Bard Dictionary

Bard (from Latin bardus from Gaulish and old Brythonic probably bardos cf Welsh bardd)

Exalted one, initiate, teacher; one of the three holy orders of Druidism -- Druids, Bards, and Ovates.

The Bards had the duty of keeping alive among the people the knowledge or intuition that there is a path that leads to wisdom and initiation. They carried this out largely by telling stories: a Mabinogi, according to Sir John Rhys, was a story belonging to the equipment of the Bards. These stories were told in such a way that their symbolic meaning might be apparent to those with intuition, but hidden from the mass. In telling the stories they used verse form a good deal, so that now in every country but Wales bard has come to mean poet.

In Wales, however, it retains some relic of its original meaning: a Bard is a member of the Gorsedd, and may or may not be a poet; no poet is a Bard unless the Gorsedd has admitted him to its ranks. The Bard's robe was of blue; that of the Druid was white; the Ovate's green.

(See also: Bard , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

BARD:  An ancient teacher who taught by the use of poems and song. They were a class of Druid who were the poets and singers that kept alive valuable oral traditions through song. These songs were called "cetel in Ireland and lay in Brittany. They could also be used as magickal spells to curse or bless those who they were directed at.

(See also: BARD , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Abred, Cylch yr Abred (Welsh) Inchoation; the cycle of inchoation. The lowest of the three cycles of existence in Druidism, including the human kingdom and probably the animal and vegetable: "the Cycle of Abred, in which are all embodied and dead existences" (Bard p. ?). Abred has four stages: Annwn, Obryn, Cydfil, and Dyndeb. Hawl yr ail (the second examination) reads:

Q. Whence didst thou proceed? and what is thy beginning?

A. I came from the Great World, having my beginning in Annwn.

Q. Where art thou now? and how camest thou to where thou art?

A. I am in the Little World, whither I came, having traversed the circle of Abred, and now I am a man at its termination and extreme limits.

Q. What wert thou before thou didst become a man in the circle of Abred?

A. I was in Annwn the least possible that was capable of life, and the nearest possible to absolute death, and I came in every form, and through every form capable of a body and life, to the state of man along the circle of Abred, where my condition was severe and grievous during the age of ages, ever since I was parted in Annwn from the dead, . . .

Q. Through how many forms didst thou come? . . .

A. Through every form capable of life, in water, in earth, and in air. (Bard 227).

(See also: Abred, Cylch yr Abred , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Taliesin (Welsh) He of the radiant brow; a transformation of Gwion, eaten as a barley-grain by Ceridwen as an old black hen. She bore him nine months in her womb, and when he was born, set him afloat in a basket of rushes on the Teifi River where Elphin found him and named him Taliesin.

Seventy-seven poems attributed to Taliesin come down, supposedly from the 6th century, though critics maintain that they are forgeries of the 12th or 13th. But the poetry of the later centuries is exceedingly different from the poetry of the Cynfeirdd -- Talesin, Myrddin Gwyllt, Llywarch Hen, and Aneurin -- said to have lived in the 6th century. Of these four, the first two are mystical and Druidical. The verse forms are simple, the rhythm is lofty: the thought, when it is apparent -- for the language is exceedingly archaic and difficult -- is in the grand manner. Twelfth and 13th century poetry on the other hand is ultra-tortuous in form -- the extreme old age of a literature, when thought and inspiration are gone, and only delight in curious form remains -- while the subject matter is practically always the Bard's praise of his chieftain. Purely literary criticism would most certainly place the Cynfeirdd many centuries earlier than the 12th century poets.

The note of the real Taliesin is pagan, that after-centuries were so desperate to make a Christian:

I have been in many a shape

Before I attained a congenial form

I have been a word in a book

I have been a drop in the air.

I have born a banner

Before Alexander

I was in Canaan

Before Absolom was slain

I was on the high cross

Of the merciful Son of God.

My original country

Is the region of the summer stars:

I am a marvel

Whose origin is not known

Nine months was I then

In the womb of Ceridwen

I was Gwion the Little;

Now I am Taliesin.

Not of father and mother

My creator created me,

But of nine-formed faculties

Of the fruit of fruits

Of the god of the Beginning

Of primroses and hill blooms

Of the blossoms of nettles

Of the ninth wave's water.

I was enchanted by Math

Before I became immortal:

(Then) I was enchanted by Gwydion

The Initiator of the Britons,

Of Eurwys, of Euron,

Of Euron, of Modron,

Of five battalions of Adepts

Teachers, the Children of Math.

Math fab Mathonwy was a famous enchanter; in the madinogi he is the teacher of Gwydion. Men are "enchanted by Math before" they "become immortal," then by Gwydion the Initiator.

A great deal of what is too obscure to be intelligible, breaking now and again into bursts of great poetry, wherein deep esoteric meanings are apparent: such are the 77 poems of Taliesin.

(See also: Taliesin , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

MUSIC MAGICK: Also known as Bard Magick. This is a spell created in song, a popular method used by the Celts.

(See also: MUSIC MAGICK , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Narada:

Narada (Naaradha). Sage-bard; traveled the world chanting Narayana. Famous for creating disputes, resulting in solutions for the spiritual advancement or victory of the virtuous. Expert in law and author of texts on dharma.

(See also: Narada , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ilmatar: ("ILL-mah-tar"): Finnish goddess; mother of the waters. Creation goddess impregnated by the wind to give birth to the earth and stars and the first person (a bard).

