Crystal Legends
by Moyra Caldecott
Published by Mushroom eBooks at Smashwords
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Copyright © 1990, 2000 Moyra Caldecott
Moyra Caldecott has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
First published in 1990 by Aquarian Press, United Kingdom
First ebook edition published in 2001 by Mushroom eBooks
This ePub edition published in
2012 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath,
BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com
Also available in paperback (ISBN 978-1-84319-326-5)
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Contents
1 — The Championship of Ireland and the Crystal Bird
5 — The Two Swords of Galahad — The Sword in the Stone
6 — The Two Swords of Galahad — The Sword of David
7 — The Two Swords of Arthur — The Sword in the Stone
8 — The Two Swords of Arthur — Excalibur
10 — Princess Velandinenn and the Diamond Ring
11 — The Crystal Cross of Glastonbury
12 — Freya's Necklace, Brisingamen
14 — The Lake Maiden and the Carbuncle Ring
15 — The Cow-herd and the Goddess Holda
16 — The Draught of Inspiration and the Crystal Cave
17 — The Fisherman and the Genie and The King of the Ebony Isles
20 — The Jewels of the Gods and the Insatiable Sea
22 — Moses and the Sapphire Tablets
23 — Shey, the Crystal Mountain
24 — Caurangipa, the Limbless One
25 — Atlantis: The Destruction
26 — Atlantis: The Crystal in the Bermuda Triangle
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The question is
whether
awareness should itself
be made the object
of the
search,
or instead gratefully
received as the fruit of
another
quest altogether
Stratford Caldecott, In Search of the Miraculous (COMMUNIO, Summer 1989)
Introduction
There is a West African legend about a Box of Stories in the possession of the Sky God and the efforts of Anansi, the Spider, to buy it from him. The price he was set was to bring certain beings to the Lord of the Sky: Onini, the python; Osebo, the leopard; Moboro, the hornet; and Mmoatia, “the fairy that none can see”.
Full of determination but not knowing which way to turn to fulfil these impossible tasks, he turned to his wife. When he mentioned the python she said he should use a piece of vine. “Say no more,” he cried, and rushed off into the jungle to cut a long piece of vine. Onini, the python, lying somnolently on a huge branch, overheard him saying “It is larger than he is. No, it is shorter. No, it is longer...” Within minutes he had uncoiled from the tree and was asking Anansi what he was doing. The Spider claimed that he was trying to settle an argument with his wife as to whether this piece of vine was longer or shorter than Onini, the python, and persuaded Onini to lie down on the riverbank to be measured. As soon as he did so, of course, the vine was wound tightly around him and he was taken to the Lord of the Sky.
With similar guile, and each time at the suggestion of his wife, Anansi captured the other three creatures. Osebo, the leopard, fell into a deep hole dug by Anansi and was “rescued” by tying himself to the end of a vine which Anansi then used to haul him up before the Lord of the Sky. The hornet was persuaded it was raining and that the only way to keep dry was to climb into Anansi’s hollow calabash. As soon as he was inside, of course, Anansi slammed shut the lid. The fairy was more difficult, but even she was tricked by a doll who sat in the forest with a lap full of yams. Thinking the yams were an offering for her the fairy reached out for them and instantly stuck fast on the thick honey Anansi had taken care to spread over them.
At last Anansi had earned the price of the Box of Stories. Excitedly he returned home and set it down in the middle of his village. He called everyone to gather round and told them the story of how he had come by this beautiful carved box. They listened to every word, sighing with relief as each being was captured and Anansi was nearer and nearer to obtaining the precious box.
It was now time to open the box. Everyone leaned forward. All eyes were on it. Anansi opened it carefully, slowly... but no sooner was the lid prized off than the stories sprang out and began flying everywhere. Anansi and his friends rushed and jumped and caught as many as they could – but many escaped and flew far away into the world to be caught by others.
I have been reaching out and trying to catch some of the stories about crystals in the world, and this book is the result.
A story needs the latent power of the python, the capacity to coil and uncoil and always stay alert and watchful; the strength and swiftness of the leopard to leap to the point after the slow coiling and uncoiling of the plot; the capacity to sting like a hornet no matter how small and short. But without the “fairy” it will not become one of the great stories of the world. It will not be one of the ones that escaped from the sacred box bought from the King of the Sky. It must have the qualities of a fairy – otherworldly qualities – meanings that creep up on you unseen to affect your whole perception of life. To catch a fairy with the honey of a story suggests very well how the story captures better than any other form of human expression – the inexpressible.
The crystals and precious stones that occur in the stories I have chosen are potent symbols. “Mysticism lives by symbols, the only mental representation by which the Absolute can enter our relative experience,” writes F. Rècéjac, and again: “Symbolical signs have the same effect as direct perceptions; as soon as they have been ‘seen’ within, their psychic action takes hold of the feeling and fills the consciousness with a crowd of images and emotions which are attracted by the force of analogy.”
I hope I have not killed the stories I have summarized here by trying to comment on what they might mean. Stories should he told or read and enjoyed, their magic working deep in the subconscious or high in the supraconscious, with our ordinary consciousness, as it were, in temporary suspension. I do not intend my commentaries to be analysis, but rather personal musings which I trust will set the reader off on a journey of exploration of his or her own.
