1.
Three circles make a pathway
to my silver-circled lady,
three journeys will bring me to her door.
Five trees surround her bower
where the cauldron of her power
will contain her three great secrets evermore.

2.
Three rivers flowing to the one
pass through her spiral bastion,
her pennant flies beyond the cold north wind.
Five wading birds fly north to south,
bearing five sharp spears of truth
by which a fish to silver wheel is pinned.

3.
Three locks secure a chamber
guarded by nine warrior maidens.
My lady's secrets are kept safe within,
and if you wish to understand
first you must find her hidden land
and there in darkness let your quest begin.

4.
Seek out the ancient, hidden keys
among the groves of speaking trees,
Rowan, Ash and Birch will lead the way.
Learn everything they have to teach
to bring the prize within your reach
along the path from which you may not stray.

5.
And when the trees have said their piece
all three locks will then release,
the maidens will lay down their swords and yield
three potions only to be shared
by the muse and her loyal bard.
The wisdom of the stones is now revealed.

6.
The standing stones signpost the path
that leads into the spiral garth
where the seventh veil of mystery will lift,
there between the day and night,
if the path you chose was right,
the Silver Goddess will bestow her gift.

7.
Understanding of all things
is granted to each one who brings
an open mind to Sidhe's hidden door,
but the cauldron will grant only pain
to those who seek its gift for gain
while the worthy will fear darkness no more.

 

The Key

Stanza 1:

My silver - circled lady is the ancient British goddess Arianrhod of Silver Dawn, I have written about her and the person she has chosen to dwell in before of course. The three circles that lead to her are three things she is ruler of, the tides, the dawn and the zodiac; all of which circle the Earth constantly. The three journeys I must make are from unbeing to being, through life and back to unbeing as she is also the spirit of life in death and death in life.

The five trees are more obscure. The British Celts, like most ancient civilisations, had several secret alphabets, one of these was the tree alphabet. So as these alphabets were only used by the initiated to record esoteric information they had to be nonsensical to laymen. Thus the vowels were never written down so that the secrets of the Gods could not be discovered. And Arianrhod's cauldron that she keeps in her bower? Now a cauldron is the same as a grail to the Celts, not the Dutch Pot depicted in children's stories involving witches but a shallow, wide brimmed bowl for cooking or drinking. When Arianrhod succeeded the older, neolithic moon deity Ceri, she inherited a cauldron that had to be kept on the boil to preserve the three secret drops it contained. The cauldron could feed all those worthy to drink from it without ever becoming empty but its contents would poison the unworthy. So the three great secrets are those three mystery drops, now let's find them.

Stanza 2:

Three rivers are the river of time, the celestial river (ancient mythologies overlap a lot suggesting a common source, and both the Celts and the Ancient Egyptians referred to the milky way as the celestial river; and the river of death on which we float through Arianrhod's realm from unmaking to remaking. And the ocean all rivers flow into may had different names but is really one great mass of water just as the ancients saw the universe or The Oneness as a single entity of which we are all part. Arianrhod's spiral bastion, Caer Sidhe, lies in the land beyond the north wind or Hyperboria. There are lots of theories about this, the one I like is that she is the energy of the zodiac and dwells in the planet's precessional wobble.

The wading birds are bound to confuse. Arianrhod means Silver Wheel. All wading birds are sacred to her because in the nesting season they catch fishes and arrange them in a wheel, tails inwards. This must have seemed like a great mystery to the ancients but modern ornithologists know the birds do that not for any mystical purpose but simply because it makes the catch easier to swallow before flying home to feed the young.

There is another connection to alphabet myths though. The letters of the first writable language, the cuneform script that Phoenicians catch on wet clay with a bone or wood stylus is reputed to have been inspired by a wise man studying the formations migrating wading birds made in the sky.

The birds are also symbols of truth, five is the number of truth, but that line is mostly a bit of poetic licence.

Stanza 3:

Three locks? Well if you want to claim Arianrhod's gift you must first fathom out what the three special drops in her magic potion are. The nine maidens guarding those locks are the nine muses who appear in various guises all over Europe. In Celtic myth they are guardians who make sure only those willing to presevere against all odds are going to get into a position to drink from the cauldron.

