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One who Binds by Speach
Religion
RELIGION — a Word derived
from the Latin religáre:
re-, again; anew + ligáre, to bind; to tie together.
The joining of members together in conscious devotion
through the use of ardently convincing actions and languaging.
Ogmios or Oghma of legend was born of the descendants of the Tuatha dé Dannan
(People of the Goddess Danaan), divine folk of pre-Celtic, pre-Anglo-Saxon (Germanic), pre-Christian Britain, a time when worship (worth-ship) was reserved for
the veneration of human spirits
— for
people of Art.
The Axis Age
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| ALBION, "THE WHITE ISLAND" |
According to a history shrouded in myth, this
ancient culture is believed to have been of the tribe of Dan who immigrated from the Levant, on the eastern Mediteranean
shore, to the Isle of Albion (Britain), bringing with them the harp and the sacred Laig-fial (the Fatal Stone or Stone
of Destiny) reputedly used as a pillow by Jacob as he received a prophetic vision, and later used as a support for
the Ark of the Covenant in the temple in Jerusalem. It became the Cloch na cineamhna, Stone of Fortune, later
the Stone of Scone, traditional coronation sitting stone for Irish, Scottish and English monarchs.
This was the Axis or Axial Age from India to the Mediterranean and west, a period of commercial, intellectual
and artistic flowering which began about 700 B.C.E. in the turbulance of the rising of Mediterranean Urban Culture, as the
innovative phonetic alphabet facilitated commerce and the exchange of ideas following the general catastrophies
and collapse of empires at the end of the Bronze Age, circa 1,000 B.C.E.
In the post-Homeric Axis Age, especially in the 6th century B.C.E., a veritable flood of great thinkers
and their disciples were alive, writing and speaking, shaping the prototypes of the Common Era’s great religions
and philosophies. These, humanity's oldest recorded Geniuses, included Zarathustra (Zoroastrism), Confucius, Siddhartha
Guatama (Buddha), Lao-Tse (Taoism), Mahavira (Jainism), and the pre-Socratic philosophers, writers and lyric poets, including
Thales, Aeschlus, Pindar, Æopios, Pythagoras and Xenophanes.
The people of Dan, many of whom were sailors, had
fled by sailing ships with the dispersal of the Ten Tribes after the invasion of Israel by the Assyrian armies of Sargon II
in the late 8th Century B.C.E. A later immigration followed the invasion by the
Babylonian Chaldeans under King Nebuchadnessar II, and the destruction of the (first) temple of Jerusalem in the early
6th century B.C.E. This exodus is reputed to have been led by the renowned prophet Jeremiah escorting Princess Tea-Tephi,
daughter of the murdered King Zedekiah and only remaining descendant in the hallowed lineage of David.
To this pivotal
historic period of the Axis Age within the maturing Iron Age we trace the origins in Britain of the legendary Ogmios,
believed to have been born of Brigit of the family of Dagda, “the good god.” Ogmios was the father of Mac Cecht
who married the beautiful Fodhla, famed for her shapeliness and sister of Banba, the first Queen of Ireland.
Remembered as
the Father of Eloquence, Ogmios was
a persuasive speaker who revealed and inspired by the Word, a great poet, teacher, musician, healer, magician and inventor
of the Ogham alphabet used in the earliest Irish writings. He is said to have died at the last battle at Mag Tuireadh as,
in victory, he took the speaking sword of king Tethra of the Formonians. But, in other accounts, he survived transformed and
went on a quest for Dagda's harp.
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Speaking of Words Ogmios was often depicted as an old man, bald and burnt by the sun, known to others as grianainech,
“of the smiling (or sun-like) countenance.” He is remembered as a
man of language, as a trénfher, 'champion', literally 'strong man,' and as a psychopomp of transformations, leading souls
from one world to another by invocation, which is to say,
by the speaking
of Words.
In his most famous portrayals, he is seen
drawing a happy band of men
behind him,
attached to him by
barely-substantial gold chains
linking their ears to his tongue.
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| RAMA AND SITA WITH FLUTE |
The Light of Consciousness
In the spiritual milieu of Bronze Age Eurasia in the third millennium B.C.E.,
with the evolution of the art of masonry, wheeled vehicles, systematic astronomy, the first wars of conquest, and a sophisticated
heiroglyphic literature, religions of philosophy emerged which traced their beginnings back to the early Sumerian culture
and the legendary figure of Rama, a.k.a. Yima, Yama, Djem, Dion, Osiris, Lord of Light, the first man to whom Ormuzd the living
God spoke.
