THE

SALMON
SPRING
in
the

The Ecology of

H
Celtic Spirituality

Jason Kirkey
foreword by
Frank MacEowen

Hiraeth Press
San Francisco
 To the ancestors—
Copyright © 2009 Jason Kirkey whose wisdom should not be forgotton…
and to the future generations—
All Rights Reserved. This book may not
be reproduced, in whole or in part, stored to whom the difficult tasks will fall.
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means without permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages.

First Edition 2009

Cover and text design by Jason Kirkey

Cover photograph: © iStockphoto.com / Natalia Bratslavsky

ISBN: 978-0-9799246-6-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009908769

Published by Hiraeth Press

San Francisco, California
www.hiraethpress.com
 H
CONTENTS

Foreword
by Frank MacEowen . . . ix

We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves, even Introduction . . . 1
deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the earth process itself, a spirituality Part One: The Ecology of Perception
born out of the solar system and even out of the heavens beyond the solar system. 1. Place and Story . . . 15
There in the stars is where the primordial elements take shape in both their physical 2. Wild Earth, Wild Mind . . . 35
and psychic aspects. There is a certain triviality in any spiritual discipline that does 3. The Fomorian Eye . . . 53
not experience itself as supported by the spiritual as well as the physical dynamics 4. Tuatha Dé Danann Vision . . . 75
of the entire cosmic-earth process. A spirituality is a mode of being in which not 5. Dreamtime Circle . . . 97
only the divine and the human commune with each other, but we discover ourselves 6. The Birdreign . . . 117
in the universe and the universe discovers itself in us.
—Thomas Berry
Part Two: The Well and the Branch
7. The Soul's Horizon . . . 135
8. Borderlands . . . 157
9. Connla's Well . . . 177
10. Ecos and Psyche . . . 203
11. Empty Mountains . . . 219
Coda: The Man Who Had No Story . . . 241

Glossary of Terms . . . 249

Notes . . . 259
Bibliography . . . 273
Resources . . . 279
Acknowledgements . . . 281
About the Author . . . 285

vii
 FOREWORD

H
by Frank MacEowen

O n the cover of this book is a gorgeous image: Luminous bands of sun-

light cascade down through the mist and settle on a pristine forest of ever-
greens and deciduous trees. A streambed of shining water trickles over dark stones,
mirroring clouds and the light of day on its surface. It is easy to imagine a solitary
deer entering the scene, lapping up her morning refreshment at the river’s edge; or
a beaver gnawing down another sapling to add to the home he builds for his family
in the face of impending winter.
There is something primal and comforting about the photograph. The land-
scape invites us into a contemplative state, one that mirrors the slow rhythm of the
forest and the sky-mirroring “art” of the stream. The image of the forest speaks
of a softer way of being as well as the unseen integrity inherently woven within the
harmonious bonds of relationship that shape the ecosystem.
The harmonious bond of which I speak is the original language of the planet.
A few knowledge-bearing wisdom-keepers in the human family still remember this
language. All of the other species on the planet are fluent, for it is encoded within
them, and their days and nights are aligned with it. Whether wise two-legged, four-
legged, or the finned and winged ones, this ancient language is a sacred language
that shapes their songs, their stories, and their patterns of seasonal activity and
movement. It is a language that most of us have forgotten. We must re-learn this
language, and guide our lives by it, or it will be our peril.
A stark juxtaposition to the beautiful image that graces the cover of this book
is the cover of the September 2009 issue of National Geographic. The photo-
graphs and paintings in the article entitled “Before New York” say it all. In the

