It gives me great pleasure to announce that my new novel, 'The Cry of the Sebac', has just been launched on Amazon Kindle.
I am the Sebac Gaoth,
the Hawk on the Wind,
one who has lived beyond memory.
I have listened to the tune of the earth
since before time began
but the music of the world grows sad.
A 12-year-old boy called Fintan meets a mysterious talking bird who claims to have lived forever. The bird, who describes himself as the Sebac Gaoth (the Hawk on the Wind), wants to warn the boy about the danger facing mankind, and to bring him to a fantastic revelation about his own origins and destiny.
The Sebac is a manifestation of ancient wisdom. In the Irish mythic tradition, the hawk appears as a shamanic presence, a voice from the ancient world. The boy represents innocence, but Fintan is about to come of age, and his experiences with the Sebac mark an initiation of sorts, a transition from ordinary mortal to the heroic figure of salvation that mankind desperately needs.
But what can one boy do in the face of such tremendous adversity?
As he journeys through mind and spirit and cosmos, the boy meets several of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Prophecy says they will help man in one final battle against darkness. But the Dananns have their own ideas about who the Samildánach (the Many-Gifted) is, and they want to reveal the one who will shine light into the darkest places and battle to prevent the fall of mankind.
There is a thought that sometimes manifests in my head when I think about the convoluted history of my people. In the stillness of the evening, standing alone at some monument of antiquity, I wonder if it was the sheer beauty of the landscape that made my ancestors stay here – those who were the first to arrive after the ice retreated, and those who later survived imperialism, starvation and poverty.
The world is a big place, and the human race is a migratory species. There were other places these ancestors could have gone to. But they held on.
The forces and factors that kept them here may be the same ones that make me a captive of this wondrous island. Ireland's landscape is lush and fertile. It is beautiful and enrapturing. Many places have an otherwordly placidity about them, even today.
In modern times, there is a tendency to over-rationalise and analyse, such that a landscape that has always been seen as somewhat magical and austere is reduced to something functional and banal. I suggest we refuse to occupy that space. Let us open up to a mystical vista.
Over the past few years in particular, I’ve spent a lot of time at Newgrange, the place most associated with the Tuatha Dé Danann in mythology, known variously as Brugh na Bóinne, Síd in Broga, Síd Mac Ind Oc and the Palace of the Boyne. It’s lovely spending time out there on my own.
I find it such a pleasurable and peaceful and introspective experience. I wrote about this in Newgrange: Monument to Immortality. I can go there, and can feel that, although I am only miles from home, I might have ventured to far distant otherworlds beyond the senses.
I expect that plenty of other people have spent time alone in the evening at Newgrange, but I hardly ever see anyone out there at night. I like it that way.
Newgrange . . . a sacred place with a message for today.
With the shortest days and longest nights upon us, in this, the season of the winter solstice, it would be nice now to think about how we first arrived into Ireland, and how our own journeying here perhaps reflects some of the other journeying going on in the world right now.
In Ireland today, our story is the same as it has always been, since the first days after the ice age. It is a story of comings and goings, of arrivals and departures. Dublin Airport is a great metaphor for Irish mythology and history. There are always people arriving, and always people departing. Some are going on holidays. Others are leaving forever.
How we arrive into Ireland is central to the nature of our belonging here. This is something the late John Moriarty realised and wrote about. Do we descend upon this island from a cloud, wrapped in a mist, like the Dananns? Or do we sail across the rough seas, like the Milesians, with their flotilla of ships – a Spanish Armada of the prehistoric world – to take Ireland, in an act of jealous longing, a rapacious conquest, driven by vengeance?
If we do that, we will never belong here.
I’d much prefer to descend into Ireland in a mist, from the stars, and set my foot gently upon her soil, wrapped up in the Féth Fiada with Manannán by my side. That way, my arrival might take place unknown, so that I could gently tiptoe across dew-covered grasses into some otherworldly copse, and there enchant my every thought with the newfound joy of arrival into an earthly paradise.
I would much prefer this to a Milesian arrival. From a distance of nine waves, as a Milesian you come in sturdy ships, beating drums of battle, and unfurl your banner of war, your standard of conquest.
But no nation ever conquested in spite or by subjugation or force could afterwards live a peaceful existence.
So I urge you to come like the Tuatha Dé Danann. Come in a mist. Arrive magically. And ask Eriú, gently, if perchance you can stay awhile, and dance and sing upon her carpet of tender green, and write joyous words and sing merry songs about netherworlds concealed in the ditches and vales of her beautiful quarters.
And I urge you, as the light creeps up through the dark womb of Newgrange into her cold interior, to think about the fact that, as an Irish person, you are just a visitor to this wonderful place. In essence, you are a migrant. We all came here from over the sea. As a human, you are a born traveller.
And if you arrive into Ireland, Danann-like – magically – you will know, as they did, that there is always room for others. This solstice, let’s share a little bit of that midwinter illumination, for the world of mankind is often dark, and right now it could do with a little bit more of that magical light.
I have started on my next book. Actually, I started before Christmas, but put it to one side to allow the madness of Christmas and the excitement of solstice pass. I've no idea what it's going to be called yet, but what I can tell you is that it will be a collection of Irish myths explained in such a way as to make them relevant to the modern world and our current situation (as much as possible). I don't believe there's any point in merely continuing to tell the stories - as so many books and websites are doing so diligently and laudably. It is clear - and this is something I touched on quite a bit in the Newgrange book - that people are seeking to reconnect with ancient wisdom and roots. This new book aims to assist them in that task. Our myths are not mere stories, simple fireside entertainment. They venture into the depths of the human spirit, and represent aspects of ourselves and our humanity, and, in some ways, our flaws and failings as well as our genius and our brilliance. I believe that, in looking at the stories of the distant yesteryear, we can rekindle the ancestral aspect of ourselves that makes us uniquely who we are as a people, as well as reinvigorating our own inner spirits for the challenges of a frenetic and challenging 21st Century world. This book will be about bringing the Tuatha Dé Danann out of the sídhe and allowing them to become relevant to a modern Irish man and woman who have lost touch with earth and roots and cosmos. The late John Moriarty believed that we could reconstitute ourselves as a people by working from within our tradition. I agree with him. We are adrift, but we are not hopelessly lost. The fire in the head in each of us never burnt out . . . the emergence of the Tuatha Dé from the sídhe is symbolic of our return from a state of dormancy to a state of invigoration. We can stoke the ashes of the sacred fires of antiquity, and call upon the restorative powers of Diancecht, and the regenerative aspects of Bóann and Brigid, and the heroic aspects of Nuadu and Lugh and Cúchulainn and Finn to help us to become who we were supposed to be. We have a proud tradition. We have survived the invasions, the incursions, the gabála (takings). We are the same as the people who built Newgrange. They built it not only as an everlasting testament to their time, but also as an eternal reminder of the unvanquishable nature of our immortal spirits.
"Heaven is above us, and earth beneath us, and the sea is round about us. Unless the sky shall fall with its showers of stars on the ground where we are camped, or unless the earth shall be rent by an earthquake, or unless the waves of the blue sea come over the forests of the living world, we shall not give ground." (From The Táin)
Out of the obscurity of prehistory, a light has emerged . . .
