Sothis Medias

  

One of the questions currently occupying a place in my mind is: How can Western Culture begin to rebuild authentic communities? I am not under the illusion that communities have entirely disappeared, but I do feel that many of them have eroded, the ties of fidelity once held by families to the land we live on having nearly disappeared in America. Local flavors and traditions are passing out of memory, replaced by commercial jingles, the rhetoric of corporate and celebrity culture.

            Humans have become adept at building networks, and I believe these can be of great importance to our collective evolution, but only if they are tied to living and breathing communities, built on the body of the land and with strong stories as the backbone. I hold as true that stories will be more important to humanities long-term survival on Gaia than food. I learned this from Badger Woman, when she spoke through Barry Lopez in his book Crow and Weasel, saying, “Remember only this one thing… The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away when they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”¹

            Stories that are shared, upheld by an entire tribe or clan, whether for good or ill, chart the course of history. In America we have shared a story of unlimited growth and expansion, a story that says it is better to let factory farms grow our food than real farmers, a tale of pills that magically cure maladies of the soul, even as the underlying issues of depression and psychological illnesses continue to fester. With little back to them these stories now have to fess up to their bankruptcy. The damage they have caused is still being played out, and the drama will continue as long as people still adopt stories designed by corporate profiteers whose only aim is a narrow, fitting in the margins of their balance sheets. 

            Another dominant story in our time is that of the machine. It has been aptly expressed in the literature of Science Fiction, a genre that of course has many other facets, which more than any other popular literature maps the collision zone of technology and society. Other stories are about resources, economics, how we treat each other and the planet. In order for an egalitarian society to prevail these stories need to be told. A healthy media manned by competent journalists is essential for knowing what is going on and how to respond to it. However, the soul of the individual and the collective soul of the community are fed by stories that resonate on the frequency of myths and dreams.

            My own dreams and search for deeper community have called me into the imaginal and historical realms of the Celts. Like other ancient cultures, they have much to teach us about how the ties of community can be bonded together, woven by the silken threads of parables and poetry. The Filidh’s were a type of bard, or poet by vocation, held in high regard by the Celtic tribes.  They acted as a storehouse of collective memory, maintaining the oral pool of history and tradition. They memorized tales and poems, commemorated heroes and leaders, and roasted those of a villainous nature. Pupil poets composed new stories and poems on a subject given to them by their teacher, using a method of incubation that required them to lay in a dark hut with a stone on their stomach to make sure they did not go to sleep². Using the mnemonic devices so crucial to oral culture to compose new verses, the bard would eventually be overcome by awen or poetic inspiration, and new material would be composed out of the images and voices coming to them in the altered state provoked by sensory deprivation. These new verses would then be shared with the community.  

            The Ceilidh was a primary method Celtic people used to gather together and share accumulated lore. It was open not only to the Filidh’s who were perhaps the most practiced storytellers but to everyone. Alexander Carmichael wrote the following in his introduction to a wonderful collection of Scottish oral folklore, the Carmina Gadelica:

In a crofting community the people work in unison in the field during the day, and discuss together in the house at night. This meeting is called ‘ceilidh’–a word that throbs the heart of the Highlander wherever he be. The ‘ceilidh’ is a literary entertainment where stories and tales, poems and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed. This institution is admirably adapted to cultivate the heads and to warm the hearts of an intelligent, generous people. Let me briefly describe the ‘ceilidh’ as I have seen it.

In a crofting townland there are several story-tellers who recite the oral literature of their predecessors. The story-tellers of the Highlands are as varied in their subjects as are literary men and women elsewhere. One is a historian narrating events simply and concisely; another is a historian with a bias, colouring his narrative according to his leanings. One is an inventor, building fiction upon fact, mingling his materials, and investing the whole with the charm of novelty and the halo of romance. Another is a reciter of heroic poems and ballads, bringing the different characters before the mind as clearly as the sculptor brings the figure before the eye. One gives the songs of the chief poets, with interesting accounts of their authors, while another, generally a woman, sings, to weird airs, beautiful old songs, some of them Arthurian. There are various other narrators, singers, and speakers, but I have never heard aught that should not be said nor sung.³

These types of gatherings have by and large been replaced by mass produced entertainment culture. Television and recorded music can be watched and listened to by a group of people together, but the transmission is still one-way. At a Ceilidh the line is blurred, as the entire community is encouraged to participate. Luckily the Do It Yourself ethos is spreading through multiple underground subcultures and making inroads into the mainstream. In these communities the line between audience and artists has to a degree, been obfuscated. Due to the tribal nature of subcultures, created by a kinship of shared aesthetics, participation within them is often highly encouraged. A shared aesthetic is not enough to create a connection to the living earth, but from the fertile ground already being sown by these groups, the subcultures can be bridged and more encompassing communities can be built, anchored by stories and strong sense of place.

