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According to Druidic teachings everyone had the innate ability or aptitude to cross over the thresholds between lands and realms and to travel back and forth between them. During the Druidry Calendar Festivals of Beltaine and Samhain the boundaries betwixt and between worlds disappeared for a time, for a spell. Animal Totems, like the swan, goose, cow, horse, and owl were an important and integral part of Druidry. Metamorphic shapeshifting was based on a long standing belief in both the possibility and the desirability of spiritual transfiguration. The cyclical magical transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly attests to both the opportunity and the probability of the globally linked Human Being being able to someday morph into a cosmically resonant Harmonic Being. Travelling widely among the Celtic tribes, the Druids were also the keepers of the Celtic Calendar which corresponded the months with the Celtic Tree Alphabet and the vowels of the Ogham.
A method of communication
for the Druids and for remembrance of lore, the Ogham characters were written on
wooden staves or inscribed on stones. Ogham consists of twenty five strokes
branching off a central line like the limbs of a tree.
The Ogham glyph system is similar to a grove of trees where each tree is a knowledge and power key that corresponds to certain colors, numbers, human characteristics, stones, stars, divine qualities, animals, birds, and animals. Each stroke corresponds to an alphabetic letter. Although similar in purpose, Ogham, as a powerful symbolic language, is distinctive from the Nordic Runes. Like a forest of neural dendrites recording the memories of knowledge and the wisdom of experience, the Ogham serves as a connectivity timebridge for storytelling, song, and restoring balance by honoring the circle of sacred traditions. The Celtic Year then was divided into thirteen months with an extra day or two adjustment at the end of the year. For each of the months there was a corresponding tree from which an overall Tree Calendar emerged. Only eight seasonal festivals were celebrated, even though, there were thirteen months in the lunar Celtic Calendar. The two solstices and two equinoxes marked the passage of the four seasons, while, the four fire festivals inbetween the passages commemorated the changes that ensued.
For the Druids, the Earth
and the Realm of Nature were alive with sacredness and with the elementals of
fire, earth, air, and water who were imbued with innate divinity and purposeful
beingness. The living waters of rivers, springs, and wells were venerated
because they were believed to have both magical and curative powers. The spiritual
teachings of Druidry were encoded in their stories, songs, and myths... Go back
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