Anansi worked hard to win the Box of Stories and that was only fair – because stories are not the valueless trifles some people think. They are among the greatest treasures of the world.
Through the ages certain stories have evolved that are so universal in their appeal and so exactly fit human experience at the deepest level that they help us to cope with what would otherwise be the chaotic and terrifying impact of the outside world.
When scientific and rational knowledge broke away from intuitive and instinctive knowledge these stories – these myths and legends – were dismissed as nonsense and relegated to children. In the households of very rational people, even children were denied their aid. Lately, having discovered that the route these scientists and rationalists insisted we take has led us into a horrifying impasse, and following such great thinkers as Jung, we are trying to reinstate the ancient myths, the healing stories, to their rightful place complementing and illuminating the other types of knowledge available to us.
Story is a natural need, and if we deny ourselves its benefits we may well suffer all kinds of maladies. We all know how our hearts beat faster when we think we hear a burglar in our house, whether there is one there or not. We hear an unfamiliar sound, and we tell ourselves a story of being robbed and murdered. Our body instantly reacts in all kinds of unpleasant and very physical ways. By the same token, faced by the frightening and immense forces of the universe we can calm ourselves, comfort and encourage ourselves, with a well-chosen myth.
Story can both kill and heal, as any witch doctor, faith healer, or psychologist knows.
The depth psychologist James Hillman once said in an article for Parabola, the American journal dedicated to Myth and the Quest for Meaning: “From my perspective I see that those who have a connection with story are in better shape and have a better prognosis than those to whom story must he introduced... To have ‘story-awareness’ is per se psychologically therapeutic. It is good for the soul.” He also said: “The main body of Biblical and Classical tales directs fantasy into organized, deeply life-giving psychological patterns; these stories present the archetypal modes of experiencing.”
There is no doubt in my mind that a well tried story, a myth, a legend, rich in inner meaning, teaches and heals. The two processes work together to make the recipient “whole”. It is often the fragmentation of consciousness – the warring of different parts of the consciousness – that makes for ill health. One’s “heart” tells one that existence has meaning and purpose. One’s “brain” denies it. The story builds a bridge between the two contraries, enabling each to come to terms with the other – each to see the truth in the other.
“Woe to the sinners who look upon the Torah as simply tales pertaining to things of the world, seeing thus only the outer garments,” says the Zohar. “But the righteous whose gaze penetrates to the very Torah, happy are they. Just as wine must be in a jar to keep, so the Torah must be contained in an outer garment. That garment is made up of the tales and stories; but we, we are bound to penetrate beyond.”
In this book I’m trying to penetrate beyond. I know I haven’t arrived, but I hope at least I’ve suggested a few paths to take. As Deena Metzeger said in his article “Circle of Stories”: “Stories go in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of finding is getting lost. If you’re lost, you really start to look around and listen.” Later he says: “Stories have many feet and travel several roads at once to the wisdom of the heart...”
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This is a book about the stories, the myths and legends, that use crystals and precious and semi-precious stones as potent and powerful symbols.
Crystals and gemstones have fascinated human beings since Neolithic times, and no doubt will continue to do so until the end. They endure when the bones of those whom they adorned have turned to dust, and it is usually they and only they that give us knowledge of the people who lived in ancient times. They speak a universal language capable of being interpreted by any people, any age. Scythians, Egyptians, Iranians, Indians, Celts, Romans – all wore them in life and tried to take them with them in death. Even Christians, who don’t believe the dead person will need the accoutrements of this life in the next, hesitate to part a woman from her wedding or engagement ring when she is laid in the earth – though everything else is stripped away.
We return to dust, but the gem on our finger still quietly gleams through the buried centuries and emerges at last, turned up by the plough or the probing trowel of the archaeologist to be displayed in a museum where people in their thousands gaze at it and thrill to the sense of continuity, of ancient, rooted mystery. The real value of the gem cannot be measured in currency, but in the sense it gives us of wonder that the earth can produce such extraordinary and secret beauty... that hidden from us, but capable of being discovered, is something more than the mundane dirt and rubble of our lives... that such orderly and precious form might indicate conscious design. In our moments of terror in a world that appears to release random and wanton horrors on us from time to time, such an indication brings hope and comfort.
Crystals have fascinated me all my life and I have been collecting them for more than half a century. Most of that time I had no idea why I did so except that they were beautiful and they made me feel happy, and comforted me in moments of despair. If I had tried to explain why I turned to them in this way, I would have said that it was because they reminded me that I was on a magnificent planet hurtling through space, conceived in Mystery and born into splendour. I would stand on the tarmac of a big city with the traffic roaring by, or in an underground train squashed against my fellow human beings, half suffocated, mind assaulted by the anxious jabbering thoughts of those around me, and touch the crystal in my pocket, instantly experiencing relief. What I could see around me was not, after all, all there was to life on earth. It was as though the secret energy contained in that harmonious and beautiful natural form helped to reorientate all the tangled threads of my disordered mind, so that they lay calmly, in a neat but vibrant pattern.
There is today a growing movement of people seeking out the ancient crystal lore. Crystal-wisdom workshops and healing centres have proliferated. Shops selling crystals are everywhere, and where before only the fey and unworldly would wear a crystal against their hearts, now the hard-headed businessman goes into board meetings believing that the crystal in his pocket or hidden under his shirt will help him clinch a deal.
