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Meditations for Hag Sacred
Sites on the Beara Peninsula
by Noragh Jones (author of
Power
of Raven, Wisdom of Serpent)
The rugged mountain landscape of the Beara Peninsula is washed by the Atlantic and retains its own powerful atmosphere of wild beauty and strength. This is the sacred space of the Cailleach, the Celtic Hag goddess who is shaper of the landscape, divine ancestress, bringer of Autumn fruitfulness. In Christian tradition the Cailleach becomes the Nun of Beare, turning to Jesus and Mary for strength to face old age and death. In the famous ninth century poem 'The Hag of Beare' she reluctantly finds consolation in religion, while mourning her life's lost riches:
Amen - Poor me!
Every acorn has to drop.
After the feasting and the bright lights -
To be in the gloom of a prayer-house!
The flood wave
And the second ebbtide -
Have all reached me,
I cannot help but know them well.
There is scarce any place today
That is the same for me;
What was on flood
Is all on ebb.
While the Cailleach as
Christian nun turned to the consolations of
Christ in her old age (though wavering between
salvation and the
world), in folklore she remained the
cosmic mother, the spirit of the wilderness, the
bringer of wisdom born of longevity (she was a
girl when Adam and Eve were created, and lived
through many lives). In Connaught folklore they
say:
There is no place or height you may get to in
Ireland where you will not hear talk of the
Cailleach Bheara. It is an old proverb that
there are three long ages: 'the age of the yew,
the age of the eagle, and the age of the
Cailleach Bheara'; and as to the Cailleach's
ways, they say thus:
She never brought mud from this puddle to the other puddle.
She never ate food but when she became hungry.
She never went to sleep till she grew sleepy.
She never threw out the dirty water till she brought in clean
water.
Hag
Pilgrimage Meditation I
Exploring the inner and outer wilderness
Explore the rough remote
country that forms the westerly end of the Beara
Peninsula. You can walk parts of the 'Beara Way'
(a waymarked route with a guidebook available
locally) passing holy wells and old copper
mines, or you can drive to the end of the road,
and take the cable car over to Dursey Island.
The Hag is said to have formed this island and
the three that lie offshore (the Cow, the Bull
and the Calf). Here landed the first invaders
of Ireland around 2000 BC, the Milesians,
whose bard sang the land into existence to make
it their own place:
I seek the land of Ireland,
Coursed be the fruitful sea,
Fruitful the ranked highland,
Ranked the showery wood,
Showery the river of cataracts,
Of cataracts the lake of pools,
Of pools the hill of a well,
Of a well of a people of assemblies,
Of assemblies of the King of Temair;
Peoples of the Sons of Míl,
Of Míl of ships, of barks;
The high ship Eriu,
Eriu, lofty, very green,
An incantation very cunning,
The great cunning of the wives of Bres,
Of Bres, of the wives of Buaigne,
The mighty lady Eriu,
Erimón harried her,
Ir, Eber sought for her -
I seek the land of Ireland.
Trans.
R.A.S. Macalister
Here at the end of the Beara
Peninsula there is still a sense of the world
made new. It is a place to renew our connections
with the natural world. It is a place to
meditate on inner
as well as outer landscapes, to get in
touch with our wilderness areas and expand our
inner landscape to make space for bigger
consciousness. Here we can sing our inner
landscape to life as the Milesian bard sang the
land into existence for the Milesians
when they landed four thousand years ago.
* Sit in a relaxing position
and still yourself by counting your
breaths
in and out. Take in the outer wild landscape
around you
- the rough hills, the Atlantic swell
below, the ever changing
skies
above, the huge emptiness that is both restoring
and frightening...
the narrow road threading its way through the
wild
landscape. Now let pictures of your own inner
wild landscape
come up, without deliberately thinking and
controlling
the images that come and go on this inner
journey to
explore your own wilderness areas.
