Today's Oracle 24th April 2021

Power of Place (Calling in the Spirit of Place)

The landscape, its hills, glens, plains, shorelines, nooks, and crannies, are the features of the body of the mother goddess, the earth. Place-names honour the unique qualities and lore of place. Similarly, honouring the power of place situates us in the passage of time.

Invoking the Qualities of Familiarity, Remembrance, and Continuity.

The Celts often name a place for its qualities and lore - a dell for providing shelter, a marshy corner for its soft and rushy bottom, a ring fort to signal an otherworldly ambiance, a meadow to mark the battles fought, or a holy well for its protectress. Affecting recollection, familiar places help us to situate ourselves in the passage of time and locale. Recalling such a place, Irish poet Cathal O Searcaigh concludes: "Contradictions are cancelled on the spot."

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you are yearning for a place you can call your own, perhaps a home, a village, a region or country, or a community. You seem to want somewhere to root, to settle, and invest yourself fully. Not anywhere will do. The place must be uniquely right for you. The power of the place compels you. Its atmosphere, physical features, people, vegetation, smells, and wildlife attract you. It may be where you are but your psyche has not yet fully engaged it. It may be a place deeply familiar and redolent of personal memories. Wherever this place is, you are more fully alive there, as though the outer landscape mirrors the inner landscape of who you are and who you are becoming. This remarkable correspondence brings vitality and a sense of contentment and well-being.

The landscape - its rocky slopes, the forks of a river, an elder tree, a spring at its source, a widening plain, or undulating hills - reveals the features of the body of the mother earth, the goddess herself. Her countenance is found in the physical appearance of each place. The power of each place is utterly unique, so that its physiognomy and stories, so familiar, are wedded to the memory of the men and women living there. In Ireland and other Celtic lands, power implicit in the stones and earth of a place is frequently distilled in place names, recollecting in a word or phrase the deeds and fortunes of memories past. Like tonic to the human spirit, the power of place - in all its nuances, the horrific and foreboding, the beautiful and innocent - links individuals and community to lore and locale.

In discussing a genre of Irish literature known as dindseanchas, the poet Seamus Heaney writes that its poems and tales "relate the meanings of place names and constitute a form of mythological etymology ... marrying] the geographical country with the country of the mind. Heaney continues:

"The landscape was sacramental, instinct with signs, implying a system of reality beyond the visible realities. Only thirty years ago, and thirty miles from Belfast, I experienced this kind of world vestigially and as a result may have retained some vestigial sense of place as it was experienced in the older dispensation. As I walked to school, I saw Lough Beg from Mulholland's Brae, and the spire of Church Island rose out of the trees. On Church Island Sunday in September, there was a Pilgrimage out to the island, because St. Patrick was supposed to have prayed there, and prayed with such intensity that he branded the shape of his knee into a stone in the old churchyard. The rainwater that collected in that stone, of course, had healing powers, and the thorn bush beside it was pennanted with the rags used by those who rubbed their warts and sores in that water... That legend, and the ringing ascetic triumph of rising in the frosts of winter to pray ... all combined to give Blemish a nimbus of its own.

The power of place is so intimate and "self-contained" that it is virtually hidden from those who inhabit the home, the locale, the village, or the city. Entering the place, the stranger "is immediately aware of the otherness and the intimate nature of the 'place.' One senses the odours unique to the place - its sounds and artifacts.... It is this quality of intimacy, based on uniqueness, that provides the possibility for placehood." By intertwining landscape and lore, the power of place connects the human psyche within the nexus of time and space.

Over the course of life, there are times to take pilgrimages to distant places and to garner their qualities to yourself. At other times, such as now, you are invited to situate your life in a particular place, to settle in and to mature amid the familiarity and memories built up over time. Surrounded by these intimacies as though encircled by the lacework of your life, your inner life and external surroundings blend together in support of each other.

Today's Oracle 23rd April 2021

Hag, the Initiator (Beginnings)

The hag initiates change and transformation, and signals the potential for significant change and transformation in relationships and the affairs of everyday life. Her often terrifying appearance is a test of your readiness for change.