ix
x The Salmon in the Spring
article, ecologists turn back the clock by four centuries to reveal how Manhat-
tan Island would have appeared before industrial development. The comparison is
shocking.
In one set of plates we have the image of ponds, beaver, elk, miles and miles
of untouched forest, with one image of a Lenape village set up according to an
undoubtedly minimum impact ethic. These retrospective paintings are juxtaposed
with photographs of the actual human footprint today. Needless to say, the vast
majority of the natural world is gone, replaced with concrete, unnatural lighting,
and tributaries of sludge and waste rather than streams of pure water.
In contrast to the songs and stories of those who live according to the original
language, our current story is one of disconnection from our naturalness. With
no regard to the immediate or eventual backlash to our own bodies, our neigh-
bors downstream, that of future generations, or the indigenous cultures around
the planet (who tend “technologies of the sacred” for remembering the original
language), the technocratic industrial complex continues its steady march forward.
Fueled by greed, chemicals, an addiction to petroleum, an obsession with con-
sumption, and a false myth that the natural “resources” of our planet are an un-
ending supply chain, we of the “First World” (unless you live completely “off-the-
grid”) are perpetrators, recipients, and devotees to a toxic reality—albeit for many
people unconsciously. In fact, the forces at work count on the masses remaining
unconscious and driven more by compulsion than contemplation.
This toxic reality, which is undoubtedly mandated, propagated and legislated
by people sitting on both sides of the aisle (and both sides of the Atlantic and Pa-
cific), is oriented to one thing and one thing only: the generation of wealth through
an economic engine that is fully-aware-yet-dismissive of the ecological impact of
its system. The end result: we are slowly but surely killing ourselves, and the earth.
Yet, there is also good news, evidenced by seemingly small things but which
will ultimately shape a future culture aligned to the original language. I think of
those people who make an attempt at living a life that bears less and less of a car-
bon footprint, or those communities where people have the bravery to engage in
an honest conversation about how we can slowly change our culture from one of
addiction to awareness.
The good news is also evidenced by the calling you feel inside your own chest—
Foreword xi
a calling for a different way of being spiritual, a desire to explore your connection to
the natural world, a need for peace and a way to befriend your own mind. Perhaps
this calling ultimately led you to pick up the book in your hands. You won’t be
sorry.
There have been many books published exploring the vast domain of Celtic
spirituality, some of my own books among them. When I first started my jour-
ney of trying to make sense of the ‘spiritual tug’ I felt from my Irish, Scottish
and Welsh ancestors, I had come from years within an explicitly indigenous and
shamanic context. Naturally, I saw everything through a shamanic filter, including
what I perceived to be Celtic culture and spirituality.
In time, because of other experiences, this profoundly limiting filter dropped
away, changing my perception of everything I’d ever written or experienced. What
I was left with was a much more vast and contemplative way of relating to life and
the essential power of spiritual inquiry. It is a way of being that transcends all
labels, and it is a spiritual landscape that author and poet Jason Kirkey has been
moving through for years. From his own deep-dreaming journey into the realms of
nature and spirit he has brought forth certain healing nectars of insight for each
and every one of us.
In these pages you will find a sophisticated understanding of cosmology and
spirituality, a Jungian understanding of the transformative power of archetypes and
story, a near-mystical and poetic way of perceiving the natural world, a shamanic
and contemplative comprehension of the nature of the soul, light touches of in-
sight from the Shambhala and Buddhist traditions, with an ever-present current of
inspiration bubbling up from the deep strata of Celtic consciousness.
In The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality, each of us is issued an
important and sacred invitation. It is an invitation to reclaim the awe and won-
derment we felt as children playing in the dew of the morn. It is an invitation to
interface with and bask in the numinosity of place and the luminosity of story for
the purpose of healing.
This book is also an invitation to face, front and center, once and for all, the
stark truth that the ecological crisis is not a crisis of the earth at all, but rather a hu-
man self-esteem problem—one that ultimately stems from a tragic state of forget-
fulness. As the late, great postmodern philosopher Alan Watts once said, “You did
xii The Salmon in the Spring

not come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave out of the ocean. You are
not a stranger here.” If the human species truly believed this it would completely
transform our world. It would translate into who we are and how we are.
As a lived-experience, if each of us truly perceived and comprehended this
sacred reality, it would slowly replace the toxic reality we see today. We would come
INTRODUCTION

H
to a point of dynamic awareness that we are empowered shapers of reality and that
how we conduct ourselves as citizens and consumers, how we relate to other people
(and other nations), and how we carry on a relationship with the life-giving earth
is, ultimately, what we hand the generations yet unborn.
The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality is a thirst-quenching contri-
bution in the parched desert of these challenging times. It is one way of receiving
the tools for remembering the ways of perception that lead us back to ecological The historical mission of our times is to reinvent the
and spiritual integrity. It is a way of remembering the original language of the human—at the species level, with critical reflection,
planet. within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental
context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
—Thomas Berry

