What is Celtic Spirituality?

Have you ever wondered what Celtic spirituality is, exactly? I mean, we're familiar with Saint Patrick and Celtic music and nature-loving, but what's all the fanfare about? Why has the interest in Celtic spirituality exploded in the past decade? Because these are questions that poked and prodded me in the past - and because I've often been asked by spiritual directees for a good summary-- I put together a ten minute mini podcast. In it, I reveal the two pillars of Celtic spirituality, and why we crave them! Check it out! Into the deep, Kelly PS - If you're really curious about the Celtic world, be sure to check out our Celtic Spirituality School! We've invited all the experts - from John Philip Newell to Esther de Waal and Ilia Delio - to teach about topics like praying with the landscape, thin places, soul friends, and Celtic mysticism.

Check it out at www.celticschool.org!

PPS - We purposely made it affordable for everyone (micro pricing! scholarships!), so no one would be excluded! Leave us a voicemail at https://www.spiritualwanderlust.org/ask for the chance to have your spiritual question answered live!

 What is Celtic Spirituality?  If you're here, I'm guessing you're hungry for a deeper spiritual life. One that's more contemplative, embodied, less concerned with being right than maybe exploring the questions together.  Which is exactly why Celtic Spirituality intrigues us so much.  In this video, I'm going to break down Celtic Spirituality into its two pillars.

and how we can build our lives on the same foundation.  For those of you I haven't met, my name is Kelly Deutsch, and I'm the founder of Spiritual Wanderlust.  Spiritual Wanderlust is a center for contemplative formation, exploring everything from mysticism to neuroscience to inner work. Our whole mission is to support you on your path to wholeness and divine union.

And the ancient Celts, much like Indigenous people all over the world, had some pretty powerful insight into that path.  More than just insight, they lived it, with mischief and mirth.  So, let's get started. What is Celtic Spirituality?  Celtic Spirituality is built upon two pillars, contemplation and embodiment.

These two pillars are the foundation that held up the rest of their practices, from  their wandering monks to their love for oak trees.  But what exactly does that mean?  Let's start with a concrete one first, embodiment.  Contrary to our modern times, Celts were not hyper rational, hyper analytical people.

They were incredible scholars. Check out the book, How Ireland Saved Western Civilization, if you don't believe me.  But they were also very heart and body focused.  How could they not be? I mean, they were a rural society that lived in these gorgeous, you know, rain kissed hills of the British Isles, living much closer to the earth as almost everyone did in ancient societies.

But diseases could wipe out your whole village. You know, childbirth was tenuous. There really no escaping their bodily reality. But the Celts really embraced it with their liturgies, their dances, their songs, and rituals. They just, they loved pilgrimages. They'd go out and hollow the land. Not just going to visit a shrine like we think of in modern pilgrimages, but going to visit a shrine.

Although you can find hundreds of holy wells and sacred sites around Ireland and Scotland and Wales, but their idea of pilgrimage was more of a holy wandering. It was said that monks would set forth in a rudderless boat to see where the spirit would take them.  Their daily lives became their liturgies. 

Not just what they celebrated in a church building, though they didn't really have any of those at the beginning, by the way. They would celebrate Eucharist in a forest grove, but their daily routines had prayers and blessings and ritual for every step of the day. You know, kindling the fire, baking the bread, turning the cattle out to pasture.

Each step had a prayer, a ritual associated with it.  And that's how they bowed to the sacred and the mundane.  To the Celts, matter mattered.  The Divine was just as present in a crying child as she is in the oak tree and the Junebug or the breeze.  They were all messengers. A bit like the concept of an angel, you know, the seas, the hills, the doves, the wolves, all might be sent by God to give you a message. 

The Celts also popularized the concept of a soul friend, or Anamkara.  Similar to what you'd find in desert spirituality in Egypt, the Celts knew it was important to have a real life person you could talk to, walk with, process life.  Don't get me wrong, they were also great friends with the saints in heaven whom they couldn't touch, but having a tactile human being who could support you and call you on was another way that they lived sacramentality of the world. 

