Spirituality of My Ancient Ancestors
By: Kelly Dignan
Tags: Religion, Ancestry, Indigenous, Druidry, Spirituality

On my quest to connect with the practices of my ancient ancestors, I discovered more information than I ever imagined existed. Indigenous Celtic spirituality, it turns out, is a thing.

There is evidence from 5,000 years ago that suggests people in Western Europe practiced a spirituality rooted in reverence for the earth and her creatures. Their religion was not expressed in sacred texts but through the experience of being attuned to the land and sky, the changing seasons, the power of the mountains and rivers, the vastness of the stars, the movements of the sun and moon. These early religions were instinctual and grounded in intuition. The people invoked a sense of awe and wonder at the power of life itself and of death. They were amazed by each type of animal, plant, tree, landscape.

For the Celts specifically, regions and tribes of people developed a spirituality based on their relationships with the land, and local sites became ritual places. Gods and goddesses were guardians of those places. Over time, groups began to interact with their neighbors, stories and deities were shared, some subsided and others persisted and spread. Practices included the use of music and chanting, the belief in animal spirits as guides in the Otherworld, honoring the four directions, sweat houses for healing, a reverence for all living things.

Like other indigenous streams of wisdom, Celtic spirituality was an oral tradition. Place was especially important. We know that in 3200 BCE, Newgrange was built in Ireland’s Boyne Valley. It is an enormous tomb with an entryway that leads into a chamber with three alcoves where bones were found. The passage and chamber are illuminated with light as the sun rises each year on the Winter Solstice. It is physical evidence of the ancestors’ understanding of the cycles of the year and the sun, along with their appreciation of the people who lived and died before them.

History shows that in about 2000 BCE there were Mystery Schools in Egypt, Greece, Rome and Albion (now called Britain). The last one influenced and taught my people, most certainly, as it was prevalent in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. It is likely that the teachings were called druidry.

At first glance, indigenous Celtic/Druid practices look much like Native American practices. There is speculation that the ancient ones met each other somehow, but scholars believe it is more likely that Nature was the common teacher, and her message was universal and clear.

From about 450 CE until the sixteenth century, indigenous Celtic spirituality seemingly went underground. Then in the sixteenth century, scholars in Europe ‘rediscovered’ the Druids, and began to reclaim their Celtic heritage.

I learned much of this using Wikipedia (a useful resource, admittedly), and then a friend told me about www.druidry.com. I compared it to other modern schools of Druidry, talked to several folks who were members, and decided to give their program a try. Every month I get a packet of lessons — myths, meditations, prayers, rituals, music. I’m part of a local “grove” which is the term for group. (I can’t believe that my maiden name is Groves.) I feel like part of myself has been reclaimed. It’s as if I’ve come home.

There are many ways to explore your own indigenous spiritual roots. Google searches and Wikipedia are places to start. For example, “What was the religion of people in Germany before Christianity?” “What was the first religion in Russia?” And so on.

Or maybe when you go to your current house of worship, you can remember that people have been gathering to invoke spiritual power for more than 5,000 years, and you can imagine your own ancestors doing so.

One of my Unitarian Universalist colleagues wrote a “call to worship” that describes just that. I close with it.

For Five Thousand Years, Or More

By Matthew Johnson

For five thousand years, or more,

more than fifteen thousand generations,

human beings have been invoking spiritual power.

My predecessors, and yours,

have gathered together

to make sense of their lives

and their place in the cosmos.

And they have spoken aloud,

and invited what they conceived as sacred and powerful to be with them.

They called upon the spirits of air and earth, fire and water.

They called the bear and dear.

They asked for the raven to protect them.

They pleaded for the heroes of old to slay the monsters of their fears.

They sang songs they learned from their grandparents, and moved in the appointed ways, or in ways that were new, but felt like the right thing to do.

And they imputed power to these spirits, and to the memories of those heroes.

They called them gods.

And they were invoked.

Vishnu and Kali,

Elohim, Odin, and a hundred million others.

Every group of people,

everywhere:

they gathered to make sense of their lives and to make sense of their place in the cosmos, and they called these spirits to be present to them.

And so do we.

So do we — we gather this morning

to make sense of ourselves and this universe in which we live, as best we are able.

And we call ourselves to worship together, and we invoke the power and wonder of life itself, that to which all those spirits of animals, and memories of heroes pointed the way.

We invoke that power,

which is, we know, always around, always with us, but which we sometimes forget about.

We forget that we are part of the whole of creation.

We forget that we are stardust.

We forget that we are capable of miracles, first among them, that we can love.

We forget these things,

so we invoke the power of existence

so that we can remember.

So we can lift our eyes and open our ears to the true and beautiful.

For five thousand years, or more,

we have done this.

In many tongues, in many ways,

we have done this.

And so we continue that ancient tradition, in our way and in our time, and so let us now worship together.

Sources:

Wikipedia

The Celtic Shaman by John Matthews

The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids — Introduction www.druidry.org