A bout 13.7 billion years ago there was a threshold between darkness and
light. In one moment there was nothing and in the next, something. The
universe “banged” into being, and I like to imagine that if it was capable of pro-
ducing sound, it would have been followed by the same sigh a lover might make
post-climax. Ever since that first creative act, things have become both strange and
wonderful. You yourself are a result of this sudden emergence of existence—so is
this living, phenomenal, thinking, spiritual world as well. That we exist is a miracu-
lous thing.
One of the billions of planets which formed after the Big Bang was Earth.
Earth is different than the other planets in the solar system, for it alone produced
complex and sustaining life. What is more, out of the abundance of life on Earth
came our curious human species—a species with self-reflective awareness, who

1
2 The Salmon in the Spring
plays music and writes poetry. Although we appear to ourselves unique, we are one
of many members of an earth community. We are newcomers here, just born and
unlearned in how to live properly on this planet—or perhaps have simply forgot-
ten. That, in brief, is the cause of the current ecological crisis. We of the modern
industrial world have not yet fully grown and matured as a species.
Although we have caused the current ecological crisis and have contributed
more than our share of pollution, soil erosion, greenhouse gasses, and have caused
an almost unprecedented extinction of other forms of life—it does not mean that
we are intrinsically unfit for the earth community. It does mean we have some matu-
ration to do, some integration with the rest of organic and non-organic life-pro-
cesses to accomplish. This means that the ecological crisis is also a socio-political
crisis, a psychological crisis, and a spiritual crisis.
It is this which I tell myself—that our crisis is one of ecology and psycholo-
gy—in order to motivate myself to write, to tell stories, to craft poetry when I feel
as though I might do better and make more of an impact as an activist. As though
the creative act cannot become activism and as though the roots of social change
can come from anywhere but an interior revolution of consciousness. We must find
not only a new way of thinking but a new way of being.
In writing this book I am dealing with the balance of what at times seem to be
opposites. The absolute is balanced and integrated with the relative, the earth with
spirit, the universal with the cultural. So when I recount that the universe came into
being about 13.7 billion years ago, I do so because I am writing this book, writ-
ing Celtic myth, upon the back of that event, as though it were a canvas. For this
book to be written, atoms had to form—then those into molecules, and into stars,
planets, oceans, unicellular organisms, plants, fish, reptiles, mammals, and people.
That is the long pedigree into which I have tried to contextualize my work because
it will take nothing less than a total integration into the living cosmos in order for
humans to become a viable species.
In other words, we need to cultivate an awareness of the whole, to hear the whole
story, and in order to truthfully tell that story I find I that must also recount the
personal genesis of this book: my story.
When I was twelve years old, during what I remember to be a somewhat balmy
November, my cousins and their family came to visit. I remember this visit vividly
Introduction 3
because some small incident which it contained changed the direction of my life so
entirely. It was a simple observation made by my cousin that answered the burning
question of religion that I had recently begun to wrestle with.
Somehow during our conversation the topic of God and religion came up and
he pointed outside to the trees which lined the fence between ours and the neigh-
bor’s yard, explaining why he, at that time, had begun to study what he called the
Old Ways.
“Nature does not require our belief; it is right here for us to experience.”
At least that was the essence of the statement. I wonder if he knew at the time
the depth and importance of what he had said. I did not. Nevertheless the state-
ment struck me and stayed with me. Recalling it now, it could be interpreted in any
number of ways. One would not be hard pressed to find a naturalist proclaiming
it as a challenge to all religion and transcendence. For me though, and I believe for
my cousin at the time, it was not a statement of atheism, but a yearning to not just
believe in a divine ground, but to experience it directly though the senses and the
body—through nature.
It was this moment and this utterance which, looking back, decided the direc-
tion of my life. It marked a new found awareness through which I discovered the
interplay of nature, story, and ancestry in the Irish druidic tradition. In many ways
this statement remains the seed thought of this book.
D ruidism is often said to be the original religion of the various Celtic
people. This is not entirely true, though it is a serviceable enough definition
of the word, fit for casual use in a modern context. In truth there never was such
a thing as druidism, though no doubt the druids were the intellectual caste of the
Celtic people and shared in their religion. So speaking of the religion of the Celtic
people as druidism, the religion of the druids, is not entirely wrong either.
The druids played a wide variety of roles: historians, doctors, philosophers,
poets, storytellers, law makers, genealogists, seers, priests, and shamans (though the
application of that term remains contentious among many scholars). Comparisons
have often been drawn between druids and the Brahmins of India in terms of their
social significance and role.
Regrettably we actually know very little of the ancient druids because theirs
4 The Salmon in the Spring
was an oral tradition, passed on through spoken word, myth, and poetry. By the
time the taboo of writing down the old stories and poems was lifted, most of the
Celtic people had converted to Christianity. Much was forgotten, or at least not
written down; what was written had either been distorted by the sensibilities of the
priests or was so far removed from their new worldview that it became confused.
Although the druids no longer had a place in society, much of the pagan Celtic
religious tradition was absorbed into local vernacular traditions, often mixing com-
fortably with Christianity. The Celtic people still survive today on the fringes of
Northern Europe, often struggling to keep their native languages alive. The Celtic
mode of imagination is still native to some individuals and groups of people,
despite its change in form from the pagan to the Christian. Even today the more
earth-centered expressions of Celtic spirituality are being resuscitated, often under
the name of Druidry or Druidism.
The Celtic, whether we name it druidic or not, is still alive, at home in Celtic
countries such as Ireland and Wales, and abroad amongst the diaspora, hungry to