Rama forbad slavery and human sacrifice and decreed that social law reflect the essential logos of divinity
as
revealed by a new process of
human thinking based on concepts.
Each concept was given a written Word
and a new World was born in the
Consciousness of the Hu'Mans.
It was then, circa 4,000 B.C.E., that History began
with an epic Urban Transformation, the beginning of the Bronze Age and the birth of science, when the bronze
plow powered by oxen revolutionized agriculture while swords, metal wheels, coats of mail and trumpets revolutionized warfare.
"From bronze came honor and life," saith a Bardic verse, "when three things came into existance at the same time: God,
Light and Freedom."
Trinity
This is an Idea of holy Trinity, God, Light and Freedom, a complex
ideal-form which found its expression by Words - thus transforming language and human consciousness.
It was the beginning of the coming of the male gods as men armed with metals began to take over the many temples to
the goddesses, to "protect" them from other bronze-armed men. The armed warriors loved to imagine that they were incarnate
sons of warrior gods. With the advent of horse-powered chariots in the earliest days of the second millineum
B.C.E. Now, the eras of organized mass conquests began at the call of the warrior gods and to the drums and trumpets
of kings who inspired armies with tales of warrior heros.
The Druids
The Veil of Isis; Mysteries of the Druids, by W. Winwood Reade.
Among the
spiritual systems and communities evolving in the Axis Age were the Druids (Derwydds) of Western Europe and Britain,
grand orators who became the pre-eminent citizens, clerics, philosophers, healers and intellectuals of their iron-making
tribes, charged with directing the government and priesthood. Yet the origins of their Indo-European language, ethos, pathos
and social structures reach back through the ages to the beginning of History and the Age of Masonry that occurred in the
early Bronze Age, when the first stages of Stonehenge were constructed, as well as many other megaliths and passage tombs
in Albion, as well as stone structures along the coasts of the Seven Seas.
Tracing a lineage from the Brachmans of Hindostan, the Persian Magi, the Chaldees of Assyria and the Communion
of Elohim in the Jerusalem of Melchizedek, the Druids shared a simple adoration of one God who was comprehended
as a Trinity of three equal aspects. It was a relationship of esteem and often of appeasement but not of submission
and homage. They believed in a life guided by consoling divine promises, a heaven and a hell and the immortality
of the soul. Nature was revered and the heavenly bodies, trees, stones and mountains, water and fire, and the
signs of the serpent, the bull and the cross.
The Druids were skilled in all the arts and sciences and in foreign languages; they were navigators and astronomers,
metalurgists and the first glassmakers, and masons, builders of precision stone works. At the time of the pyramids of
Egypt circa 2,600 B.C.E., they were building in Britain some of the archetectual wonders of the ancient world. These works,
constructed throughout the British Islands, included great alters and tombs, circular open-sky fire temples (clanchan), balanced
globes of enormous size (clacha brath) and raised stone pillars or slabs of rough and simple Druidic stamp, including
the fabulous Stonehenge complex, lifted with colossal mechanisms as stupendous as those used for the Egyptian pyramids.
Noël
The order of Druids also presided over the many ritual observations of the sacred mysteries in the consecrated oak groves which served as their open, living temples. On a special day of Noël five days after the new moon
following the Winter Solstice, the Druids in resplendent ritual costume moved in a solumn procession leading two bullocks
to a previously-hallowed oak, singing, "The New Year is at hand; let us gather the missletoe!" and the Bards in chorus sang
hymns in praise of the Mighty Essence. In their language the prize being sought was called Oll-iach, "all-heal," the
medicinal evergreen fruit that grows in the bare winter branches of the oak tree as pearls of white in green leaves, when
all else appears dead and decayed. As the missletoe was cut with a golden sickle and wrapped in a white linen
cloth, bread and mead were sacramentally distributed to the celebrants as the bullocks were sacrificed at the alter of unhewn
stone near to the great oak tree, the Pren-awr "Celestial Tree," marking a time of great joy as the Sun in
its eternal cycle began its sure return.
Derwydd, pronounced
derroo, is derived from a Celtic word meaning oak. The Derwydd were the trunk and support for the whole, the Bards
(Bardd), singers, poets and harpists, were the ramifications from that trunk arranged in beautiful foliage, expressive
of the order's great love of nature, and the Oviades (Obydd), were the novitiates initiated in caves by ordeal, the
young shoots who insured the continuation of the sacred, living grove of culture. Some were hermits or taught bardic verse
while others held official positions and served in the halls of nobles and councils of state, but all were bound by initiation
and a solemn oath of secrecy.
