@Bharat Jhunjhunwala I'll need to re-read this more slowly. I only know light in me, so I'm not sure what all this is. I'll send it anyways.
The DRUIDRY
Handbook
Spiritual Practice Rooted in the Living Earth
John Michael Greer
PDF page 65
As William Blake said, “The wisest of the ancients considered what is not too explicit as the fittest for instruction.” These nine concepts are divided up, in keeping with Druid tradition, into three triads.The first triad of Druid teachings covered here focuses on three fundamental images, each of which is itself a triad: the Three Rays of Light, the Three Circles of Manifestation, and the three elements of Druid natural philosophy. Three Rays of Light Einigen the Giant, the first of all beings, beheld three rays of light descending from the heavens.Those three rays were also a word of three syllables, the true name of the god Celi, the hidden spirit of life that creates all things. In them was all the knowledge that ever was or is or will be. Beholding the rays, Einigen took three staves of rowan and carved all knowledge upon them, in letters of straight and slanted lines. But when others saw the staves, they misunderstood and worshipped the staves as gods, rather than learning the knowledge written upon them. So great was Einigen’s grief and anger at this that he burst asunder and died. When a year and a day had passed after Einigen’s death, Menw son of Teirwaedd happened on the skull of Einigen, and saw that the three rowan staves had taken root inside it and were growing out of its mouth.Taking the staves, Menw learned to read the writing on them and became famous for his wisdom. From him, the lore of the rowan staves passed to the Gwyddoniaid—the ancient loremasters of the Celts—and ultimately from them to the Druids.Thus the knowledge that had once shone forth in three great rays of light, passed through many minds and hands, now forms the wisdom of the Druid tradition. The tale of Einigen the Giant and the three rays of light is the origin 50 myth of the Druid Revival.The rays themselves form the core symbol of Druidry, and appear constantly wherever Druid Revival teachings have left traces.They represent Awen, the heart of the Druid path. What is Awen? In its most basic sense, it means spirit, inspiration, and illumination.Awen is the inner light that gives the mind the ability to reach beyond itself. It’s Awen that turns writers of verse into poets and shows glimpses of the future to prophets and diviners. Druids of the Revival studied the lore of Awen and related it to knowledge and experience from many sources. They knew that people of all religions experienced moments of illumination in which the world took on profound meaning. Some of these experiences, they knew, happened when people turned their attention outward to nature or the great spiritual powers of nature that human beings call gods. They knew that other experiences of the same kind took place when people turned their attention inward to the core of themselves. These two modes of experience are symbolized by two ways of drawing the three rays of light.The first, the invoking form \|/, represents the experience of Einigen—the descent of Awen from a divine source outside the self. The second, more commonly used evoking form /|\ represents the experience of Menw—the awakening of Awen within the individual soul through study and contemplation (see figure 1).The two forms together form an emblem called the Tribann. FIGURE 1. THE THREE RAYS OF LIGHT.
The tale of the three rays of light is myth, not history.Yet the word
“myth” needs to be understood with care.Too many people today use
it to mean a story that isn’t true. Real myths, however, aren’t mere
lies, even when they have nothing to do with historical fact. As the
Greek philosopher Sallust put it: “Myths are things that never happened, but always are.”5
Thus it matters not at all whether a person named Menw ap
Teirwaedd existed, whether he came across the skull of a giant with
three rowan shoots growing out of it, or whether this happened exactly
366 days after the giant’s death.The daily-newspaper sense of literal fact
that fundamentalists bring to sacred texts has no place in the Druid
understanding of myth. The heart of any myth is not whether it happened—or, for that matter, who wrote it—but what it means and what
it has to teach.
This insight itself is, in fact, among the things the tale of Einigen
teaches. Einigen recognized the rays of light, and Menw recognized
the staves, as bearers of knowledge. The others who saw the staves
failed to grasp this, and worshipped the staves instead of learning from
them. There’s a potent lesson here on the difference between a religion of belief and a spirituality based on understanding.The stave worshippers treated the staves as objects of faith, and missed every
teaching those objects were meant to convey. In the same way, someone can believe in the story of Einigen and Menw, and never grasp that
their tale has something to teach.
This isn’t the only lesson of the myth, however.The three rays are also
three shouts and the three parts of the true name of the god Celi, the
hidden source of all things.That name is the word Awen itself, divided
into three syllables:Ah-Oh-En.Take a moment to think about what this
means. Awen, the inner illumination that gives gifts of poetry and
prophecy, is the true name of the source of all things.To touch Awen
is to touch the divine energy that creates the universe.To write a poem
that captures a flash of inspiration is to enact the deed of Einigen,
and more to read there. There's more to read there.
).