return to their cultural roots. It should be no wonder that in these confusing and
somewhat dark times, upon an Earth in crisis, that Celtic spirituality has become
so popular. It presents many people of European descent a way to recontact the
vital depths of nature and soul in a way enlivened by the myths and stories of their
ancestors.
It is my hope that this book will be an inspiration and a guide to those walking
an Irish Celtic path—but also to those who are not, but who may still find in these
stories and pieces of cultural wisdom, gems which can act as a map and compass
along their own paths.
The vision of this book began as a broad and deep survey of the Irish druidic
tradition in ancient and modern times, a multifaceted approach in which I hoped
to include voices from native Ireland as well as from the diaspora. A friend once
asked me, hoping to explore his ancestral heritage, what the single best introductory
book was: one which would give him an overview of the tradition without the New
Age trappings which seem so common in the popular literature. No such book ex-
ists I told him. My recommendation was several books, all with a different scope.
“Well,” he asked, “why aren’t you writing one?” Eventually I decided I would try.
My vision was something which was half historical and anthropological and half
Introduction 5
practical and contemplative. It was a worthy idea but my plans changed when pen
finally went to paper.
Shortly after my third trip to Ireland I experienced a crisis. I had, prior to this,
been involved with the Druidic community and identified as a practitioner of Irish
earth-based spirituality and shamanism. That identity I found had become like a
fence, hemming me in to a mode of being in the world which ultimately was much
too small to live in. The problem was not with the tradition itself but with the
interaction of tradition and identity within me, an interaction which had caused
me to root my perceptions of myself into the culture and spiritual tradition. When
I found myself suddenly uninspired by my work and spirituality I was devastated.
Something which had been a part of me for nearly ten years suddenly slipped away
and I was left feeling naked in a dark night of the soul, lost on the sea without even
the reference point of stars or moon.
Sometimes we need to transcend a thing before we can really know it. In tran-
scending my spiritual identity I felt free to be more creative in my holistic identity.
Tradition can be double edged. It can provide a map for us, guiding us along routes
that others have taken, and give us heart in difficult times. It can also condition us
to experience reality in a very narrow range, fogging over the freshness of the world
with a dullness of expectations and belief.
During this time of conflict I gained an increased sympathy for Buddhism
and the practice of sitting meditation. Whereas before my spiritual path was one
of descent to soul and the creation of a healthy and soulful identity rooted in the
earth, my practice had now shifted to one of ascent and disidentification with the
ego. I remember during “practice day” at Naropa University (a day during which
classes are suspended for the community to come together for the sake of contem-
plative practice) taking part in Reginald Ray’s “meditating with the body” work.
Something happened which I do not have words for. It was as though the world
had come alive, revealing how lifeless my previous perceptions had been without my
even realizing it. Really, it was my perceptions which had come alive.
One night I could not sleep as I struggled to find a reference point for what
was taking place. Everything I touched within my mind dissolved at the moment
of contact. I studied the light from a building behind my apartment, which in that
moment, seemed to me to be a work of art despite its ordinariness. This “peak
6 The Salmon in the Spring
experience” taught me a lot, and so when I did come back down to my ordinary
mind I had learned a lot about myself, about reality, about being a human being in
this world. It taught me this both through the joy and the pain which I experienced
during that time.
Soon afterwards I moved from Boulder, Colorado back to the East Coast where
I had grown up in Massachusetts. It was an altogether different world. I found my-
self in a job which left me unsatisfied and creatively drained. One day I took my
first shamanic journey after nearly a year of diligent meditation practice. I felt as
though I was being called now to integrate what I had learned in both the soulful
descent and nondual ascent oriented practices. I was recontacting the soul from a
meditative angle.
One night I found myself, again, unable to sleep. The night wore on forever and
sleep refused to come until I made a silent vow. The next day, figuring I had enough
savings to last me a while, I quit my job and began to write this book.
The book you now hold in your hands is the product of these experiences. It
is not about Celtic spirituality at all; not really. As the subtitle suggests it is a book
about ecology—about the spirituality, philosophy, and psychology of the earth
and our relationship to it. It is a book about wild nature, and about the soul, and
about cleansing our perceptions to experience the world freshly and directly. It is
about finding an experience of divine ground, of the nondual, and perhaps even
enlightenment without forgetting or abandoning the earth. It is about the world
we live in, about what is wrong with it and what is right with it, and how we can
come to live in it more entirely, more sustainably in our thoughts and in our actions.
It looks at all of these things through the landscape and mythology of Ireland,
through an ecology where earth and spirit meet.
We tend to think of ecology as an empirical science. Without negating that
discipline I would also like to adopt a wider meaning of the word. It is a rich
and beautiful word and deserves to be applied to deeper contexts, disciplines, and
philosophies. I use “ecology” here to mean the entirety of a thing’s personal and
transpersonal relationships and enfoldment in the wild earth; its integration with
an ecosystem, with the phenomenon of place, which is both an interior and exterior
phenomenon. By transpersonal I mean that even from those levels of consciousness
in which the boudaries of the self have been transcended that there remains an
Introduction 7
ecological framework to our lives. This will become clear as the book progresses.
The ecology of Celtic spirituality, using the above definition, is a map of an in-
dividual and cultural consciousness embedded in, but also transcending, the earth.
The Celtic tradition is not the object of this book; it is a lens through which I have
looked at ecology and psychology, at our relationship to earth and soul. I thought,
at first, to title the book Druid Psychology, as it contains a psychological map which is
firmly embedded in the Irish mythos. In the end I settled on ecology because, like
