COLUMN - THINKING OTHERWISE: A Pagan Ur-Text of the Lebor Gebála Érenn

Book One. The First World

 

In darkness I write, not the dark 

of the flamed volcanic gods

who take summers’ crops from men,

but of Brigid’s templed womb.

 

Windowless, my earth-burmed hut;

empty of comforts, I wait

for the forehead eye to light

the way to Brigid’s knowledge.

 

Nothing I touch can I take

--not pen, sword, or Druid staff.

only alone in the dark

can I sleepless dream and see.

 

Before time, before this sun

moved, before red Earth cooled,

we lived on a perfect star

in the perfect Pleiades.

 

We were gods and lived as gods,

knowing neither death nor pain,

but we lost knowledge of love,

of loss, sorrow, and remorse.

 

Our star died for us to send

us out in swirling metals

to an unborn denser sun

of chaos and storms of rock.

 

War was there then in heaven,

great collidings of the gods,

still children in their new minds

howling only for themselves.

 

Then came worlds where rocks had been.

Elementals were born in

earth, air, fire, and water--

these the spirits before Man.

 

Then came the life of the sea,

animal, plant, clear blue sky,

and light in which all were seen

in seeded copulations.

 

The bodiless clouds above

looked on coupling animals

and knew desire and lusted

to have springtime sex in them.

 

In showers of gold they rained

into lizard seed and egg.

At pleasure’s end, they could not

ascend to be gods again.

 

Sad beasts screamed, trapped gods cried out.

Minotaur and centaur,

chimeras roamed earth and sea.

From this race Man was to come.

 

 

Book Two. The Second World

 

The gods found no peace in beasts.

Some forgot, becoming beasts,

more cruel and resentful,

no longer knowing themselves.

 

Others discovered the dream

that set them free nights to be

up in the skies, free again

to command beasts of the day.

 

Then the meteor struck earth

and the gods discovered death

bore all the freedom of dreams

and built their kingdom of death.

 

To live was to be asleep.

To be dead and dream-bodied

was the real life the gods

enjoyed while the beasts endured.

 

When warm blooded animals

gave off the odor of sex,

the gods were startled again

and hovered, sniffing over them.

 

Again the gods took over

the hot animal bodies

and coupled with them for play.

Thus the walking apes were born

 

The apes dreamed the dreams of gods,

the gods dreamed of being apes,

so in Ethiopia,

the race of Man first was born.

 

Then continents ripped apart,

seas shifted and Man began

his hard life of wandering,

day-dreaming and night thinking.

 

Book Three. The Third World

 

The long Age of Ice began.

Man wandered, following herds

of reindeer, bison, auroch,

and the great-tusked mastodon.

 

Man drove out the Great Cave Bear

from his lair, took on his fur,

and placed his skull on altars

of square, unhewn flat stone.

 

Man found in the warm traces

of the animals red capped

mushrooms men chewed together

as their souls were born in caves.

 

The animals were Man’s life--

gods and Man as one again.

Aloneness opened, shamans,

men in animal skins, painted

 

the dreaming on the rock walls,

carved animals of amber,

engraved Goddess images

that girls signed with menstrual hands.

 

The squat men who could not run,

but tottered from side to side,

could not follow us dream-bodied

to animal gatherings.

 

We left them behind, dull louts

of crude tools and ugly hags--

sullen, without Brigid’s star

of knowledge on their foreheads.

 

They backed off in fear from us,

hunted rabbits, disappeared

into the southern passes,

and left no carved marks behind.

 

Then the skies changed, ice melted,

and the seas rose covering

our seasonal fishing camps.

This world ended in Flood.

 

Book Four. The Fourth World

 

On islands at the world’s edge,

the College of Wizards stood.

When the World Flood recalled it,

they were released from hiding

 

and again allowed to take

a hand in the affairs of men.

Before, no temples were built.

Now temples began to rise.

 

From green Ethiopia

they had come an age ago.

Now to Anatolia

they called for a Gathering

 

of all the tribes and schools

of star diviners, wizards

who became lion or eagle

to run and dream-fly at night.

 

Wizard now challenged shaman,

on hilltops built Goddess Wombs

with great stone plinths, each engraved

with animals of each tribe:

 

fox, leopard, lizard, ostrich,

headless dancers of the dead.

The stars took their positions,

rising on the horizons.

 

The shamans lost the contest,

and left for the Northern Lights

where there were no sunken caves,

but oceans of endless ice.

 

There at the Crossroads arose

the school of the new Druids,

the parting of all the tribes,

each with its god to guide them.

 

Then the Druids named a king,

and feast of the sacred bull.

All drank the blood, ate the meat,

and swore faith to the year’s king.

 

When the Temuir Feis ended,

the Chosen became blessed to Death,

the king rose from the dead bull

and coupled with the Goddess.

 

In the morning the tribes left.

Indra led the way eastward

for the horses and cattle,

his mind set on the mountains.

 

Dagda led the slow way back,

westward across the broad lands

turning from open tundra

to the short sight lines of trees.

 

Lir led the way to the sea,

on rock island stepping stones

from Aegean to Malta,

and starred Hyperborea.

 

Long before the tribes had come

to Eriu they had known

one another from the depths

of time before history.

 

I fostered child of Brigid,

raised among the Western Norse,

son of a priestess mother,

raped and taken from Temuir,

 

here alone on this west shore

declare the Lebor to be

a monkish fraud only meant

to advance the evil Church.

 

May earthquakes strike their churches,

may winds erase their black words,

may rising seas again flood

their towered monuments.

 

I see in Brigid’s forehead eye

the coming age ending not

merely by skyrock and flood

but by volcanoes, earthquakes,

 

storms and seas rising against

all the cities of the world.

A thousand years from today

this cursed monkish age will end.

 

I the unnamed of the filidh,

of no man’s world recite this,

knowing I will never see

in light what I see in dark.

 

To read the original text of the Lebor Gebala Erenn, see http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/irish/lebor.html