* As you picture where you are on your midlife or late life journey, what is the state of your life landscape? Look at what is going on in your life now. Look at the people in your life landscape. What feels good and satisfying, and what makes you anxious and fearful as you look around the place where you are in your life? Do you face an easy slope or a steep climb ahead? Are you travelling rough ground or getting stuck in a bog where you can make no progress, find no inspiration? What makes you feel secure and what makes you feel vulnerable in this inner landscape of yours? What negative energies and what positive energies are you drawing from your current inner landscape? Now imagine changes you could make in your midlife/latelife landscape... Drawing on your wilder buried energies how would you reshape your inner landscape? Would the hills be higher and more challenging - or lower and more benign to give you a well- deserved rest? How would you expand your horizons to keep in sight the wider vision beyond the daily routines? What resources do you need from your inner landscape? What support and inspiration are you finding there? What are you missing?
* Let pictures of the road
you are travelling come up in your
mind's
eye ...How far have you chosen to be on it and
how far has
it just 'happened' to you? As
you travel your inner road see whether it is
overcast or sunny, empty or crowded, winding or
straight, with or without branching
ways, signposted or not... Is there anyone with
you or
are you on your own? Who are you meeting who is
a good companion
or support, and who is a burden or a problem to
you? How
are you being a good companion and support to
others? And whose
burden are you? Do
you sometimes feel isolated and lonely on your
inner journey?
Or do you enjoy the freedoms of being on your
own - able to explore new landscapes, choose
company and support as you travel where
you will?
* Now re-imagine your
midlife/latelife path. With the help of
your
inner Hag energy what changes of direction do
you need to make? What company and support to
give and take along the road?
What
change of pace?
Quietly attend to whatever pictures come
up...
* What baggage are you
carrying with you on your midlife/latelife journey?
Is it weighing you down, or are you suffering an unbearable
lightness after unloading earlier roles from
your life
(career, parenting, relationships) and not
knowing what new loads (if any) to take up?
Now
visualize the Cailleach, the Hag, striding over
the world, dropping rocks from her apron to make
mountains, creating new
islands
in the western ocean, or taking a break from her
cosmic creation by sliding on her backside down
a mountain to the
sea...
Imagine what new baggage you need to create new
places in
your life landscape... and what old baggage you
need to throw
away...
* Picture your inner
wilderness landscape. Let images come up of
the
personal fears, the challenges, the stimulus
that come from venturing into the wildness,
exploring your own wilderness energies. What is
it that absorbs you so totally that you lose
yourself in it, are inspired - however
briefly? What inner
quests
are waiting to be pursued, that you have so far
had no time or energy or willpower to follow?
Visualize the Cailleach at home in the
wilderness, bringing
into
creation this sacred land of rock and ocean and
wide skies. Visualize yourself, from midlife
onwards, exploring your own
wilderness, finding new wells of energy,
bringing into creation your unused potential.
Let pictures come up in your mind's eye of what
you have it in you to be and to do,
your quests, your hopes and fears.
* As you end your meditation,
remember that none of us can be
our whole selves without walking the
wilderness inside us.
Walking the wilderness in the second half
of life means going beyond the roles we use to
give us outer identity. It means finding out who
we are when we stop measuring ourselves by the
standards of youth. It is about getting in touch
with our neglected inner selves, the parts of us
we need to express to
be whole. It is about moving on, and seeing to the greening of the
wilderness within.
Hag
Pilgrimage Meditation 2
Exploring
your personal harvest time
Make a personal pilgrimage to where the Cailleach/the Hag now stands in the form of a great lump of metamorphic rock looking out over the Atlantic ocean from her high stance. (The Hag Rock is signposted on the coast road a mile or two north of the village of Eyeries, overlooking Coulagh Bay) They say this natural rock monument embodies woman both old and young depending on what angle you regard her from. Different tales are told to explain her turning to stone. The Hag stands with her back to the ruins of St Catherine's Church, and one story is that St Catherine pursued the pagan Hag to the cliff edge and turned her to stone for not respecting the new Christian faith. A medieval Christian tale puts women (even former divinities) firmly in their place by explaining that the Hag was turned to stone waiting in vain for her husband Manannan MacLir, the god of the sea, who went off and never come back. In local lore, however, they say she turned herself to stone 'so that there would always be a Hag in Bearra' - the Hag being a necessary blessing on place and people, for she is the life energy that brings the harvest to fruition before autumn gales or hostile human forces come to rot or destroy the grain.