Invoking Readiness for Change.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, the hag may be testing your readiness for change. Her presence signals the potential for significant shifts in business and professional life, relationships, and the affairs of everyday living. New beginnings are possible. While the hag's outward appearance may be ghastly, welcoming her signals your readiness for a shift in awareness and fortunes. Anything may happen if you embrace such an unlikely stranger across the threshold of your life.

In Irish myth, a ghastly hag symbolizes the sovereign goddess of Ireland in the quest for the rightful heir and king. Through her, he is joined to the land. When the hag mates with the rightful heir, she signals his sovereignty by becoming a lovely maiden. In Irish and Scottish folk tales, the hag gives birth to the mountains and valleys, hills and rocks, and the various creatures of the land. The hag tests and initiates beginnings and rightful change.

The powerful hag is one of the three aspects of the Triple-Mother Goddess, the sovereign goddess of the land. Typically old and yet ageless, her terrifying appearance tests the readiness of kings and heroes. In Irish, Welsh, and Scottish legends, she enchants her "chosen" heroes with magical powers and confounds and hounds any who spurn her advances. Her shape is spine-tinglingly horrid and yet radiant, as captured in a contemporary poem, originally composed in Gaelic, by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill:

"She stood naked in the dark, her palms cold like luminous fish on my shoulders:

her hips flashing fire beneath the two moons of her breasts.

I sank my head in her seaweed hair and bitter waves of sea bruised and battered me, our white horse waves rusted to rats: all became empurpled.

In the morning waking my head aching I saw sallow scales encrusted her and rotten teeth from the abyss snarled at me and hissed.

I took my awl and last and left the place fast!"

In approaching this goddess, the Irish kings were chosen. By legend, the reign of the Uí Néill, descendants of Niall, was initiated by the blessing of the goddess of sovereignty, the hag. Though the youngest of the five sons of the king, Niall became the king of Ireland from 379-405. As the story is told in an early fifth-century manuscript, Niall and his four brothers were out hunting in the forest and were overwhelmed by thirst. One by one, each brother comes upon a pool of water guarded by a hideous hag. She offers each a drink in exchange for a kiss and each one flees at her dreadful appearance, except for Niall. He kisses the crone and makes love to her. As they kiss, the hag becomes the loveliest of maidens, her face like the radiance of the sun - none other than the goddess of sovereignty herself.

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Folk tales in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland abound in stories about the hag, the "Mountain Mother," the "Great Old One," or the Cailleach in Gaelic. Striding across the land, she "lets fall from her skirts" the natural features and creatures of the land. In Ireland, many tales tell of benevolent hags, loathsome hags, hags saved by saints from peril, and hags who turn to hares and turn back into an old neighbour woman again when caught milking the cows!

Life presents many situations that are unsettling, even abhorrent. When troubles arise, they may represent the presence of the hag, artfully disguised. There is no way to prepare for her, except to watch for her presence. She has come to test your nerve and willingness for living in a new way. Welcoming her many manifestations signals a ready and awakened consciousness. Having crossed the threshold of danger, many things - anything - is possible.

Today's Oracle 22nd April 2021

Triple-Mother goddess (Magnificence)

The Triple-Mother Goddess, commonly manifesting as maiden, mother, and crone, signifies the magnificence of Mother Earth in giving life. Expressing herself in all aspects of life, she encompasses all ages, polarities, and. expressions. Her qualities are majesty, generativity, and an inner connection with the life-giving sovereignty of the earth.

Invoking the Qualities of Majesty and Generativity.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you are invited to bring authority, stability, and vitality into your personal life and affairs. Your expression and activities may need to realign with the abundance of the Triple-Mother Goddess, the life-giving and sustaining power of the earth. Her powers are sublime and primal, rooted in the earth.

The Triple-Mother Goddess signifies the magnificence of mother earth in the giving of life. She presides over giving birth, the fluorescence and fruitfulness of plants, generativity at all ages, and the splendour of earthy and womanly wisdom. Though the mature wisdom of the aged woman is especially revered, she encompasses all ages, polarities, and expressions. Her qualities are majesty, generativity, and an inner connection with the life-giving sovereignty of the earth.

