May 13, 2003

Dear Drummers,

We are in the bursting, vivacious, ebullient bloom of spring and this Friday’s drum will take place during the full moon. In the Celtic wheel of the year, this is the season of Beltaine (pronounced byel-tin-yuh in Gaelic, but often just as Bel-TANE here in America). There are a host of Beltaine ceremonies that often involve purification by fire—people running their animals through the smoke of a sacred fire, or people jumping over a sacred fire to purify themselves. Beltaine marks the beginning of summer—the time when, in the Celtic wheel of the year, the direction south is ascending. The south is linked with the element fire—the summer sun climbs up from the southern hemisphere to warm the world into life, to call the fullness into the fruit, to elicit inspirations and song from us, and to coax the vegetables out of the ground and into our glad mouths.

There is another power of springtime that I find directly potent and active right now—what I will call the power of embodiment. During spring we see so clearly the life force—which appears so absent during bare, bleak winter—move from some invisible realm and into the bodies of the world. Leaves burst open, ice gives way to rushing waters, the ants, spiders, and centipedes, crawl up from some deep hiding place. Light seems to be present everywhere. Conceived in mystery in some hidden place, nurtured in myriad wombs—the holy grail located between the worlds—the life force now erupts into our world taking on a million different costumes—leaping, bouncing, zigging, fluttering, flapping, rolling, zooming, slithering, gliding, cavorting into new bodies in our world. We were once conceived in mystery, warmed between the worlds, and we too leapt into this world, dressed in a costume we did not choose, but which we must make the most of. We are mystery that decided to take a land journey.

This Friday’s drum will focus on embodiment of the life force. If you would like to prepare in some way (something you don’t have to do, of course) I suggest you take some extra time to observe where the life force is becoming embodied around you. The light glancing on leaves, the flutter of wings just over your head, the bulbous tulips emerging, the cat shedding its winter coat, the greening of the world. When you come into contact with it, spend five times more time than you think you should falling into that image. You might find yourself glancing at light blazing through the new leaves on that wonderful tree, and saying “Ah! Beautiful!” as you walk away. Instead, spend a full 45 seconds, a full five minutes with that moment instead of walking away. That will prepare you for Friday.

On Friday we will become what we love. As always, you can participate at your own comfort level. And as always, my job is to push as far afield as I can to prepare the way.

I’ll attach a poem I adapted as testament to embodiment. See you soon!

Jaime

I am a wind that breathes on the water

I am a wave on the ocean

I am the roar of the sea

I am a hawk on a cliff

I am a salmon in a pool

I am the blackbird’s dark song

I am a tear of the sun

I am a wonder in flower

I am the word of great power

I am a spear crying out for blood

I am a grass blade giving decay to the earth

I am the silence of the tomb.

I am the lure beyond the ends of the earth

I am the dispensing power

I am the god who kindles fire in the head

-Incantation of Amergin

adapted by Jaime Meyer

The incantation, or song, of Amergin is one of the oldest surviving Irish literary texts, found in The Leabhar Gabhala (Book of Invasions). Many versions of these words exist in Welsh and Irish, but the core of all the versions is the highly charged natural images and Amergin’s declaration of his ability to transform, and to subsume everything into his own being. This is my adaptation drawn from various translations which include: Tom Cowen, Fire In the Head (San Francisco: Harper 1993) 28; Peter Berresford Ellis, The Druids (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company 1994) 70; Caitlin and John Matthews, The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom (Rockport, MA: Element 1994) 11; Mara Freeman, “The Wide Spun Moment” in Parabola volume 23, no. 2 (Summer 1998) 29; and lyrics from a compact disc by Anúna “Wind on the Sea” from Invocation (Dublin: Celtic Heartbeat 1995).

I have played liberally with the original structure of the poem (if indeed, there was ever one “original” structure) in order to create verses with a unity of image:

Verse 1: Water

Verse 2: The upper and lower worlds

Verse 3 : Fire

Verse 4: Death

Verse 5: Mystery

Each triad ends with the element of sound—the manifestation in this world of the embodiment taking place in the verse. Also my structure also tries to create a structure of call—response—result. So the wind breathes on the water, the response is the wave, the result is the roar, which is the music of the sea. I’ve tried to create a link here between music, sound, “the Word”—all images of creation, or the act of creation.

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