Four Directions

Seamus Mullin-Norgaard

Once, a very long time ago, there was a great inner sea of emptiness. It must have been vast and dark, trackless and utterly unknowable.

The First Great Change was dazzling, beyond anything we could imagine.  If there had been sound, it would have been deafening.  If there had been breath - it would have been breathtaking.  To our scientists this was the “Big Bang”; to our ancestors it was the birth of the Light.  The arrival of Light was the forerunner to life itself.

Our Ancestors knew that this dramatic splitting - the birth and separation of Light from the Dark - was our first great mystery.  They knew it would be challenging for us to cope with this grand duality.  Embracing this paradox, this mystery of opposites co-existing, is our first, great challenge.

After this first duality of Light and Dark, our ancestors imagined the universe split again into four elements: earth, fire, air, and water. There are many creation stories in which these elements are key. By imagining different mixtures of these four elements, we can describe life and most everything we see in our world.

I have heard it said Life was born in the foam of the sea waves.  I heard my Celtic ancestors say this, and I’ve heard this same tantalizing “place of origins” cited in a recent NOVA Science program.  The Celts saw the white manes of the fertile horse goddess in the waves of the sea.  When life first appeared in this salty fluid threshold, it carried deep inside of it the seeds of all the yearnings we humans have today.

Life is a force that both yearns and dwells somewhere.  Its yearning is like the light, always traveling outwards.  With this yearning comes change and growth – it is a matter of survival.  We must venture outwards to nourish ourselves, to feed our bodies and feed our souls.

Life’s other great need is “to dwell” somewhere.  It is an ancient and protective measure to establish a “home center.”  To dwell harkens us back to the darkness of before, to deeply affirm our “being-ness.”  We all are still drawn to that vast, fertile darkness that was our primal home before the light.

Earth is the second place of our dwelling.  We began in the sea, in that great fluid vulnerability of the salty oceans.  We then crossed a threshold to the land, perhaps seeking a more stable center on which to dwell.  When we two-leggeds made our first hearth fire somewhere up on land, this tiny fire was made in ritual remembrance of that time before time when light first appeared in the void.  Our first fire became the first “home center” in the geography of our consciousness.

In those beginning days our hearth had to be moved often.  We carried fiery coals on flat stones or in pouches as we roamed the earth searching for food.  Sometimes a collapsing glacier, a saber-toothed tiger, or the drought would push us on.  Other times the promise of food, fresh blossoms, or furs would call us forth on down the path.  Very early on we discovered some patterns to our movements.  We saw patterning in the seasons, and in the times and places where we might predictably find food.  In these ways, we began to find our bearings on planet earth.

From the circle of our fire sprang forth the earth’s new coordinates:  the north was where the musk ox fed, the west where clean water could be found, the east where the salt beds lie, and the south where fuel for our fire could be gathered.  Or perhaps the north was a waterless desert, the east an antelope range, the south a place of springs, and the west the edge of the earth itself.  In each different place a “sacred geography” of the earth developed.  In each original location, a different band of 2-leggeds developed its own coordinates for life.  Our sacred map of the earth and its wheel of the seasons spread outwards from our hearth fire to the thresholds of the four horizons.

And so this is who we are today.  We yearn outwards toward the extremities, toward the four directions.  For only out there can we find the precious elements, retrieve the precious body and soul resources we need to survive.  But we’ve also learned to dwell at the center; the family hearth center where we gather our skills and resources into some dynamic balance.  So the Medicine Wheel, the great Celtic Cross, and the Mandala of Life all whirl outwards towards the four horizons and the elements of the four directions.  And every culture, every person must find their own way to balance these elements, to hold the dancing center within.

Seamus Mullin-Norgaard is a peacemaker, coach, and carrier of Celtic Spirit.  He invites sojourners to Tara’s Meadow Center, Beaver Island.  For “Compass of the Spirit” – a Labor Day Weekend Retreat, exploring the four directions,  please phone 231.347.7957 or visit  www.CelticBodyPrayers.com