Glossary
The words of two traditions, Irish and Welsh and Gaelic on one side and the vocabulary of the modern shamanic revival on the other, in one place.
Anam Cara Irish, "soul friend"
The spiritual friend or confessor of the early Irish church; made famous by John O’Donohue’s 1997 book. In practice, the companion who hears your journeys without judgement.
Animism
The understanding that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human. Rivers, hills, trees, weathers and animals have their own interiority. The ground on which all shamanic practice stands.
Annwn Welsh, "the deep place"
The Welsh Otherworld, ruled by Arawn and later Gwyn ap Nudd. Pwyll exchanges places with Arawn for a year in the first branch of the Mabinogi; Arthur raids it for a cauldron in the poem Preiddeu Annwfn.
Aos Sí Irish, "people of the mounds"
The fairy folk of Irish tradition, understood as the Tuatha Dé Danann living on inside the hills. Also sídhe or sí, originally the mounds themselves. Treated with courtesy and caution.
Awen Welsh, "inspiration, flowing spirit"
The poetic and prophetic inspiration of the Welsh bards, the Welsh counterpart of Irish imbas. Modern Druids chant the word and use a three-rayed symbol for it.
Axis Mundi Latin, "axis of the world"
The central pillar, tree or mountain that joins the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds in shamanic cosmologies. In the Celtic lens, the bile.
Bean Feasa Irish, "woman of knowledge"
The wise woman of Irish folk tradition who healed, found lost things and negotiated with the fairies. Her male counterpart was the fairy doctor. The nearest thing to a shaman in recent Irish memory.
Beltane Irish Bealtaine, "bright fire"
The fire festival of 1 May that opens summer. Cattle were driven between two fires for protection and the fires of Uisneach were said to be lit first. See the Wheel of the Year.
Bile Irish, "sacred tree"
The great tree of a tribe or a place, under which kings were inaugurated. Ireland remembered five: the Oak of Mugna, the Yew of Ross, the Ash of Tortu, the Ash of Dathi and the Ash of Uisneach. The Celtic world tree, always rooted in a specific spot.
Brigid Irish Bríd, Scottish Bride
Goddess of poetry, smithcraft and healing, daughter of the Dagda, whose feast of Imbolc became the feast of St Brigid of Kildare. Patron of the fire in the head.
Cailleach Gaelic, "veiled one, hag"
The old woman of winter who shaped the hills by dropping stones from her apron, whose chair is on the Loughcrew hills, and who turns to stone or to a young woman at Beltane.
Caoineadh Irish, "keening"
The sung lament for the dead performed by women, the mná caointe, at the wake and the grave. A psychopomp practice in all but name, suppressed by the church and nearly lost by the twentieth century.
Cauldron
The Dagda’s cauldron leaves no company unsatisfied; Ceridwen’s brews inspiration; the cauldron of Annwn will not boil a coward’s food; the Gundestrup cauldron shows Cernunnos among the beasts. The Celtic vessel of transformation. See also Three Cauldrons.
Core Shamanism
Michael Harner’s term for the near-universal methods of shamanic practice, above all the drum journey to the Three Worlds, taught without the specific dress of any one culture. The method most Celtic practitioners learned first.
Dúchas Irish, "heritage, native place, inborn nature"
The quality of belonging to a place and a people by birth and by nurture; what the land gives you. Also the name of the National Folklore Collection’s online archive.
Deiseal Irish, "sunwise, rightwards"
Clockwise movement, following the sun, used in rounds at wells and in blessing. Its opposite, tuathal, is for undoing and for the dark of the year. Boánn walked tuathal around the Well of Segais and the river Boyne burst forth.
Divination
Seeking knowledge from the spirits. Core shamanism does it by journey; the filidh did it by imbas forosnai, teinm laída and díchetal do chennaib; the folk did it by the turning of the year, especially on Samhain night.
Druid Old Irish druí, Gaulish druides
The priestly and learned class of the Iron Age Celts, described by Caesar and Pliny, who left no writings. In Irish tales druids prophesy, raise mists and shift shape. Modern Druidry is a revival dating from the eighteenth century.
Echtra Irish, "adventure, outing"
A tale in which a hero goes into the Otherworld, often through a mound, and returns changed. Echtra Nerai, the Adventure of Nera, is the great Samhain story.
Extraction
A shamanic healing method in which the practitioner removes a spiritual intrusion from a client. In folk tradition, the drawing out of the fairy dart or elf-shot.
Fetch Welsh and Irish folk belief
A person’s double or spirit-animal, the sight of which could foretell death. A folk cousin of the power animal.
File Irish, pl. filidh, "seer"
The professional poet-seer of Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, trained for up to twelve years, keeper of genealogy and law, feared satirist and practitioner of imbas forosnai. The druid’s successor and the shaman’s closest Celtic cousin.
Geilt Irish, "wild one, madman"
A person driven mad by battle who flees to the wilderness, grows feathers and lives in the trees, as Suibhne does in Buile Shuibhne. Read by many as a Celtic image of shamanic crisis and initiation.
Geis Irish, pl. geasa
A sacred prohibition or obligation laid on a person, often at birth, whose breaking brings doom. Cú Chulainn dies when his geasa are turned against each other. A reminder that vows in this tradition are binding.
Helping Spirit
Any spirit who has chosen to work with a practitioner for the good of others: a power animal, a teacher, an ancestor, the spirit of a plant or place. The shaman works by relationship, not by personal power.
