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Of all European lands I venture to say that Ireland is the most mystical, and as
much the Magic Island of Deities and Initiates now as it was when the sacred
Fires flashed from its purple, heather-covered mountain-tops and mysterious
round towers, and the Greater Mysteries drew to its hallowed shrines neophythes
from the West as well as from the East, from India and Egypt as well as from
Atlantis; and Erinīs mystic-seeing daughters and sons still watch and wait for
the relighting of the Fires and the restoration of the old Druidic Mysteries.
Herein I but imperfectly echo the mystic message Irelandīs seers gave me, a
pilgrim to their Sacred Isle. And until this mystic message is interpreted, men
cannot discover the secret of gaelic myth and song in olden or in modern times,
they cannot drink at the ever flowing fountain of Gaelic genius, the perennial
source of inspiration which lies behind the new revival of literature and art in
Ireland, nor understand the seeming reality of the fairy races.
Through the kindness of an Irish mystic, who is a seer, I am enabled to present here, in the form of a dialogue, very rare and very important evidence, which will serve to illustrate and to confirm what has just been said above about the mysticism of Ireland. To anthropologists this evidence may be of more than ordinary value when they know that it comes from one who is not only a cultured seer but who is also a man conspicuously successful in the practical life of a great city:-
Question: Are all visions which you have had of the same character?
Answer: I have always made a distinction between pictures seen in the memory of nature and visions of actual beings now existing in the inner world. We can make the same distinction inour world: I may close my eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with my physical eyes and see your actual image. In seeing these beings of which I speak, the physical eyes may be open or closed: mystical beings in their own world and nature are never seen with the physical eyes.
Q.: By the inner world do you mean the Celtic Otherworld?
A.: Yes; though there are many Otherworlds. The Tir-na-nog of the ancient Irish, in which the races of the Sidhe exist, may be described as a radiant archetype of this world, though the definition does not at all express its psychic nature. In Tir-na-nog one sees nothing save harmony and beautiful forms. There are other worlds in which we can see horrible shapes.
Q.: Do you in any way classify the Sidhe races to which you refer?
A.: The beings whom I call Sidhe, I divide, as i have seen them into two great classes: those which are shining, and those which are opalescent and seem lit up by a light within themselves. The shining beings appear to be lower in the hierarchies; the opalescent beings are more rarely seen, and appear to hold the position of great chiefs or princes among the tribes of Dana.
Q.: Under what state or condition and where have you seen such beings?
A.: I have seen them most frequently after being
away from the city or town for a few days. The whole west coast of ireland from
Donegal to Kerry seems charged with a magical power, and I find it easiest to
see while I am there.
I have always found it comparatively easy to see visions while at ancient
monuments like new Grange and Dowth, because I think such places are naturally
charged with physical forces, and wre for that reason made use of long ago as
sacred places. I usually find it possible to throw myself into the mood of seing;
but sometimes visions have forced themselves upon me.
Q.: Can you describe one of the opalescent beings?
A.: The first of these I saw I remember very
clearly, and the manner of its appearance: there was at first a dazzle of light,
and then I saw that this came from the heart of a tall figure with a body
apparently shaped out of halftransparent or opalescent air, and throughout the
body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the centre.
Around the head of this being and through its waving luminous hair, which was
blown all about the body like living strands of gold, there appeared flaming
wing-like auras. From the being itself light seemed to stream outwards in every
direction; and the effect left on me after the vision was one of extraordinary
lightness, joyousness, or ecstasy.
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Q.: (1) Is it possible, as the Ancient irish
thought, that certain of the higher Sidhe beings have entered or could enter our
plane of life by submitting to human birth?
(2) On the other hand, do you consider it possible for men in trance or at death
to enter the Sidhe world?
A.: (1) I cannot say.
(2) Yes, both in trance and after death. I think any one who thought much of the
Sidhe during his life and who saw them frequently and brooded on them would
likely go to their world after death.
Q.: Have you had visions of the various Sidhe beings in company with other persons?
A.: I have had such visions on several occasions.
And this statement has been confirmed to me by three
participants in such collective visions, who seperately at different times have
seen in company with our witness the same vision at the same moment. On another
occasion, on the Greenlands at Rosses Point, County Sligo, the same Sidhe being
was seen by our present witness and a friend with him, also possessing the
faculty of seership, at a time when the two percipients wre some little distance
apart, and they hurried to each other to describe the being, not knowing that
the explanation was mutually unnecessary.
I have talked with both percipients so much, and know them so intimately that I
am fully able to state that as percipients they fulfill all necessary
pathological conditions required by psychologists in order to make their
evidence acceptable.