the mind itself, psychology is emergent from ecology, and so I chose the wider field
in which to situate this project.
As you read this book, keep that focus in mind. You are reading a book about
our relationship with the earth and how we might transform it and thus ourselves,
not a book about practicing an “authentic Celtic spirituality.” My interpretations
and my conclusions, I believe, are in the spirit of the tradition, of the Irish and
Celtic dreamtime, but they are not the tradition itself.
As a species we now stand in a dangerous position. Our relationship to the earth
has become so toxic that we are well along in our degradation of the biosphere.
Climate change, air and water pollution, soil erosion, and a mass extinction of the
diversity of life are all symptoms of a psychological dissociation with the ecology
of the planet. If humans are to remain a viable member of the earth community
we need to integrate ourselves into its ecology. Integration is both an internal psy-
chological process and an external change of behavior and social organization. This
book takes up the former cause of the dynamics of the human-nature relationship
in hopes of influencing the latter.
Our unique position in time calls for a unique response. We are being called to
an initiation into the living cosmos. Despite romantic notions of going “back to
nature,” we as a species have never actually been psychically integrated into the bio-
sphere, perhaps with the exception of some indigenous populations past and pres-
ent. As evolution both differentiates from the old order and then integrates into a
new order, our time on this planet has been one of differentiation. It has turned
now to psychological dissociation. We have before us an imperative to integrate
before we destroy ourselves, and with us, much of the biodiversity of the planet.
This is why I have chosen not to write a book on Celtic spirituality directly. I
contend that the tradition itself, in fact all traditions, must go through a process of
8 The Salmon in the Spring
re-imagination—of integration into the New Story of the 21st century. The New
Cosmology, as Brian Swimme calls it, is a larger story than our traditional world-
views can accommodate. In his autobiography, philosopher John Moriarty spoke
of reading Darwin for the first time and how his traditional Christian worldview
ran against it like the Titanic against an iceberg. Similarly, we are lately coming
into startling new realizations about the universe in which we live; an organismic
universe which seems to be creating itself on a trajectory of complex creativity and
ever deepening communion.
Faced with the danger and groundlessness of our times we must resist the
temptation to turn backwards to the very worldviews which brought us to the cur-
rent moment. We must also not forget the cultural-specific indigenous wisdom of
the earth by which ancient people lived and knew their connection to the cosmos.
It is worth asking ourselves whether or not the Old Story can live within the New
Story. If it cannot, should we continue to live the Old Story at all?
Fortunately, I believe the Old Stories can be preserved in ways which enhance
the human presence in the cosmos even while dissolving and transforming those
things which bind us to our destructive course. I believe, in the instance of this
book, that the Celtic way can be integrated into the New Cosmology and provide a
firm cultural ground and way of communion with the living universe. Our culture,
whether it is European, African, Asian, Native American, etc., can guide us, if we
are willing to be visionary within it, into an ecologically re-imagined human spe-
cies.
T o be a second, third, fourth, and so on, generation North American, is
to be in an altogether strange position. In some sense it is to be without a cul-
ture of place and story—to be without a soul-nourishing dreamtime. Those of us
descended from Europeans are often looked at quizzically as we show up in places
like Ireland, saying “I’m Irish, too.” Sometimes our romance for the old countries
gets chuckles and rolled eyes; sometimes it is given sympathy and understanding.
The ones who understand, I think, are the ones who know how important it is to
have a place to come from; a place where our minds are reflected in the landscape
and the lanscape defines the territory of the mind.
Somewhere in us all blood and psyche mix. I sometimes see my mind in New
Introduction 9
England forests and in the Rocky Mountains—places where I have lived and land-
scapes which I have met in mutual communion and reciprocity. I see my mind in
these places, but sometimes my mind sees in Irish hills, in cairn-topped mountains,
and a little valley of lakes and ruins in Wicklow. When I’m there, the mist calls to
my blood and I respond in kind. I can hardly help it. I do not know if I can claim
to be Irish in anything but the romance of heritage, but I do know my mind in that
place and in its stories more deeply than I could ever know my mind without it.
But I am in America, trying to be native to America without being Native
American. I think this must be noted because it means that whatever my project in
this book, it is born from some tension of exile and nativity. I am, above all, native
to the earth. I see the earth only though my own eyes; eyes which are American
born but see through the lens of stories from across the ocean. What I write here
is my experience; my love letter home to the cosmos, to the earth, to Ireland, and
to America whose original inhabitants named Turtle Island. Writing it has been a
process of map making through terrain which I have walked. My hope is that oth-
ers in need of a map will find it and be somewhat guided, somewhat assured the
dangers inherent of any journey are surpassable—whether that person is Irish or
not, American or not; we are all people of the earth and of this living cosmos.
I have not made my journey alone. I have already written at length on my
relationship to the Irish spiritual tradition. You will also find in this book that I
draw heavily on Buddhism and the Shambhala warriorship teachings of Chögyam
Trungpa where appropriate and relevant—this is simply another lens, and not an
attempt to “Easternize” Celtic culture (though W.B. Yeats did once say that before
the Battle of the Boyne, Ireland belonged to Asia…).
Additionally the work of Irish philosopher and writer John Moriarty has given
shape, story, and language to many of my ideas. His bold readings and retellings of
the tales have opened doors within the tradition (and leading out of the tradition)
which have transformed me in ways I cannot even begin to count.
Finally, the Great Work articulated by Thomas Berry and his book of the same
name gave me one of the initial seed thoughts contained in the book, which I have
used as an epigraph to this introduction. Berry was a true elder and his call for the
reinvention of humans is the nutrient rich soil from which my book has grown.
You will find, peppered throughout the book, practices aimed at bringing the
10 The Salmon in the Spring

