The Wheel

Imbas Dispatch #47

A Chairde, Friends,

A new week unfolds and I have an oracle to share, which I hope arrives as a synchronicity for you in some way. It’s the ‘Wheel’ card from my deck-in-progress, Celtic Dream Oracle: Ancient Symbols to Guide Your Modern Life.

I’ve been deep in the creative process tending to The Sunset Journal, so the movements of the sun, the moon, and of time, feel amplified for me. I’ve also been dreaming a lot about wheels like a dream I had the other week where a kindly poet man was teaching me how to work a wheel-like contraption I was very wobbly with. He kept encouraging me as he moved his own wheels, spinning flat on their side and yet carrying him along slightly above ground. We both witnessed the emergence of three giant black hares on our path; perhaps our wheels opened a portal. At the weekend, I had a dream of a silvery-white tower in my back garden that transformed into a windmill, its lunar wheel spinning through the night. It felt grounding to witness, like the mill wheel was bringing the tower out of the Otherworld and into life.

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The Wheel

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Keywords:

Wheel, Phases of the Moon, Becoming

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Suit:

Time

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Symbol:

The hag-owl flies across the moon as the wheel of cosmic time turns, reminding us of the cycles in our own becoming.

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Lore:

We are all familiar with the wheel; it exists in the mundanity of life. The spinning of bike or motor wheels propelling us to our destination, the ticking of the clock propelling us through our day. Yet, as everyday as it is, the wheel is also archetypal; it is in time and beyond time. Look up into the sky and see the fiery spinning wheel of the sun, its spokes the rays that reach Earth, threading your bones with warmth and giving you life. We see this mirrored in the Wheel of Fortune in the Tarot, which, like the spinning wheel of many a myth and folktale, spins the threads of our destiny across this lifetime and even beyond, as the soul itself exists in time and beyond time.

‘Devotee of the Wheel’ is the meaning of the name Mug Roith, once the arch-druid of Ireland, who was given this name because he used ‘wheel-incantation’ to perform his divinations. Mug Roith is described as covering himself in the pelt of a hornless bull and wearing a bird’s headdress while rising up into the air incanting. Birds were symbols of soul to the filí (poet-seers) and draoithe (druids) who were said to wear the tuigen, a mantle made of bird skin and, or feathers. In the alltar, the Otherworld, we are told there exists an ancient tree where birds call each hour into form through their song. In the ceantar, this world, Irish folk memory tells us that on the first eve of the new moon, no one can see it, on the second night, birds can see it (being closer to the cosmos and cycles of time than we are), then on the third night, everyone can see it.

In Gaelic, one of the words for an owl is cailleach oíche, which means the ‘hag’ or ‘witch of the night’. This connects the owl to the primordial goddess, the Cailleach, the ‘Veiled One’ like the night itself. In Irish folklore, even the Cailleach herself does not know how old she is, and in the medieval triads, one of the great ages of Ireland is named as ‘the age of the Cailleach’. In the Welsh tradition of the Mabinogion, the mythical being Blodeuwedd, ‘Flower Face’, is transformed into an owl as a form of punishment, though in ways it liberates her from the daytime clutches of the men who created her.

In the same branch of the Mabinogion, we meet the goddess Arianrhod, whose name likely means ‘Silver Wheel’. She lives in Caer Arianrhod, her fortress in the sea, in the direction of the west, the Otherworld, the setting sun, under the wheel of night — the silver wheel of the moon. The moon itself is likely our earliest wheel of time. The 5,000 year old ‘Calendar Stone’ in the megalithic temple of Knowth in the Boyne Valley contains 29 circular symbols (circles, wheels and crescents) thought to represent the 29-day lunar month. The Greek mene meaning ‘moon’, and Latin mensis meaning ‘month’, along with mensura meaning ‘measurement’, give us the term menstrual cycle, reflecting how women’s bodies are a microcosm of the grand cosmic cycles.

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When this card appears:

The silver wheel of the moon and indeed, the seasonal turnings in the wheel of the year are ever-present teachers in our own becoming.

This card asks you to consider what you are wholeheartedly devoted to in this season of life, or longing to devote yourself to? Where would you place this in the cycle of becoming?

Does it currently live under the balsamic moon, the initiation portal of Samhain, at the naked crossroads between death and rebirth? Or under the new moon, which like the winter solstice symbolises trust that new life will come, even though we are still deep in darkness? Or the crescent moon, the Imbolc phase of the cycle when we see the first buds of light emerge, incubating the promise of what's to come? Or the first quarter moon, the spring equinox when what we desire is half in dark, half in light, but we must devote fully to its becoming?

Is it under the waxing moon of Bealtaine, the mouth of fire bursting forth into passionate blossom? Or the full moon, the summer solstice where it reaches its peak of light, its full potential in this cycle? Or the disseminating moon, when the fruits of our trust and labour are revealed to us, a Lughnasa harvest? Or the last quarter moon, the autumn equinox, the mission now complete, light fallows before surrendering into the dark void to come?

Beneath wherever you land in this cycle, ask yourself - what is the gift of this turning of the wheel?

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Ritual:

In Irish folk tradition, it is considered especially lucky to turn a silver coin over in your pocket under the new moon, exposing both sides to the energy of the moon’s rays causing the coin to flourish. The Irish word for money is airgead, the same word as ‘silver’, a colour of the moon.

If you do not know this already, find out what phase of the moon you were born under. When this phase next cycles around, source a silver-coloured coin (€1 & €2 coins are silver and gold in colour), place it in your pocket and turn it over, exposing it to the silvery spokes of the wheel of night.

Remind yourself that no matter where you are in life’s turning, abundance will always cycle back to you.

You are part of the great wheel of life, not separate from it. You are nature, you were born to flourish.

Croí isteach,

Jen x

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Sources:

A History of Irish Magic by Sally North and James North.

Celtic Cosmology and the Otherworld: Mythic Origins, Sovereignty and Liminality by Sharon Paice MacLeod.

Irish Superstitions by Dáithí Ó hÓgáin.

Math fab Mathonwy translated by Lady Charlotte Guest.

Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford.

Mysteries of the Dark Moon: The Healing Power of the Dark Goddess by Demetra George.

The Stars and the Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland by Martin Brennan.

Sources used in the collage:

Psyche and Cupid by Elihu Vedder.