Watching with the dying, travelling with the dead is a term not used very often in our day-to-day language.
It was however the language used by the old ones when they referred to consciousness, awareness, and presence. To keep watch is to be mindful, to give our full attention, to enter into a deep relationship with, to be soulfully here and now. It is to remind the one over whom we watch of their final resting place in the arms of mercy and bliss.
I first met with the concept of ‘watching with the dying, travelling with the dead’ when I was working with dying patients and their relatives. During my times of deep inspirational meditations, I would enter into an altered state and, during one of these altered states of consciousness, I received knowledge which later on structured itself into a series of writings called ‘Teachings from the Cauldron’, also known as ‘Wisdom from the Cauldron’. It felt to me that these teachings were Celtic in origin, as they first were transmitted through the medium of the old Irish language and especially from the energetic field of the great feminine or soul archetype, Brigit. Since this time I have been taught by the soul alone and for this grace I am deeply grateful.
How I met with the teachings
When I was given the Teachings from the Cauldron on ‘Death and Dying’ according to our Celtic Goddess Brigit (later adopted by the Catholic Church in her transmuted status of Saint), I was living in Findhorn, Northern Scotland. Having given a presentation and workshop at a Conference entitled ‘Conscious Living, Conscious Dying' in April 1998, I decided to live there for a while. One Sunday morning I had a great desire to sit down and write prayers in Gaelic. As I did so, tears flowed down my face and my heart expanded in my chest. I did not understand what was happening but I kept on writing poems in the old Irish language, beautiful poems depicting life and death in a way that honoured our courage to incarnate as the ‘clay stuff of God’. An example of conscious dying is expressed in the following:
Loosen my arms and let me fly
Straight to the throat of God.
And be the bird
That sings a love song to your beauty.
Close down my eyes and let me touch
All of creation with your love
So I can see with only kindness and mercy.
Zip up my ears so I am deaf
And let my inner ear awaken to your breath.
Pour out the old wine from my heart
And fill each empty glass with your compassion.
Distract me wildly with your heart's drumming
And let me fall right off my path and become the way.
Open wide my book of understanding
And tear out every reason why I might love you.
Feed not my soul with wholesome rice
But with sweet honeyed spice
That falls like healing from your eyelids,
Beloved.
As I continued writing, I felt an intense sense of beauty and pain, joy and sadness all at the same time. I felt at one with all creation and the deepest grief and most exquisite joy flowed into my veins. I thought my heart would burst open, the feelings were so intense. The splendour, order and beauty of all created phenomena touched my soul and at the same time I could experience the unbelievable grief and suffering of the world. Images of death and life, joy and pain, God and devil, good and bad, old and young, night and day etc. flooded me like I was experiencing all life in the wink of an eye. I could feel my heart beat in everything I touched, in the pen with which I wrote, in the feel of the paper on the table, in the energy around me. Colours danced back at me with vibrant intensity and sounds were magnified as if heard through a loud speaker. What was happening to me? I had had a near death experience in 1973; this felt very much like it. I was not frightened; I knew I was all right. Somehow I felt that someone/thing bigger than me was in charge and was over-seeing it all.
Goddess energy
I later realized that I was experiencing the great merciful heart energy of the Cosmic Mother and Jesus and that the compassion I felt for all living things including myself came from them. I was seeing us all through the eyes of pure love and I could hardly bear it. Death and life were one, letting go and receiving danced together in a sea of delight and I was allowed to share in this miracle and I was humbled. When I felt in need of comfort I would sit and read one of the poems that flowed from my pen. I seemed to drink from them like a woman might drink from a clear and refreshing pool. At the same time a Canadian priestess called Saoirse (Gaelic for ‘freedom') was visiting. She was an academic in Celtic studies and was very interested in my growing encounters with Brigit of the Celts. I mentioned the ‘Wisdom of the Cauldron’. At that stage I did not know what this wisdom was, I only knew that I was somehow tuning into it, and Saoirse felt that I should combine psychological principles with a deep feminine spirituality. I later understood that the Cauldron symbolizes the soul, the anima, she who experiences the fullness of life in all its expressions. The magic cauldron is spoken of a lot in Celtic mythology. It was an alchemical vessel, as was the Grail, and a sacred container for the Feminine, the soul, and the passionate fire of love. Brigit was the great stirrer, bringing to the surface that which needed to be made conscious. Eventually all is stirred back to love.
Seemingly the Cauldron of Brigit was the oracle from whose rich contents the Celts founded their spiritual belief. It portrayed a matriarchal approach in ways of relating to one another in the meitheal, or community. Many rituals and ceremonies were celebrated with the use of the sacred Cauldron. The ancient Irish translation for cauldron, ‘that which holds all with equal weight', describes it well.
In 1999, I was initiated as a priestess of Brigit and this launched me on my journey with Brigit as my strong inner Goddess archetype and Jesus as my compassionate archetype. Not realizing the significance of the gesture then, I was given the gift of the Cauldron by the Newbold House Community in Forres, Scotland. It has been a sacred source of teaching. I was instructed not to read any books referring to Celtic death rites but to follow only the inner teachings and to let others share them through workshops and talks. As the Celts left us a grand oral tradition regarding teachings and beliefs, it seems right that – in A Celtic Book of Dying – I give you these teachings in the form of stories from the hearth. May they inspire you to tell your stories, too, and to honour your own ‘my-story’ (mystery) of life and death.
From A Celtic Book of Dying, copyright 2005 by Phyllida Anam-Aire, published by Findhorn Press.
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