Celtic Presence
There is a lot of disconnect in my family. From continental and provincial immigration, to emotional distance and rejection, my family has been cut off from each other and our ancestral roots for generations.
I didn't realize how lacking in roots I was until they began to grow.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
My dad used to say that we were WASPS. He'd say it as a joke, disparagingly, but also mean it and be a bit proud.
It was an identity he accepted.
He was less than 20% correct... and I don't think it's even that much. Whatever "Anglo-Saxon" we have comes from the far west of England and is nestled right up against Wales.
WASP is a moniker of colonial white supremacy and isn't of any value unless you're trying to fit in with the oppressor class.
It's shocking now to see my family's self-hatred and loathing in such clear and transparent terms.
My ancestors are all Celtic, almost exclusively.
My great-gramma Agnes, was born and raised to adulthood in Ireland but never considered herself just Irish. She was British Irish and aligned herself with what she perceived as their apparent “superiority”. Anything Irish was considered trash and wild and worthless. She was British and she was respectable.
My family has squandered generations rejecting and hating the most beautiful and vibrant parts of ourselves.
The largest population of Irish culture outside of Ireland exists in Newfoundland. Culturally, they are our people. We are cultural cousins and all through my life I watched my Dad tell scornful and derisive "Newfie" jokes.
He had no idea that he was telling on himself - that he was carrying on with our inherited, ancestral self-hatred and loathing.
Feeling and Presence
Celtic reconnection has given me the greatest sense of belonging, in the physical world, in this body. All the ways that I have felt alienated from modern Western culture have been healed in the connection to my Celtic roots.
Above all else, Celtic culture is spiritual presence, and the feeling of that presence in the physical world. Every time I turn around, Celtic wisdom is mirroring the parts of myself that I have most hidden because modern Western society does not value connection to feeling, and the presence of spirit on earth.
Fite Fuaite
Interwoven, intermingled, inseparable.
Fite Fuaite (FEE-tza FWOO-tza)
Fite Fuaite means interwoven.
Fite is woven and fuaite is sewn, and it means the intermingled existence of the spirit and the physical. Celts believe that the dead are right here, that spirit doesn't go 'elsewhere' - there is only here and the spiritual and physical worlds are intricately bound up together and there is no separation between them. We live with Spirit, Fite Fuaite.
Celts live with the Spirit World every day, in all ways, in every aspect of life.
This is belonging.
My culture is providing me a home for my spirit in this body for the first time. It's not just me thinking and believing these things in private - this is an ancient cultural identity that belongs to me, and I belong to Them. I am at home on the earth for the first time as a Celtic ancestor.
My ancestors are thrilled that I am speaking words of Irish and Gaelic. No one needs me to be fluent. I am finding words and phrases of meaning and feeling and speaking from my heart.
This is truth to my Celtic ancestors.
Tri-Chasag, Triskelion, Brú na Bóinne
The Circle and the Spiral
The circle and spiral are sacred to Celts.
It is a symbol of living. It is a symbol of the universe, creation and being alive on all levels. Life is a circle, a repeating spiral of ebb and flow through seasons and stages and epochs. Nothing is new under the sun, but nothing ever comes around in exactly the same way. Spring is always spring but unlike any spring that has come before or will come again.
Celts hold the beauty of cycle and surprise together at once. The reassuring spiral of seasons and cycles and ages on one hand balanced with the excitement of presence here and now and the humility to expect miracles every day.
The supposed "wild ignorance" of the Celts is breathtaking to me.
The exact ways of being that my recent ancestors rejected and scorned gives me a sense of belonging and love for self. It is the quiet wisdom of being in loving relationship with both the Earth and Spirit at once. It is a way of being that is allowing me the greatest sense of self love that I have ever had in my life.
It is the recognition that all of who I am is exactly as it should be, is valuable, and worthy and wanted by the world.
Connect to Roots
Anthropologists and archaeologists suggest that Celts share an ancient common ancestor with India. There are (PIE) roots that connect our cultures through worship and symbols. Danu and Kali (Cailleach) and the worship of divinity through water and earth. The spirals / cauldrons in Celtic culture have a cousin in the chakras and both the Celts and Hindus expect to encounter the presence of divinity right here, right now.
I love this part of Celtic cultural belief and identity - that divinity isn’t ‘somewhere else’. It’s all right here and we live with the understanding that we come face to face with the godhead every day.
I encourage everyone to reconnect to their roots. For European descendants, it will begin the dismantling of white supremacy culture by disconnecting us from the supposed superiority of 'whiteness'.
White supremacy culture will always see light skin as "white" and there's nothing we can do to change the application of that identity onto us from the outside. However, we can do much for equity by identifying ourselves based on actual life-giving ancestral roots as opposed to created systems of oppression.
Light-skinned European descendants will always have to be aware of how white supremacy culture is impacting our perception and participation in the world, and work to dismantle that perspective. It helps enormously to be able to reconnect perspective into a cultural identity that is much deeper and more nourishing than whiteness.
What are your cultural roots? What aspects sing to you through ancient pathways? What resonates in the clay of your New World body to the clay of your ancestors from your ancestral lands?
Ancestor Chats
Our ancestors are not gone. They are here with us, right now, vibrant and in a lot of cases, more cognizant of what was happening in their life than when they were here.
I sit with my ancestors every week and we chat. Ancestor chats.
Sometimes they want to share particular thoughts, sometimes I have specific questions. I don't know who will come and what we'll talk about, but every week there is something interesting happening.
If you'd like to know more about connecting with ancestors - join the The Cailleach Ken Library.
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In The Cailleach Library you can find Tabhartas Bòid; a Celtic Teaching about Votive Offerings, given by Muireann - our Iron Age Celtic Ancestor.
Join the free Library if you’d like to learn more about the meaning, history and practice of Tabhartas Bòid in pre-Christian Celtic culture.