Imbas Forosnai Irish, "great knowledge that illuminates"
The chief method of seership of the filidh: the poet chews a piece of raw flesh, chants over the palms, sleeps in darkness with the palms over the face, and wakes with the vision. Described in Cormac’s Glossary, c. 900.
Imbolc Irish, "in the belly", or Oimelc, "ewe’s milk"
The festival of 1 February that opens spring, feast of Brigid, time of lambing and returning light. See the Wheel of the Year.
Immram Irish, pl. immrama, "rowing about"
A voyage tale in which the hero sails west from island to island of the Otherworld. Immram Brain, Immram Curaig Maíle Dúin and the Latin Navigatio Brendani are the great examples. Journey literature of the first order.
Journey shamanic journey
The core practice of shamanism: a deliberate movement of consciousness, usually to the drum, into the Lower, Middle or Upper World, with a clear intention and a return. See the Practices page.
Lower World
In shamanic cosmology, the realm reached by going down into the earth: a place of nature, animals and ancestral power. In the Celtic lens, the realm under the mound and under the wave.
Lughnasadh Irish Lúnasa, "assembly of Lugh"
The festival of 1 August that opens harvest, founded by Lugh in memory of his foster-mother Tailtiu, marked by games, hill climbs and the first fruits. See the Wheel of the Year.
Middle World
In shamanic cosmology, our own world seen from its spirit side. Most Celtic Otherworld encounters happen here: the mist, the mound, the stranger on the road.
Neart Irish, "strength, power"
Spiritual and vital force; the strength of the land, of a person, of a well. The nearest Irish word to what shamanic practitioners mean by power.
Nemeton Gaulish, "sacred grove"
A sanctuary of the continental Celts, often a clearing in a wood, remembered in place-names from Spain to Turkey. Celtic worship was outdoors.
Nonordinary Reality
Harner’s term for the state and the worlds experienced in the shamanic journey, as distinct from ordinary waking reality. Neither is more real than the other; they are different.
Ogham Irish, also Ogam
The early Irish alphabet of strokes cut across a stem line, carved on stones from the fourth century. Later scholars gave its letters tree names, the basis of modern Ogham tree lore and divination.
Otherworld Irish an Saol Eile, Welsh Annwn
The parallel realm of the Celtic imagination, inhabited by the gods and the dead, reached through mounds, wells, mist and the western sea. Not a heaven or hell but a neighbour.
Power Animal
A guardian animal spirit who lends its strength and nature to a practitioner. Its loss is felt as weakness and misfortune; its retrieval is a classic healing. In the Celtic lens, see fetch and the beasts of Tuan and Taliesin.
Psychopomp Greek, "guide of souls"
One who guides the dead to where they are going. In Celtic tradition the keening women, Manannán the ferryman and the Morrígan all do this work.
Ráth Irish, "ringfort", also lios, dún
The earthen enclosures that dot the Irish landscape, called fairy forts and protected by a taboo on their destruction that is still honoured by many farmers.
Samhain Irish, "summer’s end"
The festival of 31 October to 1 November that opens winter and the new year, when the doors of the mounds stand open and the dead return. Ancestor of Halloween. See the Wheel of the Year.
Soul Retrieval
A shamanic healing in which the practitioner journeys to find and return parts of a person’s essence lost through trauma. In folk terms, bringing back one who was taken by the fairies.
Sovereignty Irish flaitheas
The goddess of the land whose marriage to the rightful king made the land fertile. The ugly hag who becomes beautiful when kissed by the true heir. The idea that right relationship with the land is the basis of all rule.
Tír na nÓg Irish, "land of the young"
The best-known name for the Irish Otherworld, the land over the western sea where Oisín lived with Niamh for three hundred years that felt like three. Also Tír Tairngire, the Land of Promise, and Mag Mell, the Plain of Delight.
Tarbfeis Irish, "bull-feast, bull-sleep"
A royal divination in which a seer ate of a slaughtered bull and slept in its hide while four druids chanted over him, to dream the identity of the true king. Described in the tale of the Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel.
Tech Duinn Irish, "the house of Donn"
The island off the Beara peninsula where Donn, first of the Gaels to die, gathers the dead before their journey west. The Irish house of the dead.
Thin Place
A place where the veil between worlds is thin: a well, a shore, a mound, a mountain, Iona. A phrase of Celtic Christian origin now used widely in Celtic spirituality.
Three Cauldrons Irish Coire Goiriath, Coire Érmai, Coire Sois
The cauldrons of Warming, Motion and Wisdom within the person, described in the Old Irish text The Cauldron of Poesy, which are turned upright by joy and sorrow and filled by inspiration.
Triskele Greek, "three-legged"
The triple spiral carved on the entrance stone and in the inner chamber at Newgrange, five thousand years old, and the symbol of this site. Its meaning is unrecorded; threes run through everything Celtic.
Tuatha Dé Danann Irish, "peoples of the goddess Danu"
The gods of Ireland, who arrived in a mist, brought four treasures, defeated the Fomorians, and after their defeat by the Gaels went to live inside the hills as the aos sí.
Turas Irish, "journey, pilgrimage"
The traditional pilgrimage round at a holy well or saint’s site, walked sunwise with prayers at each station. The Celtic word for what we do on a sacred places pilgrimage.
Upper World
In shamanic cosmology, the realm reached by going up: a place of teachers, light and wide perspective. In the Celtic lens, the sky realm and the Land of Promise, thinly described in the sources.
Wheel of the Year
The modern eightfold calendar of four Celtic fire festivals and four solar points. The fire festivals are ancient Gaelic quarter days; the eightfold synthesis dates from the mid-twentieth century. See the Wheel of the Year page.
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