So that's a quick snapshot of their bodilyness. Rituals, friends, music, land.  But they're also deeply contemplative,  which I understand is a bit of a squishy word. So what do I mean by that? Contemplative.  First of all, it's holistic. You might call it non dual, or all embracing. Instead of seeing the world in black and white, the Celts embraced it in all its technicolor glory. 

So they embraced seeming opposites, head and heart. Here and the Hereafter, Discipline and Passion, East and West, Pagan and Christian, Spirit and Matter, Solitude and Community, Male and Female.  This is not an easy dance to balance all of those things that feel so opposite, contrary.  You know, when do I let my rational brain lead, and when do I follow my intuition?

How do I embrace my religion of origin while still being open to the beauty of others?  How do I find solitude and stillness while still fostering a sense of togetherness with my family,  at least in part due to the God they worshipped?  The Celts knew that God was holy mystery. Not a mystery in the sense of a puzzle to figure out, but THE mystery with a capital M. 

Their name for the spirit was the wild goose. You know, the ornery, unpredictable bird that constantly surprises us. Not the tame, peaceful dove like a lot of Christianity imagines the spirit to be.  The spirit they experienced was one that would regularly Turn their expectations on their head, or disturb them in the best sense of the word. 

That mystery was particularly present in thin spaces.  A thin space was an experience or a place where the veil between heaven and earth was particularly thin.  The saints, those who have passed, the whole Cosmic mystery was present.  It might be at someone's death, or maybe at a baby's birth, or in those liminal moments between night and day, or between a season of darkness and the coming spring. 

It could be a particular yew tree that sparkled with the sacred, or the coastline where the land met the sea.  They were always places of meeting, you know, heaven and earth, sea and sky, life and death.  Again, they lived in that non dual, both and, liminal spaces.  But Celtic spirituality was also profoundly impacted by monasticism. 

Celtic villages were often centered around a monastery, which became the hub of activity for the community, with, you know, prayer and asceticism, learning, agriculture, protection. It was all, all there around the monastery.  But that monastic rhythm of life can be seen even in laypeople's lives, like those daily liturgies and rituals that we talked about.

Tending the fire, bringing in animals from the pasture, extinguishing the lights at night.  That was all part of their liturgy. This is not unlike the Benedictine Ora et Labora, which is Latin for work and prayer,  or the monks habit of praying the Psalms seven times a day. Both of those have a certain rhythm to it, to their work, to their prayer, so that they sacralize every hour.

This is why you might call the Celts mystical, which is a synonym for contemplative. It embraced mystery, those liminal spaces. Body and mind, here and hereafter. That, in sum, is your quick and dirty ten minute summary of Celtic spirituality.  Embodied and contemplative.  To learn more, we invite you to join us in our Celtic Spirituality School, where we're going to spend a full month on each one of those topics, like pilgrimage, or what we might call spiritual wanderlust, the sacredness of the landscape, soul friends, and more.

Celtic creativity and the importance of storytelling and art and song. The wild adventures of the monks. The Celtic feminine, which we didn't even get into here. The Celtic imagination. But following that Celtic way, we're not only going to use our heads, but immerse your heart and body to help you experience what it was like to live in a world sparkling with the sacred. 

Each masterclass is going to be taught by a world renowned expert like John Philip Newell and Esther de Waal, the woman who's footnoted in everyone else's books.  You'll get the chance to immerse yourself in their world.  I can't wait to get started.  If you enjoyed this video, please let us know in the comments below.

What struck you and what would you like to learn more about?  Lastly, we invite you to share this video and the Celtic Spirituality School with your friends. It's our goal to make this kind of rich contemplative formation available to everyone. So let them know it's here for the taking. Spread the word. 

And thank you so much for joining us. Are you curious about Celtic spirituality? Or maybe craving an earthier, more embodied life?  Come join us for the Celtic Spirituality School. Each month, you'll be immersed in a new aspect of the Celtic world, from sacred landscapes to rhythm and ritual, monasticism, soul friendships. 

Each of our 12 masterclasses will be led by world renowned experts like John Philip Newell and Esther de Waal and Sharon Blackie and Ilia Delio.  The Celts lived in a world where everything sparkled with the sacred.  Come discover how you can too.  Join us at Celtic Spirituality School.