Short
analysis of The Augury of Mary, traditional Gaelic
charm or