There are many versions in
Irish folklore of the Cailleach's contests with
male challengers who want to win the harvest
from her. She defeats a long line of them at the
reaping of the harvest, until one day the great
warrior Donnchadh Mor finally overcomes the Hag
by seducing her daughter whom he coaxes into
giving away the secret of her mother's
magical powers. So in the end the male warrior
destroys the Hag power, and the Cailleach
sickens and dies. But she lived on into the
early twentieth
century in country harvest rituals. The
last sheaf of the harvest was called 'the
Cailleach', and the reapers competed to cut it,
for whoever brought 'the Cailleach' into the
house would have health and prosperity during
the dark winter ahead.
* Settle yourself at the Hag
Rock overlooking Coulagh Bay, and still yourself
by counting your breaths in and out. Contemplate
the view from where you and the Hag are sitting
- the immediate
rise and fall of the rough land around
you, the scattering of
new
bungalows and tumbled ruins around the
semicircle of the bay below you, the distant
horizon to the west where you can see the blue
Kerry hills (if they are not blotted out in the
mist).
* Invite the Cailleach, the
bringer of the harvest, into your inner
landscape. With her help look quietly at your
own personal
harvest time... the things that are coming to
fruition in your life, the things that are
currently blighted and
unharvested...
What is
ripening for you - in mind, body and spirit - at
this stage in your life? How is this late
ripening different from earlier harvests - when
you reaped other rewards perhaps in your
career, relationships, public status,
parenting...? Let
pictures come and go of where you are in your
personal harvest
- the things you are bringing to fruition at
this time in your life, the things that fail for
lack of life energy
or...?
* Let pictures come and go of
the kinds of fruitfulness you aspire to now in
midlife or later life - new ways of
connecting,
new horizons to explore, integrating old and new creativities...
* As you sit quietly by the
Hag Rock, enter into the spirit of
the
Cailleach, the Harvest Bringer, and let visions
of your personal harvest time come and go. Count
your breaths in and out, and look at whatever
comes up in your mind's eye. See what you have
it in you at this stage of your life to do and
to be...with
the help of your inner Hag energy.
Hag
Pilgrimage Meditation 3
Keepers of the Flame of
Life
A few hundred yards along the
coast road past the Hag Rock stand the ruins of
an ancient church, Kilcatherine, which was built
on the site of an early Celtic Christian
nunnery. With the coming of Christianity the
pagan goddesses who presided over land and
people were replaced by female saints and holy
women, whose powers of healing and
miracleworking often bear strange resemblance to
the powers of pagan divinities. In the overgrown
graveyard of St Catherine's is one of the very
earliest Celtic Christian crosses. The ruins of
Kilcatherine are a place to remember the
Christian holy women who kept the flame of life
and the flame of women's spirituality burning
warmly as the pagan divinities gave way to
Christian saints. St Catherine, like
St Brighid, was a great organizer who set
up a linked chain of women's monastic houses
here in the west. These were vital centres of
practical support and healing for the poor and
the sick and the needy.
The great female saints in their different ways took over the role of the Cailleach as Great Mother to her people. The Hag as 'Sovereignty Goddess' ensured prosperity and justice for her land and people by authorizing the ruler to be her consort for as long as the people prospered. When dearth or injustice prevailed the ruler was deposed and the goddess took a new consort. So in pagan and Celtic Christian times there were female custodians of the public good, who worked for peace and justice in their communities. This is a fruitful meditation theme as we stand among the ruins of Kilcatherine and recall the chain of holy women who once nurtured their communities on this very spot.