And the rest of that stanza srts out your task, first travel to Arianrhod's realm and in Caer Sidhe (Spiral Castle) and once there, in darkness, hack your way through all the obstacles. Piece of cake really.

Stanza 4:

The ancient hidden keys are clues disguised in the tree alphabet (speaking trees). The first three letters are called Beth (Rowan) Luis (Birch and Nion (Ash) Easy as ABC, told you it was a piece of cake.

To learn everything the trees have to teach you must read the poems of Taliesin the Bard. This can be difficult as most of these ancient verses have been given a Christian overlay, but they tell of heroes and their struggles to overcome monsters (weather, famine, natural catastrophe) and grant peace and prosperity to their people. The Sumerian Gilgamesh epiv, the British stories of Arthur, Seigfried if you are of German extraction, Cuchulain to the Irish, Hercules myths for the Mediterranean people and many others around the world will all suffice. Stick to your task and remain firmly in the realm of myth and fables, once this stuff starts to be read literally the essential meanings will never be understood.

Stanza 5:

You've got this far, well done. Once the coded meaning of the myths have been revealed through your understanding of the secret alphabet you have opened the locks that barr the chamber of the secret. You will have also convinced Arianrhod that you are worthy to share her potion because she is the true muse, the others are simply manifestations of her. But there is one last task. You must show that you have understood the secret of the stones. OK we are talking about stone circles, megaliths and ancient temples such as are found in many places around he globe. These were built throughout the period when the old moon godess (Ceri, Rhea, Lammia - a.k.a Lilith, Dana, Io, too many names to mention,) had allowed the male sun god to share her power. They are all fantastically complex analogue computers, it would be impossible to recrate them now, using the same materials but with the benefit of modern technology, and they all calculate the coincidence of the solar and lunar calendar such as happened this year at the Jewish Hanukkah festival. This phenomenon takes place once every nineteen years. A more amazing function of the megalithic temples is that they calculate the precession of the equinoxes, a cycle repeating every 26,000 years approximately. The precession was known to the ancients but only rediscovered in the 1950s.

The secret of the stones then is that they chart the reunification of the male and female energies. Whether there is another secret hidden in precession myths is not known and we are not likely to be around long enough to find out.

Stanza 6:

Self explanatory really in as much as anything in this poem can ever be self explanatory. You have passed all the tests, stuck with your quest and imbibed the three secret essences, from the Greek, erotos, agape (pron ah-gah-pay) and caritas: physical love, spiritual or unconditional love and love of one's fellow me or generosity of spirit, now you are ready to receive the goddess' personal gift. This is my personal way of putting it, everybody who has trodden this path will have their own

Stanza 7:

Just to remind you;

Understanding of all things
is granted to each one who brings
an open mind to Sidhe's hidden door,
but the cauldron will grant only pain
to those who seek its gift for gain
while the worthy will fear darkness no more.

The understanding of all things. Well was it worth the effort? That does not mean you will understand the workings of stock markets or the novels of James Joyce of course. What you will understand is the unimportance of such things. In death everything is corrupted and from corruption everything is born. Get your head round that and and you will never lack the fruit of the Goddess' gift, inspiration. And if you are of the female gender don't feel excluded, understanding and inspiration always come from the female part of the essential being.

Thanks for reading
Ian. 

I've been asked to provide a few links to further reading:
The White Goddess by Robert Graves
Graves' scolarly and seminal work on the history of poetic myth from the earliest civilisations.
About The White Goddess
Buy from Amazon
In the beginning was The Avesta of the Zoroastrians
Bible lovers are not going to like this but Genesis was based on these truly ancient scriptures.
The Lady from Atlantis
Goddess worship is the world's oldest belief system (it is not a religion) but did it start in the lost continent.
A very English belief system
Druidry had bad press from early Christian spin doctors but it is not actually a pagan religion. The three grades of Druidry, Bards (artists rather than simply poets), Ovates (healers) and Druids (philosophers, scholars and teachers) were not priests at all. But on questioning certain people's totally unfounded assertions about the truth of Christian beliefs I get accused of wanting to make everybody believe as I do, I leave the interpretation of this site to you.