Druidesses included a mysterious
sisterhood of Sibyls living in strict isolation and chastity and their circle was known as the Oracles of Britain, devoted
to the Moon (Cedidwen) and to Brigit (Bridghit), triple-form "goddess" of Britain. They were experts in
transformations, healing, prophesy, physics, guardians of poets and smiths.
Kerridwen, Mistress
of the Cauldron
of
the Elixir of Wisdom,
Inspiration, Rebirth and
Transformation.
The great honor accorded to
the Druidesses reflected the belief in all ancient cultures that women were uniquely clear as seers and that they
had once upon a time been supreme in affairs secular and sacred.
Womens' ceremonies and cults
were a major factor in Druidic culture.
There are said to be 369 authenticated
examples of Ogham writing which have survived as standing stones, mostly in Ireland but also in Scotland, Devonshire, the
Isle of Man, and Wales. The possible reasons for its use are unknown, given that the Druids generally forfended writing. The
Ogham system of writing consisted of horizontal or angled strokes and notches cut on stone or wood and branching out on either
side of a vertical line or corner. It is read from top to bottom and left to right. Honoring the symbolism of the Druids,
all of Ogham’s 22 letters have the name of a tree, The first letter is Beith (Birch), representing the first month of
the 13-month year (roughly December 24 to January 24) when the birch is the first tree to sprout buds for its spring leaves.
The Ogham letters seem to be related to the runes of the (Germanic) East Goths.
The Word rune is derived from
an Anglo-Saxon Word meaning
secret or mystery.
The Greek writer Lucian of Samosata in the second century
C.E. wrote of Ogmios and many Greeks identified him with Hermes,
the Greek Olympian who is in turn identified with
worshiped renowned high priest of Tahuti,
teacher of profundities, pioneer of architecture
who built the Step Pyramid,
founder of the medical arts and sciences, and inventor
and/or perfecter of hieroglyphic symbols
and conscious writing.
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| Imhotep, with stylus and papyrus tablet. |
Keys of Destiny
Imhotep,
the spiritual progenitor of Ogmios and perhaps the oldest name in the legendary history of the arts and sciences, lived and taught in Old Kingdom Egypt circa 2,600 B.C.E.,
It is the Age of the Pyramids,
the Dawn of Civilization,
Fountainhead of Arts and Sciences:
It is theTime of Mass Transformation
from simple awareness and memory
to
full Human Self-Consciousness.
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OGMIOS with the Golden Helmet, Caduceus and
Wingéd Sandals of Hermes
by Albrecht Drürer
Legendary Hermes Tristmegistos
(thrice-greatest), shrewd and cunning, is grand patron of poets and writers, god of dreams, fertility, luck and cunning wit,
alchemists and inventers, merchants, heralds, bankers, thieves and fortune tellers, protector of roads and travelers,
and the inventor of many boons for mankind, including the first musical instrument, the lyre, musical scales, the Greek alphabet,
arithmetic, astronomy, the first system of weights and measures, the arts of boxing and gymnastics, and a drill in the shape
of a swastika for making fire (?), and many other things
useful for civilizing man.
Hermes is usually depicted wearing a golden helmet and wingéd slippers, carrying his mighty
hazel wood caduceus (staff or wand of a herald), and sometimes a bow and arrow or a harp. Also known as Luckbringer, he was
the eldest of the Greek Olympians, father of Earth's Great God Pan, and wingéd
because he was The Messenger of Zeus and Guide of the Dead. To the Latins, he became Mercury, spiritually much devolved.
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| OGMIOS AS HERAKLES Garbed in impenetrable Lion Skin and Tail |
The Indo-European Celtic (Kĕl'tĭk) people of Europe, who had established
settlements in north England in the late Sixth century B.C.E., became dominant with their Iron-Age, technological culture
in Britain in the 3rd and 2nd Century B.C.E. and largely subsumed the Dannan culture, as well as other tribes native to the
island. Legend has it that the 2nd Century Greek satirist Lucian was informed by a Celtic acquaintance that the Celts,
well known for their combative natures, associated eloquence with lion-skin clad Herakles (Rom. Hercules) because of his strength.