* Still yourself by counting
your breaths in and out. When you are quiet in
yourself let pictures come up of the chain of
help and
hospitality that women once provided from this
place - for the poor, the sick, the victims of
fighting and injustice...
* After a time turn to your
own ways of caring and helping. Look at your own
life - your ways of connecting private and
public, the personal and the political. Let your
public personas come to meet you. Attend to your
public faces, your ways of behaving in the face
of injustice and unfairness. Look quietly at the
social face of your inner hag. How does she
apply her values
in her everyday concerns - in community,
in spiritual networks, in public commitments?
How does she keep the flame of life burning
in her everyday activities? Does she pass the
Hag test of working for
peace and justice? Or would she be
deposed and replaced by the stern Sovereignty
Goddess for failing to make her
people prosper? (Let pictures come up out of
your daily concerns, rather than conduct an
argument with yourself - though you may want to
do that too as you come out of your meditation).
The Changing Faces of the Divine Hag
From
Kilcatherine make your way to the little village
of Eyeries (a few miles south along the coast
road), where there is a modern mural in honour
of the Hag painted on one of the gable ends.
There are other signs in the Beara Peninsula
that the Hag is enjoying a new lease of life.
The local LETS scheme counts its transactions in
'Hags'. The Hag Rock is newly accummulating
offerings of silver coins in her ancient
fissures. She is becoming a place of pilgrimage.
Local tales about the Hag have survived to be
told to the Allihies Folklore Group when they
were writing their booklet An Cailleach Bhearra:
the Hag of Beara (Allihies Folklore Group,
1991), and they point out how relevant she is to
our current ecology crises:
An
Cailleach has come to represent in modern times
a Great Mother figure with a particular strong
aspect of Guardian Mother as in the
wilderness-personifying, protecting, and
threatening side of her nature...At this time we
face world wide
crises of vast proportions. Humanity is faced
with the challenge of learning new relationships
with which to create harmony
and peace between ourselves and the rest of the planet...
Perhaps we can gain some insight from the
ancient wisdoms
of our forbears, particularly their appreciation
of the fundamental
unity and interdependence of all, and their
sense of
balance between male and female energies. If the
principle of such a powerful guardian as An
Cailleach were more tangible with
us today, could she inspire and help us to
defend the great natural beauty of our Mother
Earth which we now so dangerously threaten?
Hag Pilgrimage Meditation 4
Being Guardians of the
Earth
* Still yourself by quietly
counting your breaths, in and out, in and out...
Look around you at this serene landscape on the
unspoiled Beara Peninsula. It is not an empty
land, for there are old stone cottages and new
white bungalows scattered over the hills and
hollows along the edge of the ocean. People live
here and earn a living, and many more people
come on holiday for the peace and beauty you can
still find here.
* Picture your home place,
wherever it is... Is it urban or rural,
noisy or peaceful with good or bad
neighbours? Look at it’s good side as
a place to dwell ....and the bad side.
Look at
it first from your personal point of view...what
do you
value in the place where you live? What
detracts from the place
where you live? Picture what would make a
difference. Picture what YOU might do
to make a difference...
* Now widen your vision bit
by bit to picture what is happening in your region and your country, your continent, your planet... What is happening to our only earth? In what state are we handing our earth over
to our children and grandchildren?
* Picture the personal changes in life style you have made, could make, to help our polluted earth... Then widen bit by bit your vision to take in the global changes that are needed. Picture where to put pressure on public bodies... Picture how to influence policies... Picture yourself standing up to be counted as one who cares for the earth... who is a guardian of the land...
* THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
Finish your meditation by focussing on the modern meanings of being a Guardian of the Earth.
Picture what it means to you
in your home place and wherever you go, this
THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING
LOCALLY...
* Come back to the bit of unspoilt earth where the Hag Rock is. Spend a minute or two just looking at her. There she stands, our symbol of endurance. The days, the months, the years, the centuries pass. The Atlantic winds batter her, people come and go in the landscape around her, old houses fall and new houses rise.
But, 'Look', she says, 'I am still here'.
© Noragh Jones 1997
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