To the Celt and other migrational peoples, the body of the
earth mother, the planet, was a living, breathing being and to claim any part as one's own
territory so as to limit the free and natural interaction of her creatures with her, was
an unholy (un-wholly) act.Pushed here and there,
diverted from the dance with the earth mother by those who chose to settle and claim,
Celts preserved their sense of freedom by not identifying with the fragmentary aspects of
civilization: they maintained a continuum of consciousness, as is reflected in their art.
Art, in those early times, served to mark the sacred, to
record it in time. To call down the divine, by marking, inscribing, thereby giving it
shape, was to magnify, empower and raise up the material; to make holy, to give wholeness
to that which is separate. In modern day language and treatment, art becomes sacred when
it serves to unite the separate sides of the brain, right and left, into a synthesis of
intuition and logic, the sum of which is experienced as divine.
This then, is the hidden
gift of the Celtic peoples; for surely, the same indwelling earth rhythm that wove in them
its nurturing ways can move us into our own migrations in consciousness as we re-enact
their mark of it - Celtic Art.
