Dagda and his people attacked his tribe, killing three score men and imprisoning Yewberry's father. Within his dripping dungeon, he was asked once more if he would yield Yewberry to Aengus, but again he refused, saying, 'I cannot, for her power is greater than mine.' When pressed, he revealed that every other year, at the time of Samhuinn, Yewberry became a white swan, along with all the companion maidens that Aengus had seen beside the lake.
Peace and friendship were restored between the Dagda and Yewberry's father, who was released at once, and since Samhuinn approached, Aengus travelled forthwith to the Lake of the Dragon's Mouth to find, as the sun began to sink low upon the horizon, one hundred and fifty swans gathered upon its still waters. And as he stood on the lake shore he saw the fairest swan of all, adorned with a silver necklace. 'Yewberry! Caer Ibormeith!' he called to her, and she flew to him and he wrapped his arms about her, and as he did so his arms became wings and his body became that of a swan, and they flew together three times around the lake, until, in the last rays of the setting sun, they sped towards his home at Cashel Aengus.
As the two swans alighted upon New Grange, they sang a song of such beauty that all at once the inhabitants of the palace fell into a deep sleep, and for three days and three nights they slept as if in a trance, whilst Aengus and Yewberry lay together in love.
Though Samhuinn ended, their love did not, and they remained as lovers together forever.
You return with your fellow pupils of the Forest School to the seashore, as once again the moon rises in the night sky. At one end of the beach, you see that a fire is burning beside the entrance to a cave. You walk along the sand and, as you get closer, you see that Elidir is seated beside the fire. She invites you to sit down and for a while she is silent. You sit listening to the sounds of the crackling flames and the crashing waves, feeling the warmth of the fire on your face and body, until at last Elidir turns to Brendan and says,
'If you really want to follow this way, there is no point in working only at the surface - thinking you can burn a few herbs, recite a few spells and then work wonders. To be able to work magic, you have to understand what is at the heart of life, what is driving it.'
Having said this, she leans forward and picks up a stick that has been lying beside her. A cloth has been wrapped around the end of it, soaked in tar. She plunges the stick in the fire and it springs alight at once. 'Come with me,' she says, and you all follow her at once into the cave.
The soft sand soon gives way to pebbles and rocks as you enter further into the cave, which starts gently sloping downwards.
Suddenly Elidir turns around, and shouts, 'Look!' She moves to one side to reveal a skeleton whose bones are half buried in the sand. 'Many people are frightened by seeing skeletons. They worry that that is all we finally are; that death really is the end, and there is no great meaning in life at all.'
'What do you think?' asks Brendan.
'Oh, there's meaning!' she replies, stepping forward a few paces, and holding her torch up high to reveal the back of the cave. And there, on a rocky ledge, are two figures - a man and a woman. They are both about a metre high and are carved out of sections of a broad tree trunk. They are roughly carved, but you can see that the male figure looks a little like the Cerne Abbas giant, complete with erection, and the female figure looks like the Venus of Willendorf - a large full-breasted woman.
Elidir points to the skeleton, then points back at the figures. 'These bones are only here because of their love for each other,' she says firmly, and with that she turns and walks back to the mouth of the cave. You follow her until once more you are seated by the fire.
'Those two figures represent the God and the Goddess - the two great forces that together create life. Ultimately, all of Life is One, but creation only comes about when that One polarizes itself into two energies. In the East they refer to these forces as Yin and Yang. In Druidcraft we talk about them as God and Goddess. In the Qabalah this same idea is expressed in the idea that the Tree of Life has two pillars, with a middle pillar being the place where they unite.'
'This is what lies at the root of life,' Elidir continues. 'This is what the Tantric tradition in the East has been teaching for thousands of years. Of course, many mythologies the world over talk about this too. The Maoris in New Zealand believe that the world was created by the union of the Sky God and the Earth Goddess. When they had children there was no room for them to stand up because their parents were locked in such a passionate embrace that they were trapped, sitting on their mother's stomach! So the eldest brother Tane, god of the trees, stood up and forced their bodies apart allowing life to flourish on Earth. It is the same idea - that life arises out of the union of God and Goddess.'
'Does that mean that monotheists, such as Christians, are wrong?' asks Brendan.
'Not necessarily,' replies Elidir. 'For instance, electricity is one thing, one force, but it operates by being polarized into two currents: positive and negative. If you look at it that way you can say that all life is One, therefore there is only one deity who is everything. But this one deity manifests as two complementary or polarized forces, which we can call God and Goddess.'
'But why the erection on the statue? Why the stress on sexuality - surely that's just one level of life - the purely biological. Surely this can't be a spiritual image?' asks Brendan again.
