The spiritual development of the Celtic folk soul – Part 2
(To part 1)
In his writing Timaeus [1] Plato writes what Solon, te lawgiver of Athens, had heard from an Egyptian initiate of Sais about 200 years before him. He told Solon about the big island, the lost Atlantis, which would have been larger than Libya and Asia combined. The bible does not mention the name Atlantis, but it does describe a great flood and that may have a connection with the sinking of Atlantis.
Moreover, many peoples have a deluge age that all tell something different. This probably stems from the fact that only seers were able to view the events of Atlantis, and each in a different way, depending on where it was viewed: from the south or north or from the winter or summer. At their core, they are all true and stories of a great flood in which a great continent submerged.
A piece of land at the edge of ancient Atlantis bears a faint resemblance to the engulfed land, which is Ireland, and further to the west, Scotland, Britain and part of Brittany. These were the areas where the Celts lived.
The Celts were convinced that the sunken Atlantis really existed.
The disappearance of this land had left a very deep impression on the Celtic soul and, moreover, this ruin was stubbornly held in the folk soul. Over time, the Celts fused memories of ancient Atlantis with even older memories: those of the paradisiacal state. That is why in the many myths these wonderful worlds are discussed and people speak of ‘the other world’, in which gods and men come together.
After the demise of Atlantis, two groups of people moved east: one led by Manu followed the northern route through Northern Europe to India and the other followed the southern route to present-day Africa.
The northern group was later described by the Greek historians as the Hyperboreans (hyper = beyond, and boreas = the north wind).
So Boreas was the name of the north wind that brought storm and winter cold with it.
Ancient travellers and historians write about a high-ranking religious group, the Hyperboreans, whose centre was Elixoa, on the island of the same name that must have been the Danish island of Zealand. In this holy city, which was entirely populated by numerous temple servants, there was a high school for priest-poets, who were accompanied by singers and musicians. The name of these priests was Boredai and in Gallic Bairadion. Their religion was centred on the God of Light and hence the name Bards of the Sun, which they carried until their disappearance.
(The Bards will be discussed later in part 11)
The land of the Hyperboreans was in the regions of Northern Europe and Northern Asia from Scandinavia through Finland to Siberia.
The Hyperboreans were a quiet people who as a race lived and were influenced by the effects of the ether and the conditions of the soil. They were not yet aware of the blood and life-fire-forces boiling up in the metabolism and reproductive organs. In the cooler regions, North Atlantic humanity thus developed, free from the materialistic hardening of the ego, and under the paradisaically innocent conditions of the Hyperborean impulses. Thus the first white race was formed. The people who lived nearer the North Pole were more influenced by the cosmos through their heads. As a result, they could later turn their attention to the outer world, thinking and sensing. This contrasted with the group of Atlanteans who moved south-eastwards. The metabolic forces glowed in the bodies of these people.
Hyperborea was said to have a clear night for half a year, and a clear day for half a year, so one would have sought that continent in the northern areas of the Barents Sea, the White Sea and in the vicinity of Siberia and Finland.
Even Homer tells of these clear nights in Hyperborea in his Odyssey story.
Hyperborea had a virginal, paradisiacal condition and the islands in this area, according to Diodorus of Sicily, were so fertile that they even yielded two crops a year [2].
We must place this in the time before the planetary changes; then the areas around Finland were much warmer than now. After that, the climate changed drastically and these areas were confronted with a much cooler climate.
The bodies of the Hyperborean people in these ancient times were more vegetal and they multiplied in a vegetal way, i.e. without fertilization. A great etheric being could contain several “bodies” and the ether humanity (of paradise) was, as it were, the group soul for many bodies.
The Hyperboreans in later times were worshipers of the Sun-god Apollo and were known basically as priests of Apollo; they praised and worshiped this god daily. This is understandable when one considers that half of the year the nights were so light, the residents must have had a special experience with the sunlight.
Thus the later teachers of mankind incarnated in this untouched etheric world of the north. This explains why the many peoples housed their gods in the north. In later times these teachers spread their teaching in the form of priestly communities centred in northern Scandinavia and operating in a circular arc across Europe as far as the Black Sea.
The Greeks brought precious ordination gifts to the Hyperboreans, and sometimes the Hyperboreans themselves came to Greece, such as the Hyperborean Abaris, who renewed the old kinship with the inhabitants of Delos.
The connection of the Greeks with the Hyperboreans is also expressed in the fact that they indicate these people by their degree of initiation of ‘Swan’; the swan was a sacred animal and consecrated to the god Apollo, and at his birth he was led in a swan-cart to lovely Hyperborea.
The Hyperboreans lived vegetarian, without labour, a blissful and healthy life that could last for hundreds, even thousands of years.
In the Finnish epic of the Kalevala, we read how the mother of Wäinämöinen, the god of poetry and magic, carried him 700 years before he was born. These images refer to a distant earth period, which is called the Hyperborea in which man still had an etheric light body. At that time people did not yet know death and the metamorphosis from one form into another. All these qualities were known in the mystery places of antiquity, and these paradisiacal innocuous states were fused with the Hyperboreans of the post-Atlantean age.
According to Steiner, the Hyperboreans not only influenced the Greeks spiritually, but also the Celtic Druids, and the Hyperborean priesthood was the common source of inspiration for both the Greek Apollo Sun worship and the Celtic-Germanic worship of Lug or the Sun God.
The Drotten, Trotten or Trudi, influenced by the Hyperboreans, thus spread their solar mysteries which were the oldest mysteries in Europe and which were the inspiration of the Celtic Druids.
(To be continued in part 3)
Sources:
[1] Plato, Timaeus and Critias, Penguin Books Ltd, 2008
[2] Sigismund von Gleich, Marksteine der Kulturgeschichte [Landmarks of cultural history], Mellinger J.Ch. Verlag, 1982
[3] Erika Dühnfort, Irische Sagen und Legenden – Von Helden, Heiligen, Elfen und Druiden [Irish Sagas and Legends – Of Heroes, Saints, Elves and Druids], Anaconda Verlag, 2012
[4] Atonin Gadal, Het Druïdisme [The Druidism], Rozekruis Pers, Haarlem 2019
[5] Hans Gsänger, Irland. Insel des Abel. Die irischen Hochkreuze [Ireland. Isle of Abel. The Irish high crosses], Verlag Die Kommenden, 1969