(See also: Ilmatar , Magic, Shamanism, Paganism, Wicca)

Cauldron of Ceridwen (Welsh) Symbol of initiation in Welsh Druidic literature; a Bard was one who had been in the Cauldron of Ceridwen, called also pair dadeni (the cauldron of rebirth). In passing out from Wales to Europe, it became the Holy Grail; thus Parsifal, or Perceval, is Pair-cyfaill, the "Companion of the Cauldron."

Ceridwen brewed the cauldron of wisdom on the mountainside. It was to boil for a year and a day while she roamed the hills to gather herbs to put in it; at the end of that time all would have boiled away but the Three Drops of Wisdom -- Enw Duw (the Name of God).

See also TALIESIN

(See also: Cauldron of Ceridwen , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Barddas (Welsh) A collection of manuscripts illustrating the teachings of the Druids, awarded the prize at the Llangollen National Eisteddfod in 1858. The original preface says: "there may be found in this collection some fragments which contain, as is very clear to every initiated Bard, the remains of that sublime learning. . . . In order to prove the genuineness and great antiquity of these particulars, it may suffice that they are also discoverable . . . in the ancient Bardism of Hindustan."

(See also: Barddas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

FILI: The Old Irish word means "poet" or "bard", and is often erroneously used in place of the word "Druid." However, the word means a specific division of specification of Druidic practice.

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Orpheus (Greek) An early religious teacher and reformer in Greece about whom clustered so many legends that in course of time his historic existence came to be disputed. He was, however, an actual historic character, probably born in Thrace about the 13th century BC, lived and taught at Pimpleia on Mount Olympus, revived the ancient wisdom-religion, reformed the then degraded popular religion, and was killed -- according to the story -- because of it.

He gathered pupils or disciples about him, and founded a famous Mystery school from which in time emanated a vast literature, now perished with the exception of the Orphic Hymns, the Lithica (a poem on the nature of precious stones), the Argonautica (which recites the connection of Orpheus with the Argonautic expedition), and some other fugitive fragments -- and in our time these are supposed to be apocryphal or of a far later date than Orpheus himself, although certainly containing Orphic elements.

There appears to have been no question in antiquity as to the actual historical existence of a godlike man who founded the Orphic religion or Mysteries, and whose work was continued by others in direct line, some of whom took his name, for no less than six different teachers by the name of Orpheus were known. When we add to the historic account the story of Orpheus as the Magician-Bard, and the legends of his divinity, his marriage with Eurydice (esoteric wisdom), his teaching, his agony and passion, and finally his martyr's death -- legends almost identical with some of those attached to world-saviors such as Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mithra -- it is clear that he was not only a great teacher in himself, but an important link in the Hermetic Chain of esoteric succession.

The legendary Orpheus was the son of Apollo, god of music and the sun, and of Calliope, muse of epic poetry. With his seven-stringed lyre, the symbol of the cosmic and human constitution, he became the magical musician: rocks moved, trees bent, flowers sprang forth, mountains bowed themselves before his song. He journeyed with the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece. His mystic union with Eurydice, like the Argonautic quest, is clearly allegorical. Orpheus won his mystic bride by the power of his music and after the mystic union returned to Pimpleia on Mount Olympus where he lived and taught in a cave (recorded also of other great teachers).

When Eurydice died from the bite of a venomous snake, Orpheus visited the Underworld to reclaim her, and his descent there is a veiled record of initiation. Orpheus was permitted to take Eurydice back with him on condition that he did not look back, symbolic of a stern condition for successfully traveling the mystic path. But Orpheus did look back and his union with the esoteric doctrine, personified as Eurydice, was broken. After mourning, he withdrew to Mount Rhodope, where a group of Maenads or Bacchanals tore him limb from limb.

Blavatsky identifies Orpheus with Arjuna, son of Indra and disciple of Krishna, who taught mankind, established Mysteries, and went to Patala (hell or the Antipodes) and there marries the daughter of the naga king (TG 242).

Orpheus may be regarded both as an ideal or as a man and teacher. In either case, whether cosmic or terrestrial, Orpheus corresponds to the unceasing attempts of the higher or spiritual ego to raise the lower ego out of the toils of matter, much as in the Gnostic story the Christos attempts to raises the Sophia, his own lower self or vehicle, out of the mire and toils of the inferior worlds. If the call of impersonal compassion be so strong that it become personal, in other words if Orpheus looks back to

See and becomes attracted to the lower planes, he loses his Eurydice. Eurydice means "wide judgment," the function of reason in the human constitution. Orpheus here would represent intuition, and Eurydice the reason: manas sunk in the earthly nature is raised to wisdom through budhi.

When the ideal Orpheus in the neophyte conjoins with Orpheus the struggling soul, then Orpheus becomes the initiate who during the trials in the Underworld secures the safety of mind (Eurydice) and thus becomes a son of the sun. Should, however, Orpheus look back -- should buddhi itself become entangled in the lower morass -- then Eurydice is not rescued, Orpheus is enchained, and the task must be essayed anew.

(See also: Orpheus , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

bard: A singer or reciter of epic poems.

(See also: Bard , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Hinduism Lexicon on B

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Toward a Celtic Numerology

What's in a word? Or a name? What special power resides in a word, connecting it so intimately to the very thing it symbolizes? Does each word or name have its own 'vibration', as is generally believed by those of us who follow the Western occult tradition? And if so, how do we begin to unravel its meaning? Just what, exactly, is in a word? Well, LETTERS are in a word. In fact, letters COMPRISE the word. Which is why Taliesyn's remark had always puzzled me. Why didn't he say he had been a 'letter among words'? That, at least, would seem to make more logical sense than saying he had been a 'word among letters', which seems backwards. Unless...  

Read more here: » Paganism: Toward a Celtic Numerology