As always with the human race some people go too far. They take up an idea and run with it so enthusiastically that they have long passed the finishing line before they realize that the race is over and the other contestants are going home. Some people claim too much for crystals, and I’m afraid that, because they do so, the general public will turn against this ancient and honourable wisdom, throwing, once again, “the baby out with the bathwater”. Crystals do have a certain power and a very real energy. A part of it may be the physical response of the vibrationary rate of our own bodies to the vibrationary rate of the crystal, but more than that I believe it is the expectation we have of the crystal, an expectation built up over centuries, even millennia, now deep in our collective subconscious and ready to be used.
Just to take quartz crystal for a moment: in ancient pre-Celtic Britain white quartz crystal was not only of prime importance in the choosing of the tall stones for the sacred circles, but was used extensively in the burials and initiations. Important burial mounds and initiation chambers (for example New Grange in Ireland) were often covered entirely with quartz, and many skeletons in barrow burials have been found with a quartz crystal beside them or clutched in their bony hands.
The tall stones in the prehistoric stone circles and single standing stones around the world have predominantly a very high quartz content, most of them specifically chosen not only for the crystalline nature of the rock itself, but for the prominent intrusions of quartz veining in them. At Duloe in Cornwall, England, near Looe, there is a circle in a farmer’s field constructed entirely of pure white quartz. Every stone (some of them ten feet tall) is of pure white quartz! Imagine it in its full glory in the ancient days (before pollution) with a full moon shining down upon it.
The universality of the use of quartz for magical or esoteric purposes was brought home to me one Christmas when my son and daughter-in-law, then living in Sarawak (North Borneo), gave me a present of a quartz crystal attached to a thong that had been worn by one of the local Penan people, the hunter-gatherers of the rain forest. I put it beside the quartz crystal I was already wearing around my neck, bought at a “New Age” festival in Britain. Crystals as talismans have been with us since cave-dwelling times and no doubt will be with us when we are living on Mars.
In his excellent book on shamanism, Mircea Eliade explains how shamans use crystals. The people of the Semang tribe on the Malay Peninsula believe that at the initiation of their shaman or medicine man, he is given quartz crystals by the celestial spirits – which he subsequently uses for healing. The spirits abide in the crystals and with their help the medicine man “sees in the crystals the disease that afflicts the patient and the means of curing it”.
The shaman of the Sea Dyaks or Iban of East Malaysia (Sarawak) has a box containing a collection of magical objects, the most important being quartz crystals, “the stones of light”. With the help of these he discovers the patient’s soul. “For here too, illness is a flight of the soul and the purpose of the seance is to discover it and restore it to its place in the body.”
Druid crystal eggs were thought to be so charged with magic that someone facing a lawsuit was put to death if he was found to have one on him, on the grounds that he had an unfair advantage.
In Australia and in South America tribes believe that the shaman is taken during his initiation to some sacred cave, or mountain, or into the sky, where he is symbolically cut open and given a new set of internal organs. The new set is of quartz crystal, which gives him his power as shaman. One becomes a fully initiated shaman when “one is stuffed with ‘solidified light’, that is, with quartz crystals”.
In Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism there is an account of how the aboriginal candidate and his initiatory masters enter a rock. Once inside, the blindfold is removed from the eyes of the candidate and he “finds himself in a place of light with rock crystals glittering from the walls. He is given several of these crystals and told how to use them.” Whoever has seen a geode, or is lucky enough to have one in their possession, will respond to this with a special tingle of recognition. Whoever has read Mary Stewart’s novel about Merlin, The Crystal Cave, will know that she is using a universal and very potent archetype.
Is the modern American myth in which Superman seeks his knowledge and his strength among the magnificent collection of crystals brought from his home planet, based on the ancient American myth mentioned by Eliade, in which “a young man climbing a shining mountain, becomes covered with rock crystals and immediately begins to fly’?
The transparency, the hint of inner light, the quality of being solid and yet almost invisible – all these things must surely make the crystal a natural symbol for spiritual matters in legends and myths.
The symbol is chosen because the qualities of the crystal lend themselves to the analogy, but it gains in power over the centuries as it is used time and again in the stories that form the thinking patterns of the human race.
It is my belief that the power of crystals to heal, to help in the development of our psychic faculties, to be used for divination and meditation, is due as much to the legends and myths the race has been brought up with, as to the inherent energy of the crystal itself.
I started this introduction by talking about the importance of Story because I am very anxious not to be misunderstood here. I don’t mean that the crystal has no power of its own and that we only think it has because we have been told about it in legends. Both the story and the crystal have a power, an energy, that cannot accurately be measured in a laboratory (though some scientists are now beginning to try!), and that power, that energy, is subtly bound up with the power, the energy of the human spirit – another thing the scientists cannot measure.
When the bicycle tones up the muscles of the body, it is not the well-being of the bicycle that we are primarily concerned with, but the well-being of the body. The crystal and the story (and more specifically for the purposes of this book – the crystal in the story) tones up the faculties of the spirit. The crystal does help the businessman to make his deal and does heal the sufferer of an illness, because it puts him or her in a state of mind in which, in the one case, clear thinking and decisiveness is enhanced, and, in the other, calmness and relaxation. I believe the gentle subliminal action of the physical vibrations of the crystal would have very little effect if it wasn’t augmented by a deep belief in its efficacy. And I hold that belief has strengthened in us because of the myths and legends that are so importantly woven into our subconscious race memory.
