Читать книгу Druidcraft: The Magic of Wicca and Druidry - Philip Carr-Gomm - Страница 11

The words of the Bard lead us into the inner world, the Otherworld, that territory which lies beyond death, and that we visit sometimes in our dreams and our meditations. And even though the images, sounds and ideas that we experience there may seem less substantial than the ‘reality’ of our physical world, they often bring us inspiration and provide us with the guiding ideas and feelings that help us live out our lives. Once we learn how to tread the ways that lead into this Otherworld, we find ourselves in the realm of the Ovate-Witch – a realm presided over by the Goddess with her consort ever-present as the fertile God, Cernunnos as he is sometimes called. It is here that we learn of the mysteries of death and rebirth, and of the force that guides us through this process, the force of life itself – sexual energy. Imagine this force as a crystalline sparkling liquid in a cauldron of the Goddess, stirred by the God. As droplets fall from this cauldron, they bring energy and creative power to whoever and whatever they touch.

Change the image of the cauldron to that of a sacred well – a spring. The water in the well is this same energy, conveys the same power, and you see the water flowing from the sacred pool into a stream, which joins a river, which joins the sea. Water flows through the world, and through our bodies, and brings us life. And in death we are ferried across the waters to the Blessed Isles in the West, until after a time in the Summerlands, we are born again through the waters of the womb into new life on Earth.

This realm of water, of the cauldron, of life force, not only brings sensual pleasure and rebirth, but also healing and deep refreshment. If you gaze upon the surface of this sacred pool on the night of a full moon, you may be able to see beyond time, through time, to gain a deeper knowledge of your own being and of the fate of the world.

This is the realm of the Ovate, and I believe it is the realm of the Witch too. The outer forms of Ovate and Witch, or Druid and Wiccan practice may differ, but it is the same pool, the same wellspring that each hopes to contact. And the way that we can do this is through listening to the old stories, for that is the way, in an oral tradition, that spiritual teachings have always been conveyed.