According to mythic history, when the Celts arrived on the shores of Ireland, they encountered the three sovereign mother goddesses, Ériu, Banba, and Fódla, who shielded and protected the land from harm. Each required the invaders to promise that if successful in occupying the land, the land would forever bear her name.

"They had colloquy with Ériu in Uisnech. She said unto them: Warriors, said she, welcome to you. Long have soothsayers had [knowledge of] your coming. Yours shall be this island forever; and to the east of the world there shall not be a better island. No race shall there be, more numerous than yours. good is that, said Amorgen; good is the prophecy.... A gift to me, ye sons of Mil, and ye children of Breogan, said she, that my name shall be on this island."

The Triple-Mother Goddess gives life to the land and its people. She preserves them from misfortune, injury, and danger. In her fiercest aspect, she is a warrior goddess wreaking havoc and death on intruders. Her motherliness more typically presides in the birthing of new forms of life and the nourishing and germinating of the land's flowers and vegetation. In locations as distant as Scotland and Hungary, and especially prevalent along the Rhone, Mosel, and Rhine river valleys of central Europe, carvings and sculptures of the Triple-Mother Goddess are remarkably alike. Typically she carries children, fruit, wine goblets, cornucopias or trays loaded with the fruits of the harvest.

Often the Triple-Mother Goddess manifests as a maiden, mother, and crone. One or two of the goddess figures is youthful with smooth skin and rounded cheeks and another is aged with creased cheeks and a wrinkled neck. At other times, their ages are much alike but their faces different in temperament. In the Roman-occupied areas of Germany, the three mother goddesses were consistently portrayed as a central goddess who is young with long, flowing hair, carries fruit, and is surrounded on both sides by older goddesses with large, circular headdresses made of supple willow branches covered with linen. With obvious dignity and stature, she gives the impression of unquestioned authority and magnificence.

In some ways you may feel uprooted, disconnected from the spontaneous fruitfulness of the natural world. The generative powers of the Triple-Mother Goddess will help lend a sense of majesty, authority, and ease to your intentions and actions. In aligning yourself with her spontaneous outpouring of energy, you will begin to reconnect your own life force with her expressions in others around you. Since the Triple Goddess faces in all directions, Her qualities are especially abundant in the natural environment and in the creatures that inhabit the earth. Spending time outdoors in nature enjoying her manifestations will help you to recharge.

Today's Oracle 21st April 2021

Banishing of Snakes (Loss of Hope/Regenerative Power)

The break in connection with the powers governed by the Otherworld is symbolized in the banishing of snakes (attributed to St. Patrick) in Ireland. This oracle signifies a loss of a vital connection with the powers of the physical and natural world and invites reconnection.

Invoking Breakthrough and Reconnection with the Natural World.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you are probably experiencing a loss of energy, vitality, and generativity in the world. The Banishing of Snakes signifies a disconnection with the primal elements of the earth responsible for physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Disconnected in this way, your body tends to feel limp and lethargic, and your emotions are likely to be depressive.

The break in the connection with the powers of the Otherworld is symbolized in the banishing of the snakes, attributed to St. Patrick in Ireland. As snakes are a well-known symbol of the goddesses, especially mother goddesses such as Brigit, the popular belief in their banishment represents a break with the primal and regenerative authority of the earth and the Otherworld. The banishing of snakes signifies the loss of hope and regenerative power and invites reconnection.

Croagh Patrick in County Mayo is the traditional site associated with St. Patrick's banishing of the snakes from Ireland. The conical mountain, tipped with white quartz, stands majestically overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at Clew Bay. Also known as the Reek, the mountain commands attention and has been a site of religious activities since ancient times.

In a delightfully Irish manner, ancient and Christian traditions intertwine at Croagh Patrick. Some thirty thousand pilgrims still come annually to ascend the mountain, circuit the stations for prayer, or join the festivities on the first Sunday in August (or the last Sunday in July), the day traditionally associated with Lughnasa, the harvest festival in honour of the warrior god Lugh. By some reports, since the mountain is associated with fertility, even. into the mid-nineteenth century only women were allowed to ascend the steep slope to the summit. There the women, and especially those who were childless, slept in the "bed" of the goddess in hope of obtaining fertility.