I have mentioned the crystal as a potent symbol in myth and legend triggering reactions in the various levels of the consciousness, but I haven’t so far mentioned that most significant and most misunderstood and undervalued faculty of the human mind – the imagination. “It’s only your imagination” is a phrase we all know, and have heard innumerable times. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you...” “You are imagining it...” In each case the implication is that imagination is something silly and should he discouraged. I believe that without the imagination the human race would still be “in the trees”. I believe the imagination is the thrusting edge of the human soul as it reaches up towards the Higher Realms, searching for its lost union with its Deity. It gives us wings, and lifts us from the clay. It gives us eyes and we see the invisible. If we do not have imagination we might as well resign ourselves to the dust, for there is nothing more we will be able to experience but the dust. Without imagination we kill our fellow man because we cannot imagine what it would be like to be him. Without imagination the scientist will measure and weigh and count, but will never bring us the great discovery, the Nobel-prize-winning breakthrough.
Myths and legends are produced by the imagination when it is functioning at its most serious and profound level. The body is a finely tuned, immensely complex and efficient instrument capable of experiencing much more than we commonly give it credit for – and one of its functions is at once to house the “growing point” of the soul, and to protect it from the damage it might suffer if it were exposed to too much transcendent experience too soon. The imagination tests out the ground beyond ourselves and allows us to explore the way ahead in imaginal symbolic form before we have to encounter it in reality. The imagination gives us myths and legends – those marvellous, subtle, complex vehicles of esoteric teaching to prepare us for our future. In seeking their meaning we are meant to find the meaning of ourselves.
Life is, as you well know, inexplicable. All the religions in the world, all the myths and legends in the world, all the scientific theories and mathematical formulae, laid end to end, cannot give us a totally satisfactory explanation. But the story teller can give us a glimpse, a fleeting flash, of something that makes us feel we understand so that we can live out our lives with direction and purpose instead of floundering blindly in the dust and wasting our potential.
Everyone finds his or her own story to help him or her go forward in hope. Over the years I have been building up a picture of how I see life drawn from what I consider to be the basic teachings of all the great religions (“the Perennial Philosophy” as Aldous Huxley called it) before they were set at each other’s throats by misunderstandings and misrepresentations. How I see the mystery of life obviously influences my interpretation of the myths and legends in this book. You might have a very different world-view, and consequently interpret the stories very differently. This is all right. The very ambiguity of myth is its strength. Myth is a kind of mirror – we see what we are capable of seeing, what we want to see, and what we need to see. We see ourselves, but in greater depth than we would in an ordinary mirror.
Sources
“The Box of Stories”, story retold by Paul Jordan-Smith from one he heard told by Jay O’Callahan, Parabola: Myth and the Quest for Meaning, Vol. IV, No. 4, November 1979, pp. 25-8.
E. Récéjac, Essays on “The Bases of Mystic Knowledge”, quoted in An Anthology of Mysticism and Mystical Philosophy, compiled by W. Kingland (Methuen, 1927).
James Hillman, “A Note on Story”, Parabola, Myth and the Quest for Meaning, Vol. IV, No. 4, November 1979.
The Zohar: The Book of Splendours, basic readings from the Kabbalah selected and edited by Gershom G. Scholem (Rider, 1977), p. 122.
Deena Metzeger, “Circle of Stories”, Parabola, Vol. IV, No. 4, November 1979.
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press, 1964).
You will find the stories in this volume in many different forms and in many different places. I have quoted only the sources I have specifically and recently consulted for the writing of this book.
1 — The Championship of Ireland and the Crystal Bird
(Western Europe: Celtic)
Everyone knew that Bricriu was a troublemaker, and no one wanted to have anything to do with him. Nevertheless he managed to persuade the three greatest heroes of Ireland and all their friends, relatives, and companions to come together at his house for a feast by dint of promising them worse trouble if they refused. His unwilling guests finally agreed to come on condition that he himself was not present. He agreed – but built himself a chamber above the hall where he could observe all that went on.
Before the guests entered the hall, however, Bricriu, as host and provider of the meat and mead, greeted them. While doing so he managed to have a private word with each of the three greatest heroes, Cuchulain, Conall Cernach, and Laegaire Buadach, mentioning to each that when it was time to serve the meat he was to claim the champion’s portion because he, and none other, was the greatest hero of Ireland. He further compounded the mischief by telling each of the three heroes’ wives privately that she, wife of the greatest hero of Ireland, should enter the feast hall ahead of all the other women. He then retired to his private room to watch the fun.
The strife he caused between the three heroes and the three wives spilled over well beyond the feast and occupied the Irish for quite a while thereafter. Rather than have the three heroes destroy each other and all around them over the matter, they were persuaded to submit to tests of strength and courage set by neutral arbitrators.
Watched over and egged on by their excited supporters, the three performed prodigious feats. In every one Cuchulain outdid the others. They fought giants and magical Druid cats; they fought fearsome spectres and armies of fierce warriors; but no matter how clear it was that Cuchulain outstripped the others, Conall and Laegaire would not admit that he was champion. They claimed something was wrong with the test and that Cuchulain had won unfairly.
