What is the Council?
The Cincinnati Council for the Bardic Arts was started on October 18, 1911 by the poet, Walnut Hills High School teacher and Nordic scholar Arthur Fiske, alongside his protégé Kenneth Templeton. An invisible third partner was the silent backer providing additional resources, financial aid, and occult knowledge.
Arthur Fiske, who had a deep interest in Nordic literature, specifically the Eddas and Sagas of Iceland, considered himself to be a Skald. During the Viking Age Skald’s were members of a group of courtly poets in Iceland and Scandinavia whom recited the epic verses of their day to their kings. They were also often responsible for creating new verses to commemorate and historicize the deeds of their own king. Fiske was also an outstanding chess player.
Kenneth Templeton was himself a member of an order that was instrumental in the revival of modern day Druidism. It was as a member of this order that he received his training as a Bard. The Bards of ancient Gaelic cultures, unlike the poets of today, were a respected lot. They helped to maintain the oral tradition and history of the people. In this tradition, the forms of the poems were not only valuable for their inherent beauty, but were designed with mnemonics in mind as well, allowing room for inspired improvisation.
Together with the help of their backer, they not only worked to design a curriculum for the transmission of these arts, but issued books, monographs, and pamphlets under a variety of pseudonymous imprints. Now, after the initial 100 years where this work was done in silence, their successors in the Council have decided to move forward into the public.
What are the Bardic Arts?
At the core a Bard or Skald, and her or his arts are concerned with memory, with story, and with the preservation of particular stories which become herstory. According to this view a Bard is someone whose memory has been trained to contain not just one story but a multiplicity of stories.
Archdruid John Michael Greer, of the Aincient Order of Druids in America wrote “To know many stories is wisdom. To know no stories is ignorance. To know just one story is death.” Likewise the great interpreter of the American experience, Joan Didion has said “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
The lifeblood of a culture then can be measured by how its poets and storytellers are valued. Something else can also be discerned by looking at what stories are being told. When the narrative shifts from a story told by multiple characters and multiple points of view, to a single story about a single person with a single point of view, we know that a culture has entered dangerous territory. A monoculture is one where only a single story is told. This is the place Western Civilization finds itself stranded in. The dominant story of endless progress –at the cost of resources, species, and future generations- is the myth of our age. The children who come after us, born into our debt, who will have to clean up after our party, will need other stories. The Council aims to provide as many as possible.
To be a Bard requires a skill set not generally taught at the contemporary university. Furthermore it takes the courage to speak. Speaking however, is not enough if one does not know what to say or how to say it. In this respect, the Bardic Arts again return to Memory. All true knowledge is original knowledge, and it returns to us through anamnesis, by remembering the wisdom imparted to our souls before incarnation.
So one of the Bardic Arts is the Ars Memoria or Art of Memory. There are various procedures and techniques that can be learned, practiced, and taught, not only to enhance the Memory but to purify it as well. There are also the Ars Combinatoria or Art of Combination, the Arts of Dreaming and the Ars Moriendi or Art of Dying. Each of these arts requires in depth study and further explication and will become the subjects of monographs to be issued by the Cincinnati Council for the Bardic Arts in the future.
Tonight, after 100 years of behind-the-scenes activity, the Cincinnati Council of the Bardic Arts makes itself known. Come to their first public performance at the Northside Branch Library on 4219, from 6PM to 8PM, to hear the readings they are sponsoring from literary legends Steven Paul Lansky, Mark Flanigan, Chuck Byrd, Bryan Burke and and Justin Patrick Moore. Maybe you’ll even join us for a drink afterwards at the Northside Tavern.