Many legends associated with St. Patrick depict his struggle with a snake goddess, symbolizing Brigit, and commonly known as the devil's mother, the Caora or the Caorthanach. By tradition, the mountain goddess attacks Patrick as a great bird and later as a monstrous snake. He banishes her from the mountain, but she escapes to a lake at the side of the mountain, reappearing at Lough Derg, County Donegal, to attack Patrick once again.

Reestablishing a stable connection with the transformative powers of the Otherworld typically involves a lengthy and steady process of recovery. If severely depleted, your physical body and even your emotions may require a slow rhythm to heal and revitalize. You may also have to break strong personal habits that deplete your energy and health. Many factors are involved in this process, including attention to proper diet and exercise, adequate sleep and rest, time spent outdoors, and sustaining a nurturing social and emotional life. If you have a positive and appreciative attitude toward your natural environment, your recovery will be quicker and stronger. It may also be necessary to look at ways in which you may be dismissing your own physical and sexual needs or participating in addictive habits that undermine your physical and emotional vitality.

Today's Oracle 20th April 2021

Changeling (Exchange Between Worlds)

The Changeling represents the exchange between worlds. Some people are faeries or have otherworldly characteristics. Some of them bring exceptional talents and skills. Received and used wisely, an exchange between the worlds brings otherworldly knowing.

Invoking Otherworldly Knowing and Talent.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, opportunities to encounter or exchange with the Otherworld are possible. There are people of all ages who naturally convey supernatural qualities and often impress others as fey, strange, mysterious, or extraordinary. They often have exceptional supersensory or uncanny abilities, especially in music, healing, or psychic awareness. In drawing this oracle, you may be encountering these otherworldly gifts in yourself or others.

The Changeling is a faery who has taken the place of a human, often a child or a baby. In more general terms, changelings are people of all ages who bear otherworldly, fey, or faery characteristics, but otherwise live ordinary human lives. Like the Changeling, they may be unusually sensitive and have remarkable talents, such as natural musical abilities, capacity for healing, psychic awareness, or sensitivity to subtle energies. Their exceptional talents become blessings if encouraged and used wisely.

The Changeling is an exchange with the world of the faeries. A faery has taken the place of a friend or neighbour, often a child or a baby. In recent times, these stories have been sinister and frightening, engendering more fear than respect for faery sensitivities and talents. The stories now remaining may be a distorted remnant from a time when an easy and natural exchange between the middle human world and the faery world was commonplace and beneficial.

Throughout the north of Europe, and especially in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, traditions attest to kidnappings of children by otherworldly beings with sickly or precocious impostors - changelings - left in their place. In Ireland and Scotland, changeling children are sickly, mettlesome, cranky, laugh when misfortune befalls the home, and sometimes have beards and long teeth. Though appearing as children, they typically betray their identity by conversing like adults, revealing ancient knowledge or memory of times long past, rising out of the cradle to play the pipes or the fiddle, or other unnatural actions for a child. Sometimes pipes, a fiddle, or another instrument are left beside the cradle and, when the family hears the most lovely music imaginable, the child is surely known to be a changeling. As many of the Irish and Scottish stories go, the changeling is discovered by a travelling tailor while applying his craft alone with the children:

"The man of the house wanted some clothes and sent for the tailor to make them. On that day they had a group on the bog cutting turf. Dinnertime came and the woman went out with the food for the men. She told the tailor to mind the babies while she would be out. One of them was at the bottom of the cradle and the other at the top. She wasn't long gone from the house when they spoke in the cradle. "An awkward woman's food for the turf cutters! " said one of them. "Do you remember such and such a war?" said one to the other. "I remember," said he, "and hundreds of wars besides." "Get the violin, Cathay" said the other man, "and we'll have a spell of music and dancing." He did and one of them played and the other danced.... They warned the tailor not to let on that he knew anything or he would come off worst. When the tailor finishes his work ... he put a shovel into the good turf fire and "reddened" it twice... . When it is red . . . he placed the red shovel under their backsides in the cradle and out the door with them.... A woman came to the door, and she threw in one of her own children and after a while, the other one."