At one point the whole crowd arrived at Cruachan, the stronghold of Ailell and Maeve, king and queen of Connaught. They demanded that King Ailell name the greatest hero once and for all.
Ailell was worried and spoke to his wife, complaining that he was in a very difficult position, for if he named one hero over the others, the other two and all their rowdy companions would go berserk and destroy everything in sight.
Queen Maeve suggested a clever solution that would at least save their own property.
One by one she called the three heroes to a private audience. She told Laegaire Buadach that he should have the hero’s portion at the great feast of Conchubar, the High King. All he had to do was to produce a token she would give him that would leave no doubt as to who she thought the champion was. She gave him a bronze chalice with a bird of silver at the bottom. To Conall she gave the same speech and a chalice of silver with a bird of red gold at the bottom. Lastly she called Cuchulain to her side and presented him with a chalice of red gold with a bird of precious crystal in the bottom.
All three and their entourage of supporters then set off for the stronghold of Conchubar, the High King. On the way the contention continued and many a dangerous and skilful feat was performed to try to prove which one was the greatest hero of them all.
At last, at the court of Conchubar, the welcome feast was set.
Laegaire produced his chalice of bronze and proudly showed the bird of white silver at the bottom, saying that it had been given by Ailell and Maeve as token that he was the greatest champion of Ireland.
Conall laughed and stood up brandishing his chalice of silver, with the bird of red gold in the bottom.
“This was given me by Ailell and Maeve,” he cried, “Judge for yourselves how much more they valued me than Laegaire Buadach.”
Then Cuchulain strode across the room and slapped his chalice down in front of Conchubar.
Smiling, the king raised it above his head so that all could see the glowing vessel of red gold and, inside, the bird of precious crystal.
“Cheat!” Conall and Laegaire shouted. “He bribed them for the better cup.”
Conchubar raised his strong right arm to prevent the fight that was about to break out and declared there would be one last and convincing test that would prove which one had the greatest courage and was therefore worthy to eat the champion’s portion.
While they were waiting for the test to be devised an ugly, brutish man entered the hall and jeered at the heroes of Ireland, declaring that none of them would dare to meet his challenge.
“What challenge is that, you oaf?” Conall said, scarcely bothering to stop drinking long enough to say the words.
“To chop off my head,” the man replied.
“That I will gladly do!” shouted Conall, laughing. “Just hand me your axe.”
“The full challenge is that you cut off my head today, but I cut off your head tomorrow.”
There was much shouting and jollity at this absurdity, and Conall took the axe from the man, swung it, and chopped off his head. He soon sobered up, however, when the man picked up his head and replaced it on his body, reclaimed his axe, and walked out of the hall.
The next day when he returned for the completion of the challenge Conall was nowhere to be found. Laegaire was accosted by the oaf and, against his better judgement, shamed into accepting the challenge to prove that he was a greater hero than Conall.
He swung his axe. The man picked up his head and left the hall. The next day when he returned Laegaire was also missing.
The man then turned his attention to Cuchulain – and for honour’s sake Cuchulain had to take up the challenge.
The next day when the man returned Cuchulain was waiting for him. He did not flinch once, though the man swung the axe three times, each time hitting his neck with the blunt edge of the weapon.
Then was the matter settled. The oaf revealed himself a master of Druid magic sent to test the three heroes.
To Cuchulain at last was given the champion’s portion, and he quaffed his wine from the chalice of the crystal bird.
Comment
Bricriu the troublemaker represents that part of ourselves which, no matter how noble we are, tempts us to mischief, tests our credentials, shows up any flaws in our personalities. When I first began to read Celtic legends I was sometimes impatient with their unquestioning belief that the man who can kill the most people was accepted as the greatest hero. It was only when I began to put the lists of killings into the background as one does with something that is monotonous and boring that I began to notice other, more interesting things in the legends. True, the hero in the Irish heroic tales is still the man who can fight and kill more than anyone else, but in this story he is teased and mocked. He may have brawn, but has he got brain? How easily Bricriu stirs up the strife between them; how quickly they fall for his tricks. Violent and argumentative, they swagger around Ireland, each refusing to accept the result of any of the tests, wreaking havoc wherever they go, egged on by their supporters.
The fact that there are three of them is interesting. Among the Celts three is the most potent and significant of numbers. There are three aspects of the Goddess; there are three crystal trees at the entrance to the Otherworld; there are three brothers or three sisters in almost every “fairy” story... It is said that the Irish took so readily to Christianity when the first missionaries came to them because they understood the concept of the Trinity so easily.
Here there are three heroes and it seems as though the problem of which one is the greatest will never he resolved. There is no doubt they are each capable of fighting and killing as well as the others, but the final test comes and only one of them can face being killed with unflinching courage. That is being killed not in the heat of battle but as a deliberate and sober fulfilment of a promise. The mysterious god who challenges the hero to cut off his head one day and then submit himself to having his own head severed the next, is a key concept in Celtic myth. In the Arthurian legends we have Gawain and the Green Knight. In this story a wild man enters the court of Conchubar, the High King. A “wild man’? Is he the nature god, the Green Knight, the earth itself? Is he asking for a blood sacrifice for the good of the earth? In ancient Celtic times the noblest of the heroes would offer himself as a sacrifice that the earth would burgeon in the spring. What we may be witnessing here is the choosing of the sacrifice – not an idle argument among the heroes as to which one is the greatest. Two of them back out at the last moment. Only Cuchulain is prepared to go the whole way, and bends his head in noble submission. Three times the ceremonial axe touches the back of his neck. He is given three chances to withdraw. He does not.
