Life after death.  The ancient Celts, as it has been shown in other documents within this site, embraced the concept of  life-after-death in their doctrine of the transmigration of souls.  The Celts held the belief that the human spirit maintained an existence beyond the moment of the death of the physical body.  While some academics have theorized that their philosophy may have evolved out of cultural contact with early Greeks (Pythagoreans),  it is clear that Celtic ideas on the existence of an afterlife or Otherworld came to take on a form that was unique in all the ancient world.  For the ancient Celt, the idea that the human soul or spirit was eternal was a given.    Celtic warriors were schooled by the Druids in the belief that death in meant nothing more than a passing from this existence into a higher plane.  It was Caesar's opinion that it was this belief in the immortality of the soul that accounted for the Celtic warrior's ferocity in battle.   Ancient texts record that Celtic warriors often entered battle wearing nothing but the torc (a celtic necklace) and that warriors whipped themselves into such a frenzy that their opponents would swear that they physically changed shape.  A remarkable description of what has come to be referred to as the "warp- spasm" can be found in the Irish legend of Cuchullainn (pronounced coo-hoo-linn) and is consistent with Celtic myths of deities capable of shape-shifting or changing their physical form.  This is illustrated in Cuchullainn's battle-frenzy as described in a text from the Ulster Cycle:

                                     "His body trembled violently; his heels and calves appeared
                                                        in front; one eye receded into his head, the other stood out huge
                                                        and red on his cheek; a man's head could fit in his jaw; his hair
                                                        bristled like hawthorn, with a drop of  blood at the end of each
                                                        hair; and from the top of his head arose a thick column of dark
                                                        blood like the mast of a ship."
 

This myth of the Hound of Culann demonstrates the Celtic belief in the power of spirit over the physical.  It is reflective of the absence of duality in the Celtic understanding of  body and mind.  Moreover, Celtic philosophy   made no distinction between  man and the natural world.  It is reflective of an interconnectedness throughout the whole of existence that we only now are rediscovering as we seek to practice a new and  holistic approach to health care.   The myth of Cuchullainn illustrates this Celtic connectedness between body and spirit in the same manner in which the Celtic-Welsh myth of Arthur demonstrates the connectedness between man and Creation.  St. Patrick's use of the three leaves of the shamrock to explain to the Celts the concept of the triune God is an illustration that  Patrick too saw the face of the Divine reflected in the whole of Creation.   The belief that the spirits of the departed can pass freely between the realm of this existence and the Otherworld is an effortless step when one believes, as the ancient Celt did that there is no duality between spirit and body and Spirit and Creation.  For the Celt, the dead never truly left them.  The worlds of human existence and Spirit were seen to be as intertwined as the Celtic knot - a symbol of the web-of-life.

Modern researchers studying what has been incorrectly termed  the "paranormal" are only now  beginning to delve into the existence of Spirit and the afterlife.  I believe the term "paranormal" to be a misnomer.  The prefix "para" is defined by Webster's Dictionary as meaning "alongside of" or "parallel, but not a part of".  Clearly any phenomenon that can be observed, recognized and quantified must be intrinsic to the natural order.  There can be no distinction  between  what we perceive to be "normal" and what we mistakenly perceive to be "paranormal".  If  an experience  has been documented to have occurred within Creation, then it must be "normal" by its very nature.  A belief in spirits has, for many been described as "alongside" or "beyond" the realm of what is normal.  It has been deemed as such as it is not a part of our Judeo-Christian acculturation.  It is seen as magical thinking because its existence has never been empirically proven by science;  and yet people of diverse cultures in varying times and varying places throughout the world and the history of the world have documented occurrences deemed to be beyond the realm of human understanding.  These spiritualist experiences have been kept hidden for fear that those who experienced them  might be deemed mentally infirm or worse - possessed by demons.
 
 

What was it that led early peoples and cultures to a belief in the afterlife?  Was it a fantasy born out a primitive need to calm the hearts of the bereaved?  What was it that led primitive peoples, the Celts included, to bury personal possessions with the bodies of their loved ones?  You can't take it with you, or so the saying goes.  Why then do we flock to museums around the world to gaze upon those treasures buried with their dead  by persons whose names we can't even begin to recall?  It is my belief that it is the universality of the experience of mankind's contact with the realms of Spirit across cultures and across time that invariably led to this practice of  "material suttee".  That this "contact" existed in a time when man was connected with the natural world to a greater degree than he is today,
is no accident.  In that time, there was no duality between man and his world or between man and his God.  The theologian Augustine wrote that free will is the cause of evil.  He believed that free will resulted in man's willingness  to turn away from a communion with  God or Spirit.  Evil  for Augustine was merely the absence of God.  It is recisely this duality or estrangement of man from God that is intrinsically evil and that leads man astray.  What if, as the Celts believed (an idea portrayed in the Legend of King Arthur) that all of Creation is a reflection of the Divine.  What if the natrural world is God's own nemeton?  Would it not follow that it is wrong for man to turn away from communion with Him in this "grove" called Creation?

The Celtic argument for interconnectedness of the whole of existence and against duality is not without merit.  In this modern world in which we stumble across eternal truths like children discovering Christmas wrappings in a parent's closet, man must be sure not to miss the point.  Rather than bemoan the idea that there might not be a Santa Claus,  man must cherish the priceless Gift that Someone, somewhere thought enough of us to remember that we ever believed in him in the first place.  Someone, somewhere loved us enough to make the magic real and  for a time, it was.  These gifts we are given - a world to hold us and images of the departed to console us - have been blessed with all the Love and understanding befitting a Spirit who has tirelessly watched over us and silently known us from the beginning of time.  Like that "phantom limb" that continues to haunt the senses of the amputee, man has a God-shaped hole in our lives, waiting to be filled by that which he has lost.  I believe that we are each spoken to by God in a language that we alone can understand - the language of our hearts.   It is His gift of tireless, Forever- Loving-Care that is laid before us now, beneath all the trees of all the world and in the light of all of the stars shining down upon us.   Man must  trust in the wisdom and the knowledge that there is no real distance between Hearts, there is only the distance that we imagine.  The Celts knew this and for a time, the world was whole.