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Ceist: What is a Dagda Bard? Ní Ansa…
We get asked a lot of questions about Irish Gods, spiritual practices, Irish culture, history and mythology… and honestly we’re delighted. That’s the area of our interest and passion, and also the area where we wished for more content on our own spiritual journeys.
Of course wishing for something is only part of the manifestation process and so, in the absence of other native content creators (at the time), we just had to get up and do it ourselves. This is in a way the ‘why’ for my chosen calling – I became that which I had longed to find in my life. A Dagda Bard.
✨ Post by Jon O’Sullivan
Out of the Darkness, Light!
Almost a decade ago now the direction of my life changed in more ways than one, and though finding my partner and sharing in our life together is the most significant for me, the other change cannot be discounted. It all began with what I can only describe as an existential discomfort.
Nothing I did, none of my usual processes of calming and self soothing worked as a feeling of anxious anticipation grew upon me. All unplanned and unlooked for I found myself at the Dublin pagan pub moot that year, a place I was not known to frequent. Arriving late I found the only seat available to me, right in front of the impressive person presenting their topic.
That topic? The Morrigan.
After the talk this impressive and experienced Morrigan priest looked at me with a gaze not fully her own and said, in a voice also not fully her own;
“You owe me time!”
Suddenly the existential discomfort had not just a source, but a purpose. The Morrigan had placed a ‘call’ upon me. Of course what was I to do, if not live to my own nature… and procrastinate. So it was that months later I had need of that priest’s services as I knew it was her alone who could guide my journey as I answered the Morrigan’s call.
The journey had many moments that I hold important to myself, not least of which is meeting the Morrigan in the pitch darkness of ‘her fit abode’, the cave of the cats, and respectfully declining her offer to accept my service.
I had always tried to live a life of spiritual connection and for years had been fascinated with all things outside the mundane. Though I had experienced many things up to that point, nothing compared to the moment the Goddess set her gaze upon me in that darkness. Yet I still found the words to share the truth I knew then but could not righty explain, that I was not meant for herself.
As the moment passed the Morrigan’s priest spoke out of the darkness with her own voice and advised that I should leave the cave but be wary for the way is not easy. As I turned to prepare to leave I saw the path easily, brightly lit with golden rays of sun. I said as much to the priest only to hear her sudden gasp, she no doubt having just opened her eyes to see the light.
I clambered up out of that darkness returning to our world, taking the last tight turn to arrive above in the light of a fading day. Eventually the Morrigan priest followed only to express her confusion as to how sunlight could have taken a 90 degree turn to shine beneath the earth, with nothing to reflect or refract its course.
I knew no answer to offer them at that time and it would be quite some time again until I found the answer. However, I was not yet a Dagda Bard.
“The Dagda! Fine I’ve said it, are we done?”
It was indeed quite some time until I knew the answer to what, or indeed who, could bend light and send it down into the Morrigan’s cave. The Morrigan priest and I had started and built a strong relationship and I still engaged in my annual service to the Pagan community by assisting at her yearly convention.
Time had passed since my experience with the Morrigan in her cave, and though her existential call had been lifted something else had very gently taken its place. I can only describe it as a subtle awareness of something ‘Other’ paying interested attention to me. Of course I chalked most of this up to an active imagination, but when others about me seemed to distractedly shift their focus to something unseen over my shoulder I knew that there was more happening than I could dismiss. Still, one should never reckon against the intentional and wilful obliviousness of one who is not ready to accept that which they already know, even if it is somewhere buried deep down inside them.
That ‘subtle awareness’ first lost its subtlety, yet remained gently patient. Yet when gentle patience was set against my intentional obliviousness, well sad to say it had no recourse but to be less gentle and more direct in its intensity. Still, though my experience of spiritual connected living had radically altered with meeting the Morrigan, I was not willing to go further.
The next step came on an early Saturday as I lay in the bed of the couple with my partner. The intensity had become a looming presence in the corners of my mind yet I had no intention of stepping forward and acknowledging it. So it was that something very unexpected happened.
“The Dagda! Fine I’ve said it, are we done?”
Out of nowhere my partner, the Morrigan priest, blurted the words that gave me, not just confirmation that I was not the only one perceiving this, but also a name. A name which landed in my brain as a key, not just to recognition but to a whole lot more.
A key that I had but to choose to take up and allow my life to change again. A key to knowing the Dagda. However, I was not yet a Dagda Bard.
Know Me By My Stories…
What had begun as an experience and grown into a presence, now became a question. The answers to which I knew I could find, now that I had a name. Could find, but what about should find? I found myself questioning everything. All that I believed I knew, all that happened around me and all that I had been raised to believe. I had a looming presence in my life which now had a name. So I did the only thing I knew how to, I asked what it wanted of me?
I had prepared myself for requests of service, for offerings, devotions, sacrifices and all the other things that religion had handed me as a child. I set my will firmly against all of these things. I had come out of the dogma of my raised religion and seen the hypocrisy of the institution that sat at the heart of that religion. I still had faith, but its direction was not set on myself and on the nature of others in my life. So I had prepared all of my arguments, all of my perspectives and readied my will to refuse another deity.
“I just want us to get to know each other.”
At that moment all I had prepared became useless, pointless defences raised against a perceived challenge that would never come. This was no demand of obeisance, not claim of worship, service or sacrifice. It was simply an open handed invitation to connect and learn together.
“How?” I had asked.
“Know me by my stories.” he replied with a smile.
And that is how I became a Dagda Bard.
The Dagda is an important God in Irish Celtic Mythology…
Take a FREE Class to Learn More About the Dagda!
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