intellectual content of the text into experiential reality. These practices are designed
to turn this book from a philosophical treatise into a practical guide, adding a com-
pass to the map. Take nothing here as truth, but test it to your own experience.
In Ireland, the rivers find their source in the Otherworld; specifically in an Oth-
erworld well or spring which, bubbling up from the earth, is surrounded by trees
of wisdom. Five streams, said to be the five senses, flow from the spring. Salmon
swim in that spring and eat the hazelnuts which fall, occasionally, into the water.
To eat a salmon from this water is to recieve poetic inspiration and to drink from
the water itself, in ecological interpretation, is to enter into a way of being that is
consonant with the underlying patterns of the cosmos, expressed as Fírinne or Truth
in Irish. The title of this book is taken from this image. It is a mythopoetic way of
speaking to the wisdom of the senses and of a process of coming-into-being that
is participatory with the unfolding of the universe. The salmon in the spring is
the soul in the cosmos. Because in so many ways, as you will find, this book is an
upstream journey to just such a spring of wisdom, I wish you all the blessings of
those salmon.

— Jason Kirkey
San Francisco
Lughnasadh 2009
 HPart One
THE ECOLOGY OF
PERCEPTION
 CHAPTER ONE

PLACE AND STORY

H
The Landscape of Identity

Each place is its own place, forever (eventually) wild.