Sadly, the belief in changelings has explained childhood diseases and abnormalities and has legitimised the torture of babies in attempts to rid them of the exchange. A unique or exceptional child - or even adult - runs the risk of being thought of as "away with the faeries."

In other ages, knowing things before they occur or at a distance, or healing others through touch and inward knowledge of plants and herbs, was valued and respected. People with such natural talents were recognized early on, encouraged, and trained by elders who had developed and rightfully used these talents. You may now have the opportunity to awaken and develop otherworldly talents in yourself or to support these talents in someone close to you.

Today's Oracle 19th April 2021

Hearth and Family (Right Relations)

In the cold lands in the north of Europe and elsewhere, family and friends gather near the fire at night. The warmth of the fire and the closeness of family, friends, and community is strengthened and valued.

Invoking Friendship, Family, and Community.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, it is time to lighten up on your professional identity and worldly status and cultivate friendship, conversation and camaraderie, and family relationships. This oracle suggests that your life activities have carried you too far adrift from the social activities and ordinary joys of life. Being in right relations with those immediately around you is to be relaxed with the human and unprotected side of who you are. In good company, your identity and attachments to status and worldly pursuits can relax, even if only for a short while. This relaxed demeanour is not the side of your nature that you necessarily take to the office, but the side of your nature that wants to be known and nurtured informally and intimately among those you love and trust.

Before the advent of electricity, the rural Celts would entertain one another with conversation., riddles, songs, ballads, and storytelling. With a fire brightening and warming a windowless home, a storyteller would blend fact and fiction to form a seamless tale. After working in the fields by day, men and women would gather around a central hearth for evening levity, swapping of news, and storytelling. The mingling of friends and family and the welcoming of strangers around the hearth represent right relations among people.

Alexander Carmichael describes his experience of the evening ceilidh (gathering time) of the crofters and farmers of the Outer Hebrides in the late nineteenth century. As evening approaches, the house of the town's storytellers is full, making it "difficult to get inside and away from the cold wind and soft sleet without." The house is

"Roomy and clean, if homely, with its bright peat fire in the middle of the floor. There are many present men and women, boys and girls. All the women are seated, and most of the men. girls are crouched between the knees of fathers or brothers or friends, while boys wherever boy like they can climb. The houseman is twisting twigs of heather into ropes to hold down thatch, a neighbour crofter is twining quicken roots into cords to tie cows, while another is plaiting bent grass into baskets to hold meal. The housewife is spinning, a daughter is carding.... Neighbour wives and neighbour daughters are knitting, sewing, or embroidering.... The speaker is eagerly listened to, and is urged to tell more. But, he pleads that he came to hear and not to speak, saying

The first story from the host, story till day from the guest."

The joy and art of ready conversation, music, humour, banter, and repartee are greatly prized in Celtic lands. Even today in Ireland, the soft warmth of a peat fire and lively conversation attract more attention than the nightly news or BBC. In the winter months, much of the home entertainment of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is graced nightly by the conversation of neighbours, especially if houseguests are willing to oblige an eager audience with tales of distant places (though anywhere will do, like America or England). If you are known for pipin' or fiddlin' or tellin' stories, you will be asked to entertain. A praiseworthy Irish compliment is to be thought a "good crack," that is, capable of setting others laughing, thereby fashioning an atmosphere to forget the cares and struggles of the day. As is proverbial in Ireland, village pubs are the gathering places of neighbours. Here the melodious strains of conversation and music intertwine.

The art of socializing for the sheer joy of it seems curiously dated in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, all of us need the community of right relations, the cultivation of familiar and relaxed social relationships.

Today's Oracle 18th April 2021

Leprechauns (Earth)

Leprechauns represent the playful and resourceful qualities of the earth. By poking fun at our desire for riches, the leprechauns teach us detachment and equanimity in relationship to material wealth and status.

