THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: AFTERWORD

AFTERWORD

The Spiritual Avalon

In Chapter 1, we explored the physical Avalon that was the Roman fort of Burgh-By-Sands in Cumbria. Here I wish to touch more upon the spiritual aspects of the apple tree Otherworld.

We human beings are obsessed with the effects of both linear and cyclic time. The latter is experienced every year of our lives as we watch the endless march of the hands of a clock, the ceaseless turning of the pages of a calendar, the alternating of the seasons. Birthdays and anniversaries are celebrated to mark what are judged to be important intervals of time. But we all know that for everything in the universe, cyclic existence does end with death or dissolution. As if to compensate for this, we invent scientific theories or religious systems that seek to give time itself a definitive beginning and end. Time thus becomes linear, passing distinctly from point A to point B. Yet we grapple so poorly with the concept of an ultimate and irrevocable extinction of being or consciousness that we ingeniously tag on a point C – an imagined afterlife that is eternal in nature and free from the ravages of cyclic time. In this afterlife we do not age and existence is inevitably paradisical.

The pagan Celts also acknowledged the role of time in the cosmos, and they were not immune to the same impulses that led to the formation of religious concepts designed to facilitate the intellectual and emotional acceptance of seasonal fluctuations and death. There is no evidence that the druids were in dread of an eventual ‘end of the world’. Indeed, Strabo tells us that not only did they deem souls to be eternal, but the universe itself was ‘indestructible’. Classical writers claim that the druids subscribed both to a belief in reincarnation and to that of an afterlife in the ‘infernal regions’ – statements which would appear to contradict one another.

The only evidence for reincarnation that I’ve found in the Celtic sources pertains not to human beings, but to deities. For example, the goddess Etain Echraide is reborn. Lleu is also ‘reborn’ by being transformed from the death-eagle back into his ‘human’ form. This is the normal seasonal transformation of the goddess and the god.

To some extent the Classical authorities may have been confused by the Celtic philosophy expressed beautifully in the Cad Godeu of Taliesin, the Irish Song of Amairgen and the Voyage of Bran son of Febal:

“I was a slender, enchanted sword –  I believe that is was done.

I was rain-drops in the air, I was stars’ beam;

I was a word in letters, I was a book in origin;

I was lanterns of light for a year and a half;

I was a bridge that stretched over sixty estuaries;

I was a path, I was an eagle, I was a coracle in seas;

I was a bubble in beer, I was a drop in a shower;

I was a sword in hand,  I was a shield in battle.

I was a string in a harp enchanted nine years, in the water as foam;

I was a spark in fire, I was wood in a bonfire…”

(From the Cad Godeu)

I am Wind on Sea,

I am Ocean-wave,

I am Roar of Sea,

I am Bull of Seven Fights,

I am Vulture on Cliff,

I am Dewdrop,

I am Fairest of Flowers,

I am Boar for Boldness,

I am Salmon in Pool,

I am Lake on Plain,

I am a Mountain in a Man,

I am a Word of Skill,

I am the Point of a Weapon (that poureth forth combat),

I am God who fashioneth Fire for a Head.

 Who smootheth the ruggedness of a mountain? Who is He who announceth the ages of the Moon? And who, the place where falleth the sunset? Who calleth the cattle from the House of Tethys? On whom do the cattle of Tethys smile?

Who is the troop, who the god who fashioneth edges in a fortress of gangrene?

Enchantments about a spear? Enchantments of Wind?

(From the Song of Amairgen)

He [Mongan] will be in the shape of every beast,

Both on the azure sea and on land,

He will be a dragon before hosts at the onset,

He will be a wolf in every great forest.

He will be a stag with horns of silver

In the land where chariots are driven,

He will be a speckled salmon in a full pool,

He will be a seal, he will be a fair-white swan.

(From the Voyage of Bran son of Febal)

In these beautiful passages, the poets claim to have been all manner of things other than themselves – even God! In other words, everything in the cosmos is One and Dualism is an illusion. This is not the same as reincarnation, of course.

As was the case with Lleu in his oak, when Myrddin is said in the early Welsh poetry to be at his apple tree we are being told he is in the sky. Before the sun can enter the earth, it must cross the sky. Irish and British myth and folklore is full of instances in which a hero must obtain or be given an apple or apple branch before he can enter the Otherworld. This is why the Norse Eddas place the sky-tree in front of the door of Valholl, the Viking paradise that was located within the earth.

To understand the function of the great barrow mounds is of paramount importance in determining what exactly the ancient Celts believed happened after death. Although erected as early as the Neolithic and so often predating the Celts, an understanding of and reverence for the mounds is evident in Celtic literature and folk beliefs.

These great chambereds tombs were communal in nature. While it may be that only royalty were deposited in them, it is possible commoners were as well, or that commoners had their own less grand Otherworld portals. In any case, the more important monuments have their entrance passages so aligned that the rays of the rising or setting sun can only pass down the passage and strike the bodies or cremated remains of persons deposited within the central chamber on or about the winter or summer solstices.