In a sense we already know which one is chosen when Cuchulain is given the chalice with the crystal bird. He has drawn “the long straw”. The others have been honoured with silver and gold. They are heroic figures of the material world. But the third chalice, the one that becomes the possession of the real and ultimate hero, carries the symbol of the spiritual world. In Celtic legend birds are almost always associated with the Otherworld. We have Rhiannon’s magic birds in the Welsh legends; the two birds that swoop over the lake and entice Cuchulain away to Fand’s beautiful spirit-world; the swans that so frequently prove to be spirit-beings...
The silver bird and the gold bird received by Conall and Laegaire in the cup of plenty, the chalice of life-giving liquid, are messengers too, but the crystal bird – the transparent one, the one that suggests the invisible and numinous realms of the Otherworld more readily – is the one that is given to Cuchulain.
Cuchulain is the god’s choice and Cuchulain honours his calling with a good grace, all boasting and buffoonery past.
Sources
Early Irish Myths and Sagas, translated by Jeffrey Gantz (Penguin Classics, 1981).
Cuchulain of Muirthemne by Lady Gregory (Colin Smythe, Gerrards Cross, 1970).
2 — The Crystal Trees
(Western Europe: Celtic)
One day at Samhain, Cuchulain, Ulster’s greatest champion, was beside a lake at Muirthemne with a group of companions when a flock of birds flew over the water. The women cried out that they wanted the feathers for their cloaks, and the men soon set about shooting them down. When the feathers were all distributed only one woman was left without, and that was Ethne Inguba, the mistress of Cuchulain. So disappointed was she that Cuchulain promised her he would find even better ones for her no matter what happened.
At that moment two birds came skimming low over the lake, so strange and beautiful that they gasped to see them. Cuchulain took aim with his sling at once and let fly. He missed and the birds wheeled and flew back across the lake. Embarrassed, for he was the surest shot in Ireland, Cuchulain loaded his sling again and was waiting when the pair darted back overhead.
“Leave them,” cried Ethne, for she could see a fine chain of red gold between them and suspected that they were enchanted birds, birds of the Sidhe.
But Cuchulain let fly and once again missed them.
Now he was angry and red in the face, and the next time they appeared he flung his spear at them, dislodging a feather, but no more. They eluded him and flew across the lake and were not seen again.
Ethne tried to tell him it didn’t matter, but he strode away from her angrily.
He came to rest at last against a standing stone, remote from all his friends. He sat down with his back against the granite, his head on his knees, ashamed that such a great marksman as he was should have made such a fool of himself.
Whether he was dreaming or not he could not tell, but it seemed to him at that point that two young women stood before him. They stared at him a moment and then one of them struck him with a rod. When she had done, the other did the same. They went on thus, alternately striking him, for some time. Both were smiling.
When they left him he was slumped against the stone in a daze.
His companions found him like that and took him to Ethne’s home. He would say nothing to them and lay in bed with his face to the wall for a whole year. They were at their wits’ end to know how to rouse him.
A year from the day the wasting sickness started, Cuchulain received a mysterious visitor. One of the Tuatha de Danaan appeared at his bedside and called him to come with him. Then he disappeared.
Cuchulain, sighing deeply, at last told his companions what had happened the year before. Conchubar the High King told him that he must return to the same stone where he had encountered the women and see if it were not possible to resolve the matter where it had started.
To the standing stone he went on the high day of the feast of Samhain when the gates between the worlds lie open.
It was not long before one of the women who had beaten him appeared.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“My sister Fand has fallen in love with you,” she said. “Come with me and I will take you to her.”
Cuchulain did not feel inclined to do so.
Seeing that, she continued: “I have a message from my husband.”
“Who is your husband?” he asked suspiciously.
“He is Labraid of the Quick Sword,” she replied, “and he offers you anything you might wish for if you will come and lend him your warrior strength against his enemies for one day.”
“I am weak and ill,” Cuchulain said. “I cannot fight.”
“You will be healed.”
Still Cuchulain hesitated, and he returned to his companions without giving the woman the answer she sought.
He sent Laeg, his charioteer, to tell Emer his wife all that had happened to him, and she came to him and roundly berated his companions for not telling her before what shape he was in, nor for helping him when he needed help. She then turned to him and roused him to his feet, demanding that he face whatever it was that was required of him like the champion he was supposed to be.
Cuchulain returned to the standing stone and once again met the young woman of the Sidhe. Once again she pleaded with him to come to the aid of her husband and her sister Fand,
This time he agreed to do so, but sent his charioteer Laeg with her to make sure that everything was as she had said.
Laeg brought back a glowing report of the land of the Sidhe, the island at the centre of the lake, the woman more beautiful than any other who pined for him, the hero of the Quick Sword who needed his help.
Cuchulain agreed at last to go himself.
