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Stories in Ireland do not belong to the past.
They do not age.
They move through time.
One of our most ancient stories tells of two tribes living on the island: the Fomorian people who made war with the Tuatha DéDanann. A war between darkness and light, they said. A war, according to Jason Kirkey, between two peoples experiencing the world in two opposing ways. The Tuatha Dé Danann, content to live with nature, ruled only through the sovereignty of the land. The Fomorians, not so content, are possessed with Súil Milldagach (that is the ‘destructive eye’ which eradicates anything it looks upon) and intent on ravaging the land.
In John Moriarty’s description this is a battle, a moment of utmost importance for Irish mythology. A battle between a people intent on shaping Nature to suit them and a people who, surrendering to it, would let Nature shape them to suit it.
Kirkey poses the question, ‘Might it be said that we are standing at a moment which recapitulates this same mythic motif? Has our culture become Fomorian Súil Milldagach writ large? An examination of our tendencies toward environmental destruction in favour of, and as a means to human wealth and progress, seems to suggest this.’
For Moriarty, we now resemble Fomorian seeing more than Tuatha Dé vision. We have the collective Súil Milldagach: a culture so dominated by the ocular, the grasping eye, that all other senses are now subject to the sovereign, the eye, the slave to the screen: the spectacle.
‘The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.’
(Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967)
The ancient poet, Amhairghin Glúngheal, stood at the prow of his ship, coming up the shore in Kerry. He travelled with the Sons of Míl (Milesians, who we know today as the Celts), seeking to settle on the island of Ireland.
As Amhairghin placed his right foot on the ground, he chanted:
I am a wind in the sea
I am a sea-wind upon the land
I am the roar of the ocean
I am a stag of seven fights
I am a hawk on a cliff
I am a tear-drop of the sun
I am fair…
Amhairghin led the Milesians into battle with the Tuatha Dé at the hill of Tailtiu. Victory went to the Milesians and a treaty was agreed that delivered over the land to Amhairghin and the Milesians, and everything below land to the Tuatha Dé.
From the Great Song from Which All Things Arise
Amhairghin – reputed to have been Ireland’s first Druid – led the Milesians into Ireland through song. Indeed, his name translates to ‘Born of Song.’ The name is significant be- cause of its association with the ancient Irish notion of ‘Óran Mór’, which – in one account – refers to the primordial sound of invocation – to ‘The Great Song from which all things arise.’
Tragically, it seems, while Amhairghin brought the Milesians into what could have been, for them, a radical initiation into the Óran Mór, they chose invasion instead and took the land from the Tuatha Dé. ‘They chose Súil Milldagach, and we still hold mythically to that choice today.’
Kirkey notes that ‘we can see this in the story of Amhairghin, singing the world into creation. Through the power of voice and song he sings the unity of all things and through this, form arises – the cosmos of Ireland comes into being, allowing the Milesians to land.’ (p.40) ‘Amhairghin, ‘born of song,’ and the song which it is born from is the Óran Mór.’
For writers such as Moriarty and Kirkey, the original choices that lay before Amhairghin and on his arrival in Ireland – continue to exist for us today. The Óran Mór symbolizes the music of consciousness arising as form – from the ground of all being.
"There as a mountain, there as a tree, there a stone, and there a person; each form is at its most basic nature made up of this limitless and enlightened awareness."
The arising of forms, the act of shaping consciousness itself is the music of Óran Mór. To see things as the poet and the mystic see – to see things as they are, as the Óran Mór, the divine ground of beauty from which all things emerge, is said to be the antidote to Súil Milldagach.
‘Soul and nature are one; they are the wildness of the world and the wildness of the self. To free ourselves from one is to alienate ourselves from the other.’ (Kirkey, p.43)
‘The nature which we are estranged from is not the phenomenal world; it is the soul, wildness, which is most often found in nature. Connecting with trees, mountains, rivers, and animals is good, but unless we recognize and work with that from which we are really estranged, the soul and the Óran Mór, we will not truly be healed.’ (Kirkey, p.47)[1].
The preservation of the world depends on the wild. The poetic mind is wild. Therefore, the
preservation of the world depends on the poetic mind.
MacEowen, Frank. The Celtic Way of Seeing: Meditations on the Irish Spirit Wheel. Novato: New World Library, 2007. 71
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