The Daily Round: Blessings of Hearth, Sun and Threshold

Most of what passes for ceremony in modern spirituality happens a few times a year, by candlelight, with special clothes. Most of what the Celtic peoples actually did happened every day, at the hearth, in the byre and on the road, in working clothes. A woman on South Uist kindling the morning fire said a blessing over it. She said another over the cow at milking, another over the churn, another over the loom, another over the child she washed, another to the new moon if it was showing, and a last one over the embers as she covered them for the night. Nobody would have called this shamanism. But it is the ground every shamanic practice stands on: a life in constant, courteous conversation with the powers of fire, water, earth and sky.

Where the Blessings Come From

Between the 1860s and the early 1900s Alexander Carmichael, an excise officer whose work took him all over the Highlands and Islands, wrote down hundreds of prayers, charms, hymns and blessings from the people he met, most of them crofters and cottars in the Gaelic-speaking Hebrides. He published them from 1900 as Carmina Gadelica, the Songs of the Gael. They are Christian prayers, full of Christ and Mary and the saints, and they are also something older: Brigid stands beside Mary at the birth, the sun is greeted as the face of God, the moon is curtsied to, the fire is blessed as a living thing.

Two cautions belong with them. Carmichael polished what he collected, and later scholars showed that some of the published texts were smoothed and improved in ways the reciters would not have recognised. And these are prayers of a living Christian people. They should not be stripped of their saints and passed off as pagan survivals. If you are not a Christian, use them as a pattern rather than a script: learn their shape, and make your own in the same shape, and say that you have.

The American teacher Jane Burns describes what the pattern taught: a day in which tasks were undertaken with reverence and gratitude, greeting the sun as it rose, praising the fire for cooking the morning meal, thanking the cow for her milk, and so on through the day, “until it was time to bend your knee to the rising moon and smoor the ashes in the hearth with prayerfulness and thanks.” Those gestures, Burns writes, strengthened the people who made them. They still do.

Morning

Kindling the Fire

The first act of the day was to rake the covered embers and bring the fire back to flame. Carmichael records that the woman of the house did this with a blessing, of which one version begins:

I will kindle my fire this morning
In presence of the holy angels of heaven…
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun.Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael

The prayer goes on to ask that God kindle in the heart a flame of love to neighbour, to foe, to friend, to all. The fire on the hearth and the fire in the heart are lit together. You may not have a hearth. You have a kettle, a stove, a candle, a pilot light. Light it on purpose and say why.

Greeting the Sun

Carmichael heard from old people in the islands that they greeted the sun when it rose over the hill, and some took off their caps to it. One greeting he recorded calls the sun the eye of the great God, the eye of the King of the living, “pouring upon us at each time and season, pouring upon us gently and generously,” and ends: “Glory to thee, thou glorious sun. Glory to thee, thou sun, face of the God of life.” Step outside, or to a window facing east. Look. Say something. It need not be long.

Washing

Water was blessed as it was poured. Mothers washing a child poured palmfuls over the small head with a blessing for each: for form, for voice, for speech, for means, for generosity, for appetite, for wealth, for life, for health, nine small waves of grace. Wash your face in the morning with three palmfuls of water and a word for each.

Going Out

The Encompassing

The caim, “encompassing,” was a circle of protection drawn around oneself or another. Carmichael describes the person extending the right forefinger and turning sunwise, drawing an invisible ring while saying a prayer of encircling, which then moved with them through the day. Before a journey, a hard meeting or a night walk, stand still, point, turn deiseal, and name what you ask to be kept in and kept out.

The Nine Elements

A blessing circulates widely as an “old Irish blessing” of the nine elements: strength of heaven, light of the sun, radiance of the moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock. It comes from The Deer’s Cry, the Old Irish prayer also called the Breastplate of St Patrick, in which the speaker arises each day through the Trinity, through Christ, through the angels and the saints, and then through the strength of heaven and the powers of the created world, one after another. It is the clearest surviving example of the Celtic habit of standing in the elements as in a shield. Kuno Meyer’s translation of the passage runs:

I arise to-day
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.The Deer’s Cry, translated by Kuno Meyer

Say it on the doorstep. Feel each one as you name it. This is the Land, Sea and Sky orientation in its oldest written form.

Through the Day

The Carmina has blessings for milking, herding, churning, reaping, weaving and the waulking of tweed, sung to the rhythm of the work, and charms for the sprain, the toothache, the evil eye and the lost cow. The principle is simple: no task is too ordinary to be done in company with the unseen. Make one of your own for the work you actually do. A blessing for opening the shop, for starting the car, for the first email of the morning, may feel absurd for a week and then become the most honest prayer you say. Keep it short and rhythmic, address the thing itself, and give thanks.

Before eating, pause and name where the food came from: the field, the sea, the animal, the hands. The old hospitality laws were built on the understanding that food is a gift that obliges you to share.

Evening

The New Moon

People in the islands bowed or curtsied to the new moon when they first saw it, and in many places people turned a coin in the pocket for luck in the month to come. Carmichael recorded many short greetings to her as a guiding light for travellers by land and sea. If you see the new moon tonight, stop, greet her, and say what you hope the month will bring.

Smooring the Fire

The last act of the day was the smàladh, the smooring, the banking of the fire to keep it alive till morning. Carmichael describes it carefully. The embers were spread evenly and gathered into a circle, which was divided into three parts around a small mound in the centre. A peat was laid between each part, the first in the name of the God of Life, the second in the name of the God of Peace, the third in the name of the God of Grace. The circle was then covered with ash, enough to subdue the fire but not to quench it, in the name of the Three of Light, and the woman said the smooring blessing:

The sacred Three
To save,
To shield,
To surround
The hearth,
The house,
The household,
This eve,
This night,
Oh! this eve,
This night,
And every night,
Each single night.Carmina Gadelica

Few of us bank a peat fire. But a candle can be snuffed in three movements, a stove turned down with a word, a lamp switched off with thanks. What matters is the knowledge that the fire is not ended but kept, and that the house is held through the dark.

Lying Down

The Carmina ends the day as it began, with a blessing for lying down: the sleeper asks to be encompassed through the night, by the saints and the angels and the Three. For the practitioner this is also the moment to set a question for the night, as the incubation practice describes, and to put the dream book by the bed.

A Modern Daily Round

This is the shape our circle suggests. Do one part for a month before adding another. The whole round takes perhaps ten minutes in a day.

1. Kindle. Light the first flame or heat the first water of the day deliberately, with a word.
2. Greet. Face the sun, or where the sun is behind the cloud, and greet it.
3. Wash. Three palmfuls of water, each with a blessing.
4. Encompass. On leaving the house, draw the caim, or say the nine elements on the doorstep.
5. Bless the work. Say your own short blessing over the first task of the day.
6. Give thanks for food. Name where it came from before you eat.
7. Greet the moon. Whenever you see her, especially new.
8. Smoor. Put out or bank the last light of the evening in three movements, with a blessing for the house.
9. Lie down. Ask to be held through the night. Set a question if you have one.