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For the Celts, the Earth and the Realm of Nature was alive with sacredness and with the elementals of fire, earth, air, and water who were imbued with innate divinity and purposeful beingness. The ancient Celts had deeply rooted spiritual traditions that included: Bards, Druids, Fairy Mounds, Healing Rivers, Holy Wells, Newgrange, Otherworld, Ovates, Sacred Groves, Stonehenge, and Tree Spirits. During their rituals, the Celts often revered their ancestors who lived in a paradise that lied somewhere beyond the encircling sea. Besides their deep respect and abiding reverence for the Natural World, another hallmark of the Celts was their thematic tradition of mythic storytelling about heroic quests, sacred kingships, and underworld journeys. Like the intricate, intertwining, interlacing, eternally connected knotwork of their art, the spiritual continuity of the Celtic traditions shined through their cultural mythos. Three was a Celtic holy number which had many different meanings beside the most traditional of the representations, that of the three realms of land, sea, and sky.
For instance, the Celtic
Goddess Brighid (who was associated with the cow) was featured in many heroic
myths about sacred kingship and underworld quests. The fire festival of Imbolc
honored Brighid as it ushered in the Spring.
The Natural World was also portrayed in the dynamically intricate designs (chevrons, knotwork. labyrinthine patterns, spirals). The vibrant diversity of Celtic art permeated all areas of daily life from the stylized animal heads on the open ends of a neck torc to the swirling vegetative carvings on a the handle of a bucket.
Their melodies enchanted
with the wonder of life. The songs of the bards renewed the land as they
walked the Earth journeying to sacred sites where the ancient spirit of holiness
lingered still. When the bards produced artistic works in healing lyrical lines
and patterns of balanced love, light, and power, harmonic resonance was restored
to the planet time and time again...
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