The shared histories of a community can be embodied in a story, poem, or song and it will help the community to remain united and be resilient when the trials of life come calling, promoting what Wendell Berry has called membership. In his essay Poetry and Marriage⁴ he writes, “Belief in culture calls for the same disciplines as belief in marriage” and “consists of the accumulation of local knowledge in place, generation after generation, children learning the visions and failures, stories and songs, names, ways, and skills of their elders, so that the cost of individual trial-and-error learning can be lived with and repaid, and the community thus enabled to preserve both itself and its natural place and neighborhood.”

Today we need Filidh’s, people who know the history of the land, who know their ancestry and family stories, true Bards who can inspire right action and livelihood, who can stand up for the soul in a world where soul loss has become epidemic. We need stirring tales of heroism, magick, and the Otherworld so that the imagination may once again be upheld as a power of practical virtue.

The Otherworld was a favorite subject for storytelling among the Celts. It is hopeful to know that it has become a key element in the burgeoning field of Young Adult literature, yet it would be nice to restore this element into the popular lives of the people. A true purpose in life, a definite direction, or aim, can be found in the journey to the Otherworld, and by returning home, the great work of making that purpose real can begin. Beings are available in the Otherworld whom can help guide us on our path and offer us timely wisdom. And in the Otherworld we may also find –and reclaim- stray bits of our soul that have gone missing, thus restoring power to ourselves and to this world.

The Filidh can help repair the bonds of fidelity that have been severed by both the industrial revolution and the information economy. These, along with many other factors, had the twin effect of causing a widespread uprooting of people from the land and widespread divorce, two forms of disconnection that caused communities to gradually disintegrate. We in the twenty-first have inherited a dissociated landscape that is now our job to mend. Decentralized networks may spread across the globe connecting us to kindred spirits all across the globe, but communities always form in connection to a place. Those communities must remain intact or else the global networks will become a fiber optic skeleton draped over a burned out husk. 

This work can be done at a Ceilidh. I am aware that they are still taking place, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, but from what I have been able to find the emphasis of these is on dancing and music as opposed to storytelling. Sure, there will be singing and song (would Taliesin go without his harp?) in the type of Ceilidh I plan to build, but the purpose will be to revive oral culture through the art of storytelling and ground community with a firm sense of place through the transmission of local lore.   

The task of implementing a Ceilidh in my own family, which includes not only the bonds of blood and biology, but also the ties of friendship, may not at first be easy in a time of competing agendas and distractions. Still the Ceilidh is something I feel obligated to rebuild. This obligation is not a burden but a joy, for it is my response-ability (how I choose to respond with all the skill and power that I may have to what I perceive as a need in my life and the lives of those around me: the need for meaningful stories). 

I plan to have one in my back yard next to a roaring campfire with plenty of warm flagons of mead on hand, a few acoustic instruments, people who are ready to share their tales. It will be an event where families are welcome, toddlers, teens, and elders alike. At the Ceilidh we will build a home for the soul and woo it back with stories and song.

Addendum: This is just one idea I have for rebuilding community from just one culture and tradition. The spirits of Camellia Sinensis have also been calling to me in my dreams, and The Way of Tea is another facet of my current studies. Concomitant with the Ceilidh I also intend to learn the Tea Ceremony of Japan, and practice it as a way of bringing people together. But that is another story and shall be told another time.

Notes:

1. Crow and Weasel, by Barry Lopez, Ferar, Strauss and Giroux (Reprint edition 1998). I was guided to seek this book out by my Aunt Loredonna during a weekend when I was taking a workshop with Robert Moss called “The Healing Power of Story.” Our assignment after the first day was to find a story, this is the story I found, my Aunt telling me about it at a family reunion that evening.
2. Dreamgates: An Explorer’s Guide to the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death, by Robert Moss, 2^nd Edition, New World Library 2010
3. Carmina Gadelica, Hymns and Incantations, in two volumes by Alexander Carmichael, Oliver and Boyd 1928
4. The essay “Poetry and Marriage” collected in Standing By Words by Wendell Berry, San Francisco: North Point 1983

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