He was taken across the lake in a fine and shining boat, and there on the island of the Sidhe passed through the eastern gate beside which grew three trees of crystal, melodious with birdsong.
Labraid told him the task he had to perform and he was led to the place of battle. There in a magical mist he fought with all his old skill and strength an enemy he could not see. Victorious at last, he was taken to Fand’s bed and, forgetful of everything that had passed or was passing in the world of the mortals, made love to her.
He lived with her for a long time by earth measure, but aged not a day. It might be that he would have been with her yet, had not he felt the stirring of a memory one day, a longing for the old rough ways of the earth, and the pain in his eyes showed her that she could not keep a mortal man forever in her shining land when he was not ready for it.
They agreed that he should pass once again between the crystal trees and return to Ulster. She would follow him there and they would continue to be lovers in his world as they had been in hers.
But trees of wood and leaf change with the seasons, unlike the crystal trees of the Shining Lands, and when summer changed to autumn Cuchulain was caught between his love for the changing moods of the physical world and the changeless beauty of the Otherworld. He was confused, torn between the two women Emer, his earth-wife, and Fand, the spirit-woman. The two women faced each other. At last, for love of him, Fand sadly gave him up and gently withdrew back between the crystal trees.
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The eastern entrance to the beautiful land of the Sidhe, the mysterious Otherworld where Cuchulain lives in bliss with Fand and does not age, is between trees of crystal.
In the Book of Revelation the heavenly city, standing in the glory of God, shines with a light “like unto a stone most precious – clear as crystal” (21: V. 10, 11). “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations... Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (22: 1, 2, 14).
Although St John does not say the trees in the heavenly Jerusalem are made of crystal, the crystal imagery is so closely associated with them that I have always seen them as crystal in my mind’s eye, the image strengthened by so many other traditions. In the Islamic Paradise there is a tree covered with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. In the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, spells 109 and 144 refer to the two trees of turquoise between which Ra, the sun-god, goes forth.
Everywhere one looks, in ancient legend or ancient sacred sites, crystal plays a major role as symbol for the passage between the worlds, between the mundane and the divine, between the material and the spiritual.
In the Celtic story of Cuchulain and the crystal trees the combination of the words “east” which represents sunrise and renewal, “trees’ which remind us of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, and “crystal” which suggests that we may see through the natural to the supernatural, produces a powerful and evocative image. Cuchulain is no longer in the ordinary world. He has entered a different reality – a reality that is eternally present and yet normally unnoticed by us. At the entrance to it are the crystal trees.
But he has taken a long time to reach this point of entering the Otherworld. The process started when he tried to shoot down the magical messengers from the Sidhe, the two beautiful birds linked by a golden chain swooping low over the lake. He had a glimpse of Otherworld reality, but was so much embedded in the material world that all he could think of was how to destroy what he saw and use it for the physical adornment of his mistress. He saw no other meaning in the experience. When he couldn’t shoot them down, he was chagrined and shamed. His pride was hurt. For the first time his physical prowess (which was considerable) was of no use to him. He became depressed and sick. He could see no other way of living but by his physical skills, and he couldn’t understand the message the birds were trying to bring him.
He sinks down in despair with his back to a standing stone – a place of great mystic potency. It is Samhain – that time of year when the Celts believed the gate between the worlds was open and it was easy to pass through from one to the other.
The two young women of the Sidhe who had appeared to him first as birds, beat him. He suffers. His human pride is reduced to nothing. He doesn’t know how to live without it. He retreats to his bed and turns his face to the wall.
A year later to the day, at Samhain, another messenger appears to him. For the first time Cuchulain tells his companions something of what had happened to him. No one understands the implications, but he is advised by the High King (a high priest?) to return to the standing stone and at least try to find out what it is all about.
He does so, and the call to the Otherworld is delivered clearly. The spirit-woman asks for his warrior strength to help her husband against his enemies. Cuchulain had lost his physical warrior strength when he entered the period of questioning and bewilderment that precedes acceptance of spiritual values. Warrior strength is the only kind of strength he understands, so the spirit uses that image to entice him, but the battle she wants him to fight for her husband is very different from the battle he is likely to fight on earth. When he eventually fights he fights “in a mist” an enemy he cannot see.
But at this point Cuchulain is still too fond of the world he knows, and does not dare to leave it no matter what the enticement is. Emer, his wife, his strong and intelligent mate, seeing that the life he is living now is no life at all, rouses him to face up to whatever challenge awaits him. Throughout the Cuchulain stories he meets challenge after challenge and does daring deeds beyond belief. He is no coward. This is the first one he has shirked, and he shirks it only because it is so much beyond his understanding. He clings, like most of us, to what he knows, fearing what he does not know.
At last, stung by her words, he goes back to the standing stone. But even so he hesitates: he sends his charioteer in his place – twice. Only at the third call does he go himself.
He passes between the crystal trees, he conquers himself believing he is conquering the enemy of the king. He unites with Fand, his Higher Self, and is blissfully happy for a while.
But the pull of the ordinary world is still too strong for him. He tries to have the best of both worlds by taking Fand back with him to his. But the ordinary world wins and Fand withdraws.
It is interesting that when Cuchulain is eventually slain in battle he chooses to die with his back against the standing stone. In death he enters the world he was unready to accept before. But that is in another story.