The idea was simple. When the dead person was touched by the rays of the sun, which itself was in the process of dying and being reborn, his spirit became one with the sun. Probably the spirit traveled up the light beams or, perhaps, the light beams plucked up the soul and conveyed it to the source. By becoming part of the sun at this instant, a dead person was reborn as the sun and partook of the god’s immortality.

Christians would be very uncomfortable with such a concept, but only because they continue to deny that their own Christ was early on ‘solarized’, and that by participating in Communion, where they consume the blood (light) and body (sun) of their god, they are likewise seeking to share in his immortality by becoming one with him.

We may imagine the pagan Celtic conception of the afterlife as something like this: a person dies and is taken to the tribal barrow mound. This ‘journey’ to the mound was symbolically likened to the setting of the seasonally-slain sun god into the earth. Once deposited with all due ritual in the barrow, his spirit remains bound to his body until midwinter or midsummer, when it joins with the sun to be reborn.

Similar practices appear to have been engaged in at henge monuments, as archaeology has provided us with indisputable proof that burial took place within banked enclosures and stone circles. We even have examples of chambered tombs or cairns being enclosed by circles, even if the two phases of construction did not coincide with one another. As stone circles can have alignments for celestial objects other than the sun – the moon, other planets, even stars – it is probable that souls could join with any number of deities. A person’s birth-date, declared divine patron, cause of death, circumstances surrounding that death and death-date may all have been contributing factors that helped druids presiding at a person’s funeral determine to which heavenly body the spirit should go.

In the Appendix, which concerns itself with the ancient Irish tree alphabet called the ogam, I will demonstrate that the current Celtic festivals of Imbolc (February 1), Beltane (May 1), Lughnasadh (August 1) and Samhain (November 1) were originally solstice and equinox festivals. The scholar Garrett Olmsted’s work on the Gaulish Coligny calendar has proven that Beltane was once the Summer Solstice (around June 21), Lughnasadh was the Autumn Equinox (around September 21), Samhain was the Winter Solstice (around December 21) and Imbolc was the Spring Equinox (around March 21).

These four vitally important days of the solar year, that of the longest day (Summer Solstice), the day ending summer when night and day are of even length (Autumn Equinox), the shortest day of the year (Winter Solstice) and the day ending winter when night and day are of even length (Spring Equinox), were those most charged with supernatural power.

The old view of the spirits of the dead as revellers inside the fairy hill must be abandoned as a quaint fancy. Celtic feelings towards the Otherworld have always been ambivalent; fear of the dark, cold grave resides side by side with poetic visions of beautiful maidens, endless food and drink, and sprightly song. Instead, dying was a much more profound experience. It was all about becoming the god or goddess. The Otherworld, the earth, the barrow mound, although a home to the celestial deities, was merely a stopping point for human spirits on their way from mortal life to immortal life. When we worship Lleu the sun, we also worship those spirits who have become Lleu.

The myths hint at similar identifications of women with goddesses. The various Sovereignty Goddesses who marry kings in the Irish and Welsh sources show that such identifications could be made. As the Egyptian Pharoah could be a divine human incarnation of the sun god, so could his queen be an incarnation of Isis the moon goddess. Again, divinity of this nature may have been the prerogative of the ruling elite. But it is possible that in more egalitarian societies, the promise of joining the god in immortality was not restricted to royalty or even to nobility.

Avalon is not so much a place – although it could be localized in the human landscape – as it is a state of divine existence. It is not an Otherworld of the souls of the dead, but rather the home of those gods and goddesses with whom the spirits have become joined with as One.

Avalon is also a time or, more correctly, a season. For the apple tree not only stood for the sky, but as my re-interpretation of the ogam alphabet will show, it was the sky-tree of Summer. There were other trees that governed Summer as well, and trees corresponding to the other seasons.

When Arthur was taken to Avalon after his fall in battle at Camlan, he was buried at the place of the apple tree. His journey to the Otherworld was the earthly reflection of the journey of the summer sun across the sky. Once he had ‘set’ into the earth, he waited for the annual rebirth of the god. When that time came, his spirit and the deity became one. Arthur became immortal, never to experience anything other than eternal Summer.

For it is only from our mortal perspective that Summer ends. The sun is always attended by Summer. When the god moves south in Winter, he takes Summer with him to the southern hemisphere. When he comes back to the northern hemisphere, Summer returns. This is the story of the Holy Grail, whose disappearance brings on the Waste Land, i.e. the dead land of Winter. Only by achieving the Quest of the Grail and bringing the precious object back to the North can the Waste Land be healed by the onset of Summer. And so for the god – and for the spirits who have become One with him – the sky is always the apple tree.

Arthur is indeed the Summer King.