Irish Coastline, Image: A. J. Abel 9/2019
I expected the land to be filled with trees, and the old Jungian professor I spoke with said something like: ey, ye remember there were trees here long ago? Indeed. He confirmed the forests were cut and the land later filled with marshy bogs. Ireland has long been in my heart, though my family was Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Viking Norwegian, my father recently found an ancestor baptized in a catholic church in Ireland by the name of Jessie Grace, and that sort of landed like a Somewhere in Time, confirmation: I was there.
Dark green stone native to Galway, rimmed the sinks and tubs. I wore it as jewelry. I can’t remember the name of the stone right now. It looked like jade. My travels were before cell phones and digital pictures. After the divorce I don’t know where all those photographs went. But I remember the way the stone made me feel. How it grounded me into the vibrant landscape where roads weren’t built in straight lines, but rounded the fairy forts as not to offend “the other folk”.
I felt that strange sense of home that has always been evasive as a military child, that place of belonging somewhere where I had never been before, among people with twinkles in their eyes, secrets and poetry, places for songs and passion for dancing. The land made my heart open and see beyond the western “scientific mind” of straight lines and laughable things such as invisible worlds and mysterious creatures beyond the veil.
We traveled one day to an ancient sacred Druid site and found caution tape surrounding land that had been clawed by a man who went mad the previous night and began digging up the earth in a frenzy with his bare hands before being taken away. The crowd of us tourists gaped at what was possible for a mad man to do with his hands as it appeared like something only a large machine could dent at a construction site. The guide seemed to downplay the scene with an offhanded, “that happens sometimes around here.” Not too long after that a woman began telling a terrible story of a friend who standing on a great cliff as such as this one we were upon, over looking the blue Atlantic Ocean, watching waves crash against the rock. And the woman relayed how a great wind rose up and took her friend’s hat away, and her friend just loved the hat and so reached for it and fell off the cliff to her death. And just at that moment a great wind rushed up and blew this woman’s hat off and we all screamed when the woman reached for her hat at the edge of the cliff and we snapped her out of the spell and pulled her back down to the earth. Shaken the woman remarked: all I could think of was how much I didn’t want to lose my hat! We all marveled at the great magic afoot and how easily one could manifest and amplify energy at such a spot as this, and we all watched our words and stories much closer.
Ireland revealed to me the magic of the earth and stone and words. When a man offered me his hand to dance, it revealed to me my own forgetfulness of dancing, and my own fear of moving my body among strangers, my own freeze response to attracting unwanted attention. The man and I shared a wide eyed exchange and for a moment he tried to force me to the floor by tugging my arm a little harder, and I remained still as stone. This moment initiated me into healing trauma through body movement, and now I teach yoga.
Ireland is home to The Hill of Tara, a place where Kings were married to the land through the Priestesses of Gaia. A place of deep suffering and great resilience. A place where the snakes and Druids were driven out, or simply hidden in deeper mysteries beyond the veil as colonial Catholicism clashed with ancient mother earth religion.
The fairies and the fey are known by the locals, and the stories are filled with layers of mysteries. Doctors and scholars would talk of the other folk and share personal stories of seeing leprechauns and other such creatures right along side their rigorous academic work without batting an eye. I couldn’t imagine talking that way when I was in university or even seminary in the US. Respect of the land was palpable. It made me wistful for more conscious ways in the US. We once came upon the skeleton remains of a human layers deep in an earthy hill and the guide was quick to remind us to bless the dead and not disturb them. As he spoke and we ate lunch I couldn’t get over that there were just bones sticking out of the earth behind him. My western mind wasn’t used to eating with death, but then again monks and nuns were known to carry the bones of the wise with them and set them at their own tables to join with their wisdom.
I recall a cozy bar overlooking rolling green hills and the sea. The building was made of stones and dark wood, and with a glass of the best tasting Guinness in hand I could almost hear the land speak. I found a piano tucked in the corner, and after my drink, I found the courage to play it. When I finished my song I found suddenly a room full of warm support and applause. I often dream of that bar, and some small stone house I would find near it. Some place where I could become so quiet as to simply listen to the land and write and sing what I hear. Some days I feel so full of untold stories and unsung songs paralleled with a deep wondering if these are to be hidden yet, or finally spoken again. Some things only the stones know and only the trees see.
It comforts me to know, that all the earth is connected, like a certain place in all our hearts, in mysterious pathways and veils where illusions can suddenly vanish and old friends and other worldly ones appear. You never know when or where the portals may open to you, so you keep listening and looking, and keeping the magic alive in you so as to be ready.
May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.