In addition to his physical strength with which he wielded his great club of olive wood, Herakles was renowned for the
power of his voice, which could exhort friends and panic foes. The Celts are said to have described the legendary Ogmios as
a 'strong man', appearing to them as a champion of the gods, one exceptionally capable of performing the primitive
liturgy of rousing the fervor of warriors by grand pre-battle exhortations.
"Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the
painting, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks
do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes.
"So, if with this old man Heracles the power
of speech draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware of the
close connection between the ears and the tongue.
"In a Word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles
himself performed everything by the power of Words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected
by persuasion. His weapons ... are his Words which are like arrows, sharp and well aimed, swift to pierce the mind
— and you too say that Words have wings!"
The Bards
Leaves on Oaks, Tips on Arrows.
Most of the admiration attributed to Ogmios very likely stemmed from the public admiration
for Bardic eloquence among the Celts, a people who were and are renowned for their loquaciousness. With them,
the Words of poets hold magic and the Bards were proverbially regarded as equals with kings. This voluble nature, as well
as Scottish, Irish and Welsh poetry and music, can be traced back to the influences of the Arts of the spoken Word
epitomized in the persona of Ogmios.
The long and intensive training of the Druidic Bards included the memorization of countless
triadic verses dealing with language; fancy and invention; the design of poetry; the nature of just thinking and virtue; roles
of arrangement; methods of description, etc. For example:
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| The Elemental Plane Structure: The Pyramid of Triadic Planes |
Qualifications of poetry: endowment of genius, judgement from experience;
happiness of mind.
Foundations of learning: seeing much; studying much; suffering much.
Foundations of thought: perspicuity; amplitude; preciseness.
Canons of perspicuity: the Word that is necessary; the quantity that is necessary;
the manner that is necessary.
Canons of amplitude: appropriate thought; variety of thought; requisite
thought.
So, a Bard does not just sing songs, though most do sing, often accompanying themselves on a harp. He writes and memorizes poetry, lyrics and stories, recites and tells myths and legends
and sometimes sings all of these, but the operative Word here is that
— the Bard speaks!
The Bard travels anywhere and widely and can say anything
and perform whenever and wherever he pleases. He is inviolate in his journey for he is the bearer of news and carrier of messages,
a valuable repository of cultural information, history, gossip, events, folklore and entertainment, protected from harm by
custom and by the sanctions of the Archdruids.
The Bards are tellers of tales of romance and love, life and death, unity with nature, of
adventures, comedies and noble deeds and, as he carries the customs of the land in his memory as verses, he is sought out
to mediate in matters of
Common Law.
The repertoire of entertainment would include sacred hymns and songs of Essence and immortality,
genealogies, the works of nature, the course of heavenly bodies and the order and harmony of the spheres, along with satires
of prevailing vices, praise of horses and rude songs of heroes, warriors, ancestors and famous history.
The Bards with drums and pipes
encourage or inhibit battles with music.
They sing the praise of worthy kings and lords but when the nobles are unjust, selfish or evil,
the bardic satire can evoke ridicule, scorn and loss of face. It is fate greatly to be feared by even the most
ruthless of the lords of earthly power.
In those days, the coming of a Bard or Bards to village or town or camp was a very special day of great
anticipation and they received
high honors and many gifts in exchange for the service they performed. As it is with entertainment celebrities today, the
Bard was to the ancient ones a persona they sought to emulate and replicate when his journey had again carried him away, a
persona projecting a supernatural
power of enchantment, magic, prophecy and a divine calling to poetry, which inspires with the evocative and creative power
of human speech that seems to
merge with the holy!
The Idea is
the transformative powers of
the art of language,
key art of civilization,
Identity
Questions of the Dannan Ogmios' identification with Greco-Roman personae, whether he is like Hermes or Herakles,
remain forever moot, although the transformative powers of the art of language, key art of civilization, seem most
closely identified originally with Imhotep.
The arts of civilization are the time-binding
arts,
the sinews of religion, joining our memories
with Ideas of our progenitors, our ancestors,
thus revealing time to be an illusion
in the realm of the creative soul,
which is the realm of
mystery.
The difference
between Ogmios and Imhotep is perhaps that the Egyptian high priest is remembered as a pioneer Genius in the
art of language as writing (hieroglyphics), understood by scholars and transmitted to adepts, while Ogmios personified
the art of the spoken Word to Everyman. The Druidic believed in the supremacy of spoken words in their effects
on human memory. So, they forbad the use of writing to tranmit history and the mysteries of their
culture, even among the arch-Druids, relying instead upon the instantaneiously flowering repercussions of the spoken Word.