Invoking the Qualities of Playfulness and Mirth.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you are attracting the playful and resourceful qualities of the earth. The leprechaun is boundlessly rich. Each time he opens his silken purse, he finds another golden guinea. Yet his presence often has a double meaning. On the one hand, he beckons the rich resources of the earth toward you, tempts you, and may bountifully reward you. On the other hand, he often turns your attachment toward wealth into a standing joke in which you are the principal player.

The leprechaun is a small, mischievous, and wizened man who often appears dressed in fanciful clothes such as a red vest, green trousers, and a conical hat. Aligned with the otherworldly powers of the subterranean earth, he knows its hidden treasures and is therefore very rich. When encountered cobbling in a lonely place, humans torment him to relinquish his golden guinea purse or lead them to a crock of gold. Through cleverness and trickery, he typically outwits his captors and escapes.

The leprechaun is known by many local names throughout Ireland. All manner of similar dwarves and gnomes inhabit the stories of western Europe, especially Germany and France, particularly Celtic Brittany in France. The leprechaun often lives in the ground or in rock caverns and caves. Though commonly connected with the faeries or known as the cobbler to the faeries, the leprechaun is a singular otherworldly being associated with the underground and its riches, especially gold and hidden treasure.

Most commonly, a leprechaun appears as a small and mischievous man, a wee cobbler, who possesses an inexhaustible purse of golden coins or hidden treasure. Typically encountered at the thresholds of time, just before dawn or after night has fallen, a leprechaun will often be dressed like a country gentleman of the last century, wearing a fanciful red vest with gold buttons or a gentleman's dress coat with large buttons, tight fitting trousers or knee-breeches, and curious shoes with large metal buckles or boots with curled-up and pointed toes. Occasionally, a leprechaun will befriend a poor farmer or a child by leading them to hidden treasure or leaving a guinea in an old chest each night. Some leprechauns live merrily in the wine cellars of old and noble families - as long as good wine is kept in the cellar. Nonetheless, most leprechauns are seen cobbling a single shoe in a hedgerow or out in the bog. When chased, he may disappear as though swallowed by the ground.

A common leprechaun story tells of a man, or occasionally a woman, who catches a leprechaun cobbling on a single shoe and makes a "close prisoner" of him. Until he tells where the gold is, the leprechaun has no chance of getting away. Taking the man out to an old ring fort where the faeries live, the leprechaun shows him a big ragwort, and says, "Dig under this weed tomorrow morning and you'll get a crock of gold." "Wait," he says, "and we'll mark it. Take off my red garter and tie it around the [ragwort], and you'll know where to dig in the morning." The man does exactly that and lets the wee man go. When he comes out in the morning, there is a red garter on every ragwort in the field, thousands of them, exactly the same size and pattern.

Even with a tight grasp about a leprechaun, the wee man can only be trapped by an unbroken stare. Many stories of leprechauns tell of his imitating a lover's voice from behind, alerting the captor to some alleged danger, creating a ruckus, and the like. A likely story from Ireland goes like this:

"The clocharachán [a local name for a leprechaun] makes shoes inside a little rock cavern and he has sparán na scillinge: every  time you'd look. the purse there would be a shilling there. You'd seldom see the clocharachán and it is very difficult to catch him. A man heard that he was in some rock cavern or other. He came upon him one evening and gripped him firmly.

",give me your purse! " said the matt.

"Let me go," said the clocharachán, "and I'll give you the purse."

If you took our eye off him he'd get away from you.

"Get a red-hot spit," said the clocharachán, "and stick it in his backside!"

The man looked all around him and the clocharachán departed and took his purse away with him!"

The presence of this oracle suggests that you are being tempted by material resources in the form of money, great opportunities, or a "deal." These material resources may come, but more likely, they are ephemeral. Being a natural trickster and mischief-maker, there is no telling what the leprechaun's influence will be. There is no human logic predicting his rare gifts of hidden treasure. There is only a slim hope that your present circumstances will result in making you rich or famous.

Spiritually, the tempting yet ephemeral riches of the leprechaun invite you to cultivate detachment and equanimity with regard to material treasure.