Post by Fool Coyote on Mar 27, 2008 15:07:38 GMT -5
The Salmon
"Fifteen years I lived before the flood, said Fintan, "and as likely as not I should have perished along with the rest of my kin, but I was hidden in the Earth at Tul Tuinde and so survived, but my noble sons and my wife white handed Cessair all perished, and that brought such terrible sadness upon me that I longed to die. Perhaps that is why the gods chose to put me in another shape for a while. For one day I awoke and I had become a salmon. Ah! but that was the sweetest of time! Never had I felt such freedom as when I followed the rivers of Ireland!"
And to the Hawk he sang this song:
"My sorrows fell from me,
as I rode the waters,
the Bush, the Bann, and the brown Burr,
the Suck, the Suir, and the Shannon!
In the Moy, the Mourne, and the Muir,
the Solan, the Slaney, and Sligo I swam,
till I came to Liffey, the Lee, and the Laune,
and at last to the estuary of Erne!"
-Lebor Gabala Erin
To me the salmon is a totem of many flows and associations. The above story is one of a few I will highlight to help show how the Celts saw the Salmon (sometimes give as trout in some texts) one of the oldest animals if not the oldest, and therefore was the wisest of all. Fintan in the story gives us the beginnings of the salmon's representations as being one of travel, growth, and following one's path or flow to it's source, as does the salmon every year. The salmon as a totem animal shows us the importance of getting back to the basics, and from there rediscovering one's source in being. In the story "the hawk of Achill" we saw the salmon as an animal who began at the most primordial aspects of creation and from there, down through the ages of Ireland so that all that has ever transpired is retained within the salmon's memory.
Here we see some of the reasons why we Druids work to compress memory and work to memorize what is *known* as it is in this way a Druid connects with deity, and comes to taste the salmon of wisdom for themselves as Fionn Mac Cumhall told his mentor at the well of Segias in the Fenian tale of Fionn and the salmon of wisdom:
The legend of the Salmon of wisdom:
Long ago, in the realm of the Sidhe, which over laps our own, the branches of nine hazels overhung a deep pool on the river Boyne in Ireland. Hazel nuts (wisdom) fell from these branches into the pool and were the food of the salmon who lived therein. It is said that the most ancient of druids had foretold that whom-so-ever should eat of this great salmon of knowledge and wisdom would forever have achieved all the wisdoms that this world this reality, this plain, or any other has to offer.
It is said that the Druid Finnéigeas had been seven years fishing for the salmon at the pool of Segias, three weeks after arriving at the home of the Druid the salmon was caught, and by being to excited to cook the salmon himself, Finnéigeas lost his chance at all the knowledge of the world to Fionn, who the salmon was meant for.
"Fionn prepared the salmon, but as he took it from the fire three blisters rose from it's skin spurting the juices on his thumb, he placed it in his mouth to ease the pain and in that instant knowledge entered him and in that moment he knew all that had happened from the time of the flood on."
Fionn's eating of the salmons flesh is a supremely totemic act which in all likelihood is rooted in far more ancient traditions of receiving power from the guardian of the tuath or clan. It is a beautifully shamanic act, as it serves to connect Fionn to generations of Faery see'ers as well as more ancestral roots.
So here we begin to see the salmon as both a seeker, and as the teacher, or giver of knowledge and wisdom. This association begins at the pool, or well of Segias where the nine hazels of wisdom over hang the pool. The salmon who is associated with knowledge and memory feeds only from the fruits of the wise wood thus IMO showing that knowledge and memory feed off wisdom and vice versa. I have heard it said that to consume or eat something is to make that thing a permanently part of one's make-up which in many ways seems to be what the Irish Celts were trying to tell us with stories like these, as well as their more symbolic and shamanic natures.
The salmon is nourished by the fruits of wisdom, it is in this way he becomes the seeker, it is by the symbolic eating of his flesh the seeker becomes the teacher. It is through the salmon's flesh that the knowledge and wisdom of tradition becomes transferable to the individual. It is then through this transference of seeking one's source, consumption of memory and wisdom, within the self that more hidden meanings and truths begin to surface. In this way the salmon totem becomes a seeker of hidden meaning and paths that were previously obscured. This point is shown further in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, a Welsh story from the Mabinogion.This is a story of how the world's oldest animals help as guides in showing Arthur's warriors how to find a child prisoner called Mabon:
"The salmon stuck his old scarred head out of the water and said, "As much as I know I will tell, every time the tide rises I swim up along the that runs beneath the walls of Caer Loyw, and there I have heard on many occasions one who is in pain crying out for release. Such sorrow and evil is in that place that I've never felt the like. There indeed you will find a prisoner, though if it is Mabon son of Modron I know not.""
The salmon and the warriors of Arthur went on to free the hidden prisoner through battle. The warriors in this Arthurian legend come into contact with the world's oldest animals, each sending them on to the next, and it is only the salmon who understands and helps to achieve that which is hidden and locked away from freedom.
Other stories include Cu Culainn's "Salmon leap" which he used when he was in his year and a day training process under Scathatch on the Isle of Sky. The reason for his using the leap was to gain Scathatch's advanced knowledge of arms....Every leap Cu Chulainn made into the realm of the sidhe the more knowledge he would attain. Over and over through out the texts the salmon has been there, watching and learning from us....
The salmon teaches us to patiently await knowledge and to progressively retain it as memory, it teaches us that following our path or flow will ultimately lead us back to a much more elaborate complex source, it teaches that sometimes that to achieve the fruits of wisdom, we need to swim against the current and leap for it with all our might. To always be aware of both bigger fish and the myriad of possibilities. It teaches us to be strong in the face of the unknown in order to free and unlock deeply hidden truths and thus ennobling one's self from one's center.
Senbecc