This is the way the
Word had always been communicated from elders to the masses and within the masses of the people. It had been so with
the teachings of the Egyptian scribes and governors, the Magi, the Orpheans, the Cabiri, Pythagoras, Numa and
Socrates. It continued to be so until about 1,500 C.E when books from the newly-invented printing press began to make the
speaking memories of the elders obsolete and so then, the elders themselves. Today, to be an elder is no longer to be necessarily
honored and revered as a living repository of time. We have the Internet instead, reflecting a wider spectrum of time,
tho' mayhaps the language spiritual and timeless seems degenerate in the absence of the inspiring voices of
the true Bards of the Circles of Light of the hallowed Groves of Oaks.
The last University amidst the Oaks
falls to Roman tyranny
On the sacred Isle
of Mona (Ynys Dewyll, now Anglesey), the dark and shadowy island in the Irish Sea, in 61 C.E. the sword of
Rome descended on the last remaining Druid academic center and stronghold which fell in blood and fire - and
the long reign of the Druids, priest-kings of the north, came to an end. It is because of the lack of written
records that with the brutal coming of the Romans the memories and languages of their many amazing cultures were
almost entirely lost, surviving mostly in numerous remnant architecture and art objects but, most of all, in the many
stories and songs which the people continued to tell and to sing.
Forevermore! — with the arts of civilization will be
remembered to all generations the great grief and heartache, the horror of desolation, abominations, subjugation and
dread, the weeping, woe and lamentations of
that time of cruel Romish war
when the plunderers are everywhere,
blood is everywhere, and
laughter is made no more.
 Ogmios, Son of Light
The solar leadership quality of Ogmios that
survives in legend reminds us that Ogmios of the golden tongue is none other than the Son of divine Brigit,
a name probably derived from an older form, Brigantī, meaning "Sublime One" or "Exalted One."
Daughter of the Tuatha dé Dannan, she was the beloved Celtic goddess of widespread worship (worth-ship); keeper
of the chalice, protector of virgins, guardian of the household against fire and calamity, patroness of poetry, prophecy,
transformations and divination, arts and crafts, fertility and crops, fires and smithing, medicine, leechcraft, wells
and waters, cattle and other livestock, and Essence of Spring.
Her feast day is called Oimlec or Oimealg
(ewes' milk), modernized Imbolc (In-the-Belly), the second of four great fire festivals, celebrated around February 1,
the portal between the dark season and the light, the time the lambs' wombs are swollen and about to birth and the milk
of life is flowing again. Imbolic is a time of hope, new beginnings, awakenings and blessings, for Brigit is pregnant
with the seed of the Sun, ripe with the promise of new life for humanity, just as the seeds deep within the Earth begin
to awaken, ripe with the promise of Spring and a renewed vivacity for the Earth.
Much of her legend has been subsumed into the
figure of Saint Brigit of Ireland, who's sanctuary, Cille Dara or Cell of the Oak, is at Kildare, Ireland, where her
eternal flame was long tended and protected by maidens. Extinguished by a Roman bishop in the 18th Century for the community's
insistance on banning the presence of men, it was rekindled in 1993 by the Brigidine Sisters of Ireland, and so the sacred
blaze of the goddess again hallows the land of old Éireann.
A Bhrigid, scar os mo chionn
Do bhrat fionn
dom anacal.
Oh Brigit, spread above my head
Your mantle bright to guard me.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, goddesses and queens ruled the world of humans.
Although his creative functions were just like Hers, despite the historical ascendancy of gods over goddesses, Ogmios
never did eclipse his divine Mother Brigit,
Queen of Inspiration and
Hope of Resurrection;
Ogmios, Elohah of Eloquence,
Prince of the Bards.
Amoun
Christ the Word from the beginning
was from the beginning our teacher
and we have never lost his teaching.
Christianity was in the East a new thing
but never was a time when the Druids
of Britain held not its doctrines.
“Natio est omnis Gallorum admodum dedita religion ibus.”
(The whole Celtic people is greatly addicted to religion.)
De Bello Gallico
Julius
Caeser.
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and The Adventures of the Last Unicorn
... with our Thoughts ...
we Create the World.
TOP
T a h u t i ....... E t e r n a l
THUNDER
TRANSFORMATIONS
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