—Gary Snyder

There is no single, unique reading to a story,

but rather many enfolded and interpenetrating levels,
none of which need to be thought of as more fundamental
than any other. Understanding comes from a direct experience
of the dance between these levels of meaning.
—F. David Peat

W e need stories to live. Not just any stories, but STORIES—ones of

mythic proportions which attempt to not only explain our existence to
ourselves, but in their telling and their hearing enact on us an initiation into the
greater cosmic community. These are the stories, which like the pomegranate seeds
fed to Persephone, bond us to the psychic Underworld of our genetic and in-
stinctual human inheritance. Such stories are capable of integrating us spiritually,
ecologically, culturally, and psychologically into the world.
Stories tell us who we are. It is by stories that since the emergence of con-
sciousness we have orientated ourselves to the proper order of things in the world.
In this sense mythology is a bridge between culture and nature. When we talk about
stories at this level we are talking about the creation and sustainability of viable
cosmologies. The Greek word kosmos means ‘order.’ We might then define cosmol-

15
16 The Salmon in the Spring
ogy as the prescribed proper or natural order of things. Myths tell us how to be in
right cosmological relationship with nature. They are the synchronization of nature
and culture into functional integrity.
When we lose myth we develop cultural anarchy. Insomuch as we might see
myth as the encoding of natural order or law, for which we could also use words
like the Sanskrit dharma, Chinese Dao (or Tao), Navajo horzo or the Irish Fírinne to
describe, the loss of myth is equivalent to straying from “the Way,” from the eco-
logical and spiritual imperative of wildness. This is not to say that all cultures who
have an active relationship to their mythology will be ecologically and spiritually
integrated (to my knowledge no culture, indigenous or civilized, has ever achieved
this completely, if it is even possible; most cultures occupy shades of gray). Equally,
however, no society can achieve this without a relationship to myth and story.
Oral stories, whether mythic or not, engage us sensually in our immediate sur-
roundings. In indigenous oral cultures, many of the stories told are place-specific,
detailing how to properly survive in that particular bioregion. If one were to walk
through lands as diverse as North America, Ireland, and Australia one would en-
counter specific places such as a mountain, a bend in a river, or a grove of trees,
which are storied: places which the native inhabitants had and have reciprocal re-
lationships with, places which speak to them and are ensouled. As David Abram
writes:
To live in a storied world is to know that intelligence is not an exclusively
human faculty located somewhere inside our skulls, but is rather a power
of the animate earth itself, in which we humans, along with the hawks and
the thrumming frogs, all participate. It is to know, further, that each land,
each watershed, each community of plants and animals and soils, has its
particular style of intelligence, its unique mind or imagination evident in
the particular patterns that play out there, in the living stories that unfold
in that valley, and that are told and retold by the people of that place. Each
ecology has its own psyche, and the local people bind their imaginations to
the psyche of the place by letting the land dream its tales through them.1
Stories tell us about our soul or the soul of a place. Bill Plotkin marvelously
Place and Story 17
describes soul as our “ultimate place in the world.”2 In this sense stories are descent
oriented—toward the soul, the wild earth, and the unconscious—and initiatory:
the process whereby we come into contact and embodiment of our soul. To tell or
enact a myth is to initiate its listeners, tellers, and participants into the cosmos, and
into the deepest strata of the self. A storied existence is one rooted in the mysteries
of soul and nature.
Just as we need stories, we also at times need those stories to dissolve or be-
come transparent. That is to say that we must, at a certain point in our develop-
ment, transcend our own stories and places. To be clear, to transcend does not mean
to abandon. We do not need to forget our stories, to cease telling or living them.
Rather we need to take part in a dynamic process whereby they are both transcend-
ed and included, a foundational process in evolution as described by transpersonal
theorist Ken Wilber.
The telling of stories and myths connect us to the natural world and to the
specific places where the stories are told and are told about. Myth itself, however,
presents a cosmology, a particular view of the way things are, the proper order of
things, and how to be rightly integrated into that order. In the early and even mid-
dle stages of our unfolding, this is incredibly important and provides a foundation
for orienting ourselves in the world and making sense of our experiences. Buddhist
teacher and scholar, Reginald Ray, writes:
In indigenous initiation, the adolescent is shown that the conventional
view he or she has learned and come to take for granted is ultimately not
real. The purpose of indigenous initiation ceremonies is, then, just this:
to bring young people into their own contact with this living reality; only
