Paulie Rainbow 

Immersive spiritual experience - taking a dip in the moonlight.  

I tend to be an immersive learner. I don’t just want to read about a place, I want to go there. I struggled to read music, but I could play a piece by ear if I heard someone else play it. I learn languages best by speaking and hearing them. 

In basic magic, to line up our energies and intent, we tend to pull in all of the senses: the color of the candle, the scent of the incense, the murmur of our own chanted words, the taste of clear water, or some other beverage to seal the toast. We carve runes into wax, write out sigils on sacred paper, use gestures or wands to weave a pentacle in the air: invoking… banishing… beginning… finishing.

To explore the wisdom of a specific culture, especially if drawing on a different time, presents a different challenge: the need to bridge to something outside of your past experiences. If you have been trying to “get” a specific path that originates in a different landscape and are struggling to make it work for you, like a wand that doesn’t really belong to you, you may need a more immersive experience. 

Traveling to another place may be, especially at the moment, out of reach. But there are other options. 

Language is one. Much more than a cipher, a code that replaces one word for another without adding any information, language is a container for culture. The structure of a language is the structure of the thinking of a native speaker. The rhythm of a language is like the music of a film, setting up mood, and layering meaning. Even if you aren’t “good” at languages, using internet resources to watch a tv show or a movie, or listen to a radio program, can help you to immerse yourself in the rhythm of communication of that culture. 

Food is another. Try cooking traditional dishes, remembering that our high-and-dry environment will change the chemistry of cooking, especially for breads and pastries if the recipe originates at sea level, especially by the sea. My earliest attempts at Irish breads produced clumps of toasted sand before I understood something about this. 

Songs, clothing, mythology, history, there are so many aspects of culture that are different from American culture and letting go, for the moment, of the grasping at magic and simply allowing for the differences in experience may open up doors that seemed sealed shut. It honors the ancestors to connect with and understand the modern occupants of the land from which your intrests arise. An immigrant living in Ireland has more understanding of Irish priorities than I do, four generations removed from living there. 

By wrapping my mouth around the food and words of Celtic culture I help bring myself closer to the magic that inspires me, and that I hope will assist and protect me.

On this note I can take a moment to recommend a favorite book, “By Land, Sea, and Sky: A Selection of Paganized Material from Vols 1 & 2 of the Carmina Gadelica” by Morgan Daimler. Morgan Daimler is an excellent translater, someone who has taken the time to learn the languages, the rhythms, and meanings of the words of the texts that they translate. The work in this book helps create that bridge that I seek. There is an underlying melody to magic, a texture and mood that I can’t shortcut. While the Carmina Gadelica is a product of Scotland, it captures that texture and Daimler has carefully transposed a Pagan sensibility onto selections from that work. 

The placement of repetition feels just right, the construction of the phrases of the prayers and invocations help align my intentions as naturally as the basic magical principals I originally learned. I have found great comfort and grounding in more than a few of the selections. 

Take, for example, this excerpt from Sleeping Prayer #29, as transposed by Daimler: 

    I am placing my soul and my body

    Under your protection this night, O Gods,

    Under your protection, O mighty ancestors,

    Under your protection, O goodly-inclined spirits, 

    The Three who would defend my cause,

    May they not turn Their backs upon me.

It goes on a bit from there, providing comfort and assurance, not merely in the words but in the way they move from me and through me. Daimler calls on the aspects of These Three in ways that focus my mind on the spirits of my practice. 

For those of us who provide House Blessings, #45 provides an invocation that thrums with power in its brevity and tempo:

    Gods bless this house

    from site to stay

    from beam to wall…

It continues for five more phrases, ending in a repeat of the last phrase that feels like a binding-off of a knitted garment, lending itself so naturally to a layering of magic on a dwelling. 

I have personally used “Imbas with me #2” on multiple occasions, my relationship to Imbas being unique to my current practice of Druidry and not like the way I related to practices that I engaged with prior to embarking on Irish Polytheism and animism. The invocation helps me maintain the integration of my relationship to Imbas in my daily life. 

My choice to move out of my comfort zone of competence and into a student attitude toward a culture I was not raised in has been challenging and humbling but there are many paths into that grove and many competent guides who have invested deeply of themselves to bridge the gap from my American Pagan experience to a rich engagement with Irish Polytheism. I hope that, if you find yourself at a plateau, or caught in an eddy where your sense of excitment may have waned, that you find a way to let down your defenses and find a new beginning in some act of cultural immersion. 

The moonlight awaits and may reveal shapes we had not imagined. 

Peace of the mountains to you, 

Paulie Rainbow