Symbolism of the CentreIn
China, moreover, there was the custom, at the centre of each feudal state, of raising a
mound in the form of a rectangular pyramid, the four faces connoting the cardinal points,
and the summit symbolizing thee navel of the world.
The word "navel" derives from the Indo-European root
"naf" or "nab", meaning navel and also centre. The word survives with
this meaning in most of the old European languages, including Celtic. Today in Wales the
word means centre, navel, but also chieftain (as in Irish naomh, pronounced
"neev", which means saint, holy). In Ireland also the five provinces recur, with
the "standing stone of the chief" raised in the central domain, upon a mound.
This central region, called Meath (Old Celtic Medion), means precisely the middle, and had
portions donated from each of the four provinces of the country, Ulster, Munster,
Leinster, and Connaught (see footnote). A huge stone
was erected at Usnagh, called "the navel of the earth" and also "the stone
of the portions" since it represented the meeting place of the four provinces and the
portions each donated to the fifth kingdom. Each year on the first of May a general
assembly was held there, comparable to the reunion of Druids in the consecrated central
place in Gaul (J. Caesar, De Bello Gallico, 6.13), known at least until the
eighteenth century as the Pais Chartrain, in a place called Dreux (John Tolland,
118).
* Coincidentally, Tara in Sanskrit means star, corresponding to archis, which refers to the polar
star (Guenon). Coomaraswamy gives a translation of a Buddhist canonical prescription for
artists to invoke a detailed vision of the Lady Tara - the deva of deliverance - in
his The Intellectual Operation in
Indian Art (op. cit.,
ch.10). By coincidence, in County Meath was the seat of the High King of all Ireland, and
his palace was at Tara.
The five provinces with the central
fifth allotted to the supreme or royal court demonstrate a pattern not confined to
Ireland. In India there is the tradition of the four masters, or great kings (Maharajas), the Lords of Creation. The supreme master, a fifth, resides at
the centre on the sacred mountain, representing the etheric realm (Akasha), above of Shambala, or "headquarters" of the spiritual
hierarchy (comparable to the Western tradition of the communion of saints), the
alchemical "quintessence of concentration". Saint Patrick was originally known
as Cothraige, "servant of the Four". Ireland itself was sometimes called the
Island of the Four Masters; the traditional history of Ireland is a manuscript called:
"The Annals of the Four Masters." Guenon suggests that the eponym of Ireland as
Island of the Four Masters refers to a wider tradition, and applies, like the appellations
"Emerald Isle" and "Erin", to another island more northerly, Thule --
once the principle, if not supreme, spiritual centre. (With respect to Thule, see John
Tolland, History of the Druids (Montrose: Watt, 1814), 190-228; also Magnus
Magnusson, Hammer of the North (London: Orbis, 1976), 9. On the Vinland Map,
Thule denotes the Russian polar fringe).