then do they understand the point and purpose of their spiritual tradi-
tions and the truth behind the cultural façade. Only then can they them-
selves find nourishment and sustenance from the living cosmos and thus
become creative and mature adults in their society.3
In this sense, the stories do not go anywhere. We do not lose our relationship
to them but the relationship itself changes. Although there are plenty of stories,
as mentioned previously, which tell us how to physically live on the land, there also
18 The Salmon in the Spring
stories which tell us how to psychically or spiritually live on the land. These are
the stories which can both help or hinder us in developing into initiated adults,
depending on whether or not we are in touch with what Ray calls the “living real-
ity” to which they are pointing. Like the old Zen saying, they are only the finger
pointing to the moon. We must experience the moon itself, and to do that, we
need to be fluid enough to let our stories drop away. The foundation of orally told
and enacted stories and myths must exist for this transcendence to take place in a
healthy context.
To live is to live as a story. That story may be healthy and life-enhancing or it
may be unhealthy and life-degrading. Our identity is intimately tied to the stories
we tell about ourselves and the world, both consciously and unconsciously. The pro-
cess of differentiating and transcending our stories takes us through the very same
process with our sense of identity, with the ego. To experience the world freshly and
directly we must also be able to experience ourselves in the same way. Otherwise we
continue to project ourselves out onto the world as though a canvas—we see only
our stories rather than having a direct and true encounter with living reality.
Largely, we have suffered the loss of our stories, which is to say we have be-
come dissociated—or pathologically differentiated—from them. We have “fallen
out of our stories,” to use the visceral turn of phrase used by the late Irish phi-
losopher John Moriarty to describe the process whereby the stories—whether reli-
gious, mythic, or scientific—which once provided us with meaning and the ability
to make sense to the world, can no longer support us. Coming to a crescendo in
the Enlightenment period of human culture, scientific reason was advocated above
mythological wisdom.4
The old stories could not stand under the pressure of reason, could not be
verified to scientific or historical truth, and so were relegated to quaint and naïve
tales spun by our less-knowing ancestors to explain what they could not under-
stand. Damaging to the human psyche as this was, it could be seen as necessary,
considering the process of evolution is to both transcend and include. Having
transcended these stories, it is high time that we once again include them in our
lives and cosmologies. Read without the lens of literalism they have the benefit of
enriching the scientific story of the universe rather than negating it.
Place and Story 19
T he 21st century is an amazing and often frightening time to be alive. We
face problems which perhaps no other generation before could even imagine.
The wholesale destruction of the biosphere may potentially lead to a mass extinc-
tion of both human and non-human life, reducing life on this planet by as much as
fifty percent.* Fortunately this is a worst-case scenario and with it comes the pos-
sibility for growth, evolution, and the re-integration of humans into the ecology
from which we were born. This is the current story we are living. Insomuch as ritual
is the enactment of mythology, we may regard these times as a ritual of initiation
into the living cosmos.
This is a book about that initiation, with roots in nature and soul, bursting
out through culture, and finally reaching toward the divine ground of being. As our
stories are place-centered and specific, so too must be our reclamation of them.
My project here it to present one of many possible reclamations, one centered in
my own journey and experience of initiation into the cosmos. Like John Mori-
arty’s description of his own work, I too would like to describe this as a naissance.
Whereas a renaissance implies a re-birth of something, I would like to emphasize,
not so much what has already come before, but what is unique and original to our present
moment in both dreamtime and history, and the place of what is ancient and wild in
what is now emerging.
Thomas Berry’s wonderful quote at the beginning of this book’s introduction
states that “the historical mission of our times is to reinvent the human.” As such,
this book is a reinvention of the Irish Celtic way of being in and seeing the world,
one which is capable both of initiating us into the cosmos, and sustaining us psy-
chologically, ecologically, culturally, and spiritually upon our arrival.
•
* Such statements are often claimed, by opponents of environmental consciousness and pro-
ponents of industrialism, as doom saying and fear-mongering. The reality of the situation
though is that the ecological crisis extends far beyond symptoms such as climate change. It
is worth noting that many biologists, including E.O. Wilson, consider us to be in the sixth
mass extinction known to the history of the planet, itself a startling piece of information
that brings into serious question the long-term viability of our industrial lifestyle.