Sources
Early Irish Myths and Sagas, translated by Jeffrey Gantz (Penguin Classics, 1981).
Cuchulain of Muirthemne by Lady Gregory (Colin Smythe, Gerrards Cross, 1970).
3 — The Crystal Ball
(Western Europe)
A sorceress had three sons, and as they grew one by one to maturity she began to fear that they would outstrip her in the magical arts by stealing her secrets.
When she thought the first one had grown old enough to be a danger to her, she turned him into an eagle and sent him to circle the sky day after day. He made his home at the top of a mountain and lived as eagles lived. But once a day, for two hours, he reverted to his former shape and was aware of what had happened to him and sorrowed for it. But he was too far from home to do anything about it.
When she thought the second son was old enough to outwit her she turned him into a whale, and he circled the great oceans, crying with a whale’s voice to the other whales that rode the wild water far, far from his home. He too was allowed two hours a day in human form, but was too far from home to do anything about it.
When the sorceress was in her secret room considering whether she should turn her third and youngest son into a wolf or a bear, he slipped away and fled, anxious that what had happened to his brothers would not happen to him.
In his wanderings he heard about a princess kept prisoner in the Castle of the Golden Sun by an enchanter, and determined to release her. He was warned that the task was difficult and dangerous and that twenty-three young men had already attempted it and each one had died in agony. Only one more attempt was to be allowed – after that the princess could never be rescued. But nothing would deter him. He was sure he would succeed where others had failed.
The first difficulty he encountered was that he couldn’t find the Castle of the Golden Sun. He journeyed in every direction and followed many different instructions, but he seemed to be no nearer his destination.
One day he found himself lost in a deep, dark forest, and no matter which way he chose to walk he never seemed to get to the end of it. When he was almost in despair he came upon two giants in a clearing fighting over a hat. When they saw him they asked him to arbitrate between them.
“It’s ridiculous to fight over a hat!” he said.
“But this is not just any old hat,” they said. “It is a wishing hat. Anyone wearing the hat can wish to be anywhere in the world and in an instant find himself there.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “Give me the hat and I’ll walk away. When I call, you race towards me and the first one to reach me has the hat.”
They agreed to this at once because, although they were so huge, they were not very bright.
The young man put the hat on and walked away from the giants.
While he was walking he wished he could find the Castle of the Golden Sun, and instantly he was on a high mountain at the gate of the castle.
He entered it and began to look for the princess. Room after room proved to be empty, but in the very last one left to try, he found her.
She was not young and beautiful as he had expected, but shrivelled and dark and ugly. He couldn’t help an exclamation of surprise, and, seeing his disappointment, she explained that the form he thought he saw before him was an illusion.
“Look at my reflection in this mirror,” she said. “The mirror cannot be deceived. There you will see me as I really am.”
He held up the mirror and looked at her reflection. There he saw her looking as beautiful as she really was and he saw the tears that were in her eyes.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“It is dangerous,” she said.
“I will dare any danger,” he replied.
“There is a crystal ball,” she said, “and only he who manages to survive all the dangers that surround it may obtain it. When the enchanter sees it, his power will be destroyed and the spell that binds me will be undone.”
“I will find it. I will obtain it,” the young man said confidently.
“Many men have died in the attempt.”
“No man would have tried harder than I,” he said passionately. “Tell me what I must do that I may start at once.”
“At the foot of this mountain,” the princess told him, “you will find a wild bull by a spring of water. You must fight it, and if you kill it a bird of fire will fly up from its body. The bird carries a red-hot egg in its body, and the yolk of that egg is the crystal ball. The bird will not want to lose the egg and will do everything in its power to keep it. If you manage to force it to drop it, however, you must be very careful, because if it falls on the earth it will start a blaze that will melt both the egg and the yolk and you will be left with nothing, and I will have lost my last chance to become myself again.”
“I will be careful,” the young man promised.
At the foot of the mountain he found the wild bull fearsomely pawing up the turf beside a spring of water, snorting and bellowing. He drew his sword and went in to the attack. With feint and spring and plunge he tried time and again to best the animal, and many a time he felt its hot breath on him and feared he was about to meet his death. But at last it was his thrust that won home and the beast fell to the ground. As it gave its last gasp a bird flew out of its mouth, as bright and hot as the sun, long plumes of flame trailing behind it.
The young man leapt up and tried to catch it, but could not.
Suddenly an eagle swooped down from the high blue sky and pursued it, snapping at it with its beak and reaching for it with its talons. At last the fire-bird was forced to drop its egg.
It fell on a fisherman’s hut beside the sea. The hut immediately caught fire, but before the egg and yolk could melt a whale heaved its great bulk up close to the shore and caused a huge wave to break over the burning hut, extinguishing the flames.
The young man came running up and searched through the hot ashes. There he found the egg cracked and, within it, unharmed, the crystal ball.
He took it at once and confronted the enchanter.
The enchanter looking into the crystal found that he no longer had the powers he once had. Sighing, he told the young man that he was now to be the king in the Castle of the Golden Sun and the princess was free. The brother who had been an eagle and the brother who had been a whale were also free.
Rejoicing, the young man hurried to the princess and found her as he had seen her in the mirror.
There and then they exchanged rings.
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