'Have you not seen the images of the Egyptian gods before they were defaced by the prudish French and British who occupied Egypt?' replies Elidir. 'Some escaped their vandalism, and we see images of the god depicted in exactly the same way. And both Druids and Wiccans, like the ancient Egyptians and like the followers of Taoism, Tantra and Hinduism, see sexuality as sacred, not as dirty or evil. People who think the way we make love and the way babies are made is disgusting are simply uneducated. The way love manifests and the way life comes into being is beautiful and sacred - that is why those statues are there.'
Elidir pauses for a while, before continuing: 'Both Witches and Druids believe in reincarnation - that we enter into and out of our lives on Earth many times. And what is the force that drives this educative process? It is sex of course. We only die because we were born. And we were only born because our parents made love. By giving birth to us, our parents ensure that we will die. The act of male and female union is the cause of both birth and death. It drives the process of reincarnation, the Wheel of Life, round and round. And there, at the centre of this wheel of Life, is the God and Goddess, Eternal Mother and Father, united in love, giving birth to Creation.'
'Many of the old Bardic tales speak of the union of God and Goddess, and one of them the Tale of Taliesin - lies at the heart of the Druid tradition. It is a story about such a union, and of how it gives birth to creativity in the form of the finest bard in the land – Taliesin.
'These stories are precious and sacred, and you can use them to unite the God and Goddess within your own heart - to give birth to the Magician Within, your Creative Self, your own Taliesin.'
In the first chapter we learnt about blessing, and being blessed, and Elidir concluded by saying, 'In the end, maybe there is no difference in essence between giving and compassion, love and blessing.'
In this chapter, we have travelled to the heart of these qualities to observe their source in the relationship between two aspects of Deity, between God and Goddess.
These two aspects of the Divine exist within each one of us, and part of the work of becoming a magician, and following a path such as Druidcraft, involves becoming conscious of the God and Goddess Within, and of experiencing their union within our souls. In alchemy this is a process known as the Alchemical Wedding, or the Coniunctio.
In Wicca, the union of God and Goddess is enacted by the High Priest and High Priestess during what is known as the Great Rite. The following ceremony works with the concept behind this rite,
but does not relate it to the external union of High Priest and High Priestess, but to the alchemical union of God and Goddess within the individual soul. By doing this, we immediately avoid any issues of gender or sexual orientation, whether one has attained the position of High Priest or High Priestess, or whether one even has a partner with whom to enact such a rite. All such concerns become immaterial as we focus on the deeper significance of God and Goddess and their union. This is in the true spirit of the Wiccan Charge of the Goddess which says: 'If that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.'
The ceremony is adapted from the Bealteinne Solo Ceremony of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. The festival of Bealteinne on l May in the Northern Hemisphere and 31 October in the Southern Hemisphere is traditionally the time when the union of God and Goddess is celebrated in the pagan round of eight seasonal festivities, but the following rite can be enacted at any time.
THE RITE OF UNION
Take a fairly large candle and fix it within the centre of a bowl. Fill the bowl with water - during the ceremony you will light the candle. Have two candles in normal candlesticks set back a metre from this bowl. These two should be about a metre apart, so that you have formed an equilateral triangle, with a candle at each point. Start your ceremony about a metre from the two normal candles, so that the bowl is about two metres ahead of you. Use flowers and incense to enhance your sacred space if you wish.
If you are familiar with casting circles and invoking the four directions, then you might like to do so. Otherwise, simply begin with a prayer such as:
Oh, Goddess of the Flame and Well, God of the Wind
and Sea, of Star and Stone, God and Goddess of all life, I
ask for your blessings on this my ceremony. l ask for your
blessings on this seeker of the ways of magic and of
Druidcraft. May I be blessed by the power of the earth
beneath me, the sea around me, and the sky above me!
Or you may prefer:
O Goddess Brighid, Keeper of the Sacred Flame, Guardian
of the Holy Well, Mother of Song and of Poetry, of the
Wise and the Gifted, l ask for your blessings on this my
ceremony. l ask for your blessings on this seeker of the
ways of magic and of Druidcraft. May I be blessed by the
power the earth beneath me, the sea around me, and
the sky above me!
Sit and meditate for a while on how you came into being. If it feels right, imagine your mother and father behind you, and behind them their mothers and fathers, and so on, so that you form the apex of a great triangle of beings stretching back through generations. Sense how life has travelled through all these beings to come to you. Sense the interplay between Masculine and Feminine, sperm and egg, God and Goddess that has occurred across the millennia. Where did it originate? When did it begin? Allow these unanswerable questions to echo through your being. Then open yourself to the Goddess, the Divine Feminine, to all that the term Woman or Mother means to you and, intuitively, move towards one or other of the candles. Say out loud:
I turn towards the Moon,
l open to the Goddess within me.
Light the candle and, as you do so, imagine that you are activating the feminine aspect of your own being. Make a conscious choice to open to this side of your nature, and allow whatever sensations, emotions, images and thoughts to arise without question or judgement.
Give yourself plenty of time, and then, when you're ready, move to the candle across from it and say:
l turn towards the Sun,
I open to the God within me.
Light the candle and, as you do so, imagine that you are activating the masculine aspect of your own being. Make a conscious choice to open to this side of your nature, and allow whatever sensations, emotions, images and thoughts to arise without question or judgement.
Give yourself plenty of time, and then, when you're ready, sit, stand or kneel exactly between the two lit candles and feel the two energies flowing into you, stimulating and awakening their corresponding qualities within your body, your mind and your heart.
You might sense male and female figures to either side of you, or you may become aware of an animal presence on either side of you. You might visualize the two energies as flows of different colours entering you. Do not try to force anything, simply open to the flow of the two energies.
Then, when you feel both energies meeting and merging within your being, slowly cup the hand on the side you have associated with the Feminine, so that it forms a bowl shape, and make a pointing gesture with the fingers of your other hand (one or two fingers extended, the rest folded away). Hold these two positions for as long as you wish, feeling them within your being. Sacred gestures of the hands, such as this, in ritual or meditation are known as mudras in the East. Then, slowly and deliberately, lower your pointed finger(s) down into your cupped hand and say:
I unite the powers of the Sun and Moon within me. With
my wand I father the Child, with my chalice I mother it.
Within me lives the alchemy of this union of opposites.
Let the magical child of my creative nature blossom and
thrive in the inner and the outer worlds.
Keep your hands in this position for as long as you wish to allow yourself to be fully present to this moment of union. Then separate them and move beyond the two candles and approach the bowl. Light the candle in the bowl, saying:
The union is complete. May God and Goddess be forever
united within my soul. May love and blessings, creativity
and joy flow from my heart, and my hands, my body and
my whole being. All is One. All is One. All is One.
Meditate or sit in silence for as long as you wish, then finish the ceremony by extinguishing all three candles, saying:
As the radiance of this ceremony fades, let it remain as a
light in my heart. May my memory hold what the eye
and ear have gained.
Then give thanks for the ceremony, saying in these or your own words:
O God and Goddess l give thanks for your blessings and
inspiration. This ceremony is ended in the Apparent
World. May its inspiration continue within my being.
If you began your ceremony with circle casting, now it is time to uncast the circle.
The fact that the home of the Irish god of Love, Aengus Og, was the megalithic temple of New Grange, is deeply significant. Within New Grange, each year at the Winter Solstice, the Great Rite is performed – a stream of sunlight penetrates to the heart of the temple, through a specially constructed shaft, oriented exactly to the midwinter sunrise. Love, sexuality, creation, birth and the indissoluble relationship between Heaven and Earth, is portrayed in a way that succeeds in uniting the most tangible of elements, stone, with one of the most intangible, light.
Those early ancestors who built the stone monuments that still grace Ireland and the British Isles, understood that the sexual process was sacred and fundamental to all life. New Grange, Brugh na Boinne, was clearly built as a symbolic representation of the Goddess, who was fertilized each year by the God at the Winter Solstice. This imagery is repeated at Stonehenge at the time of the Summer Solstice, the first rays penetrating not an enclosed chamber, but a horseshoe, or cauldron, of trilithons. The sexual symbolism of ancient megalithic culture includes the many standing stones that are clearly phallic, and the many barrows that are symbolic of the Goddess' womb.
A Druid altar from the times of the Roman occupation has been discovered in Cumbria, near Hadrian's Wall by the border of England and Scotland, which consists of an upright phallus carved out of a single block of stone. On its side is carved the image of a snake biting an egg. This is exactly the same image that is found depicted by the Native American serpen
t mounds of North America, the best example of which is in Ohio.
The image of the snake with an egg in its mouth suggests that the ancients knew of the details of conception - with the snake being the sperm and the egg the ovum. Somehow, perhaps intuitively, perhaps through seership, it seems that the Druids and the Native American tribes who constructed the snake mounds, were aware of the mechanics of fertilization. This idea is further supported by ancient rock carvings found in Scotland, that look exactly like views through a microscope of sperm penetrating ova.
Druidcraft Page 5