Druid's Prayer III: ... strength understanding... knowledge

[DaRC]

Hi all,
firstly I must agree with everyone - Alferian thanks for introducing such thought provoking and searching threads.

Laurelin I absolutely agree - nature is both kind and unkind. The Hindu's, possibly all the Indo-europeans, have G-O-D as Growth, Order, Decay or Destruction which in the Northern tribes could be the Vanir (Ingvi-Frey), Aesir (Odin) and Jotuns (Loki) or Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva (I think I'm not so clued up on the Hindu's).

Alferian within the example of the asteroid I think the only advice that can be given is that "it is the will of the God/the Gods/Allah etc..."
In the UK, as children, the story of our national hero Admiral Horatio Nelson always finishes with the story of him dying, at the battle of Trafalgar (his greatest triumph) from a gunshot wound. He turns to his next in command and friend and says
"Kismet Hardy" (kismet means 'it is my fate'). The apocryphal saying is "Kiss me Hardy".

As Brennus the leader of the Celts who invaded Greece told them (the Greeks):
"We Celts are afraid of nothing, except the sky falling in on our heads."
They focused on living an honourable life and having a brave death.
If we can manage that then the Summerlands/Heaven/Valhalla awaits.

The Norns sit at the root of the Yggdrasil the World Tree and not even Odin knows when they will snip the thread of life.

My wife's best friend died, at the age of 38, very suddenly of a brain tumour. She was a unique and special individual who was full of life. So it is a question we've mulled over this past year.

Cheers, Dave.

[Alferian]

Laurelin I absolutely agree - nature is both kind and unkind. The Hindu's, possibly all the Indo-europeans, have G-O-D as Growth, Order, Decay or Destruction which in the Northern tribes could be the Vanir (Ingvi-Frey), Aesir (Odin) and Jotuns (Loki) or Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva (I think I'm not so clued up on the Hindu's).

I like that. Very good.

"We Celts are afraid of nothing, except the sky falling in on our heads."

There you go: the official Druid doctrine on asteroids.

A.

[Seeker]

And here I thought we had no dogma...

[Alferian]

I can't resist pointing out the difference between dogma and doctrine. I know you are just kidding, Emrys, but it's a good point. Druids have lots of doctrines (i.e., "teachings"), but no dogmas because there is no centralized authoritarian structure to make them. This from Dictionary.com:

1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.

2. An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true.

3. A principle or belief or a group of them: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” (Abraham Lincoln).


I like that last quote from Lincoln. So dogmas require a centralized authority, a "church." And it requires centralized authority that believes it can make decisions for its members. OBOD, for example, as a Druid order is sort of organized and does have a sort of central figure in the Chosen Chief. But Philip, at any rate, doesn't occupy that role as one of superiority or kingship. Compare this, for example, to the Pope and the Catholic Church. You need that sort of kinglike spiritual leader and a Strict Father idea of morality and authority to get dogmas.

Who is to say that an asteroid hitting the Earth is all bad? After all, the last one was bad for the dinosaurs but ultimately may have facilitated our evolution. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Who is to say? Seems to me that the Druidic ideal of "understanding" is the ability to understand that everything is interdependent and relative. It is not possible to judge in an absolute sense whether anything is purely "good" or "evil." Did the Iron Age Druids think this way? Nobody knows, but I bet they talked about the question!

[EarthWard]

[radgareb]

Protection, Strength, Understanding?
An old man wept gazing at his reflection in a pool, another man passing inquires. I am weeping because I have lost my innocence! Man replies, you had better weep that you ever had it. Old man sighs and says, it is that for wich mirror gazing is the cure.

[Old Peculier]

An Old man knelt before a pool weeping at his reflection. A bard in blue robes came up behind him, harp slung over his shoulder. "Why are you weeping, old man? Lose something?"
"I weep for my lost innocence."
The bard replies, "Oh I see." Then he kicks the old man in the pants and sends him head first into the pool.
The old one emerges, spluttering and covered in duckweed. The bard looks sternly at him and says,
"Stop annoying the pool, old man, and go out and find Innocence again. You are old. You haven't much time left. Don't waste it feeling sorry for yourself."

And the bard walked on happily singing to himself and the trees.

[Maester Fwibos]

Perhaps, and I am going out on a limb with this, but Understanding might mean an emotional understanding of the world in relation to yourself?

The greek word is 'Saphrosune' - meaning roughly self mastery.

It reminds me of when I was a child and and I first saw a Luna moth. I feared it, because I felt unsafe. My mother said that it was "more afraid of I than I of it.". Because I felt safe (protection with my mom), I felt I could not be harmed by the moth (strength), and so I was immediately curious about this new thing in my world.
And so I learned about a Luna moth (Knowledge).

A bit of a rustic explanation, but I think you'll see my meaning.

Jason

[Scáthach]

Ugh, I can't cut-and-paste my Greek!  I see why you did it phonetically!

Fwibos, if I were going to translate that concept into ancient Greek, I would use 'gnwmhn exein', literally 'to have a means of knowing' but idiomatically 'understanding'.  The trust you had in your mother was your means of knowing that you were safe (I love this example in the context of the prayer, by the way!).

Swfrosunh (double-ugh, how did you do that? sophrosune?) isn't really 'self-mastery', unless you're talking about appetites.  It's more self-control or discretion, healthy moderation of desires -- apparently the word meant something closer to 'mental health' to Hesiod (soundness of mind), which is why it's often mistranslated as 'wisdom', but by the time Plato and Aristotle were writing, it comes to mean self-control or temperance.  These days you'll see it translated as 'prudence', which isn't a word I like much, but there you are.

This really is a beautiful example of understanding from strength in protection and I hope you share it with your mom!

[Maester Fwibos]

D'oh! You got me there, I flubbed up what I was trying to say. I meant the Socratic mastery of emotions - The phrase escapes me now (I have the worst chronic case of tip-of the-tongue-desease).

In this context, it refers to the understanding, as you say, that exploring the world comes easier to those who intuit what is frightening and what is not. Proper habituation and protection yields this sort of courage.  

*stops and reads*

Turns out the word that I wanted is courage... in English, at least. My Greek is rustier than.. well, heck.. something extremely rusty. (My colloquialism generator hasn't started today)

Anyway, I think Understanding denotes this sort of Courage.

By the by, I'm having flashbacks to my Ancient Greek Philosophers class.

I'm glad somebody knew what I was talking about!

Jason

Edited: I am a poor typist, and make many errors. So i cleaned them up.

[Eustacia]

To me the use of Understanding is asking the Divine to help us to understand the old ways, to understand the world around us, to understand that which we do not know, to show us the wisdom of the world in it's purest form and to allow us into that.

Thus by having this undertsanding we are able to strive for a better world, by understanding that around us we begin to see the changes needed to maintain that and to truly battle for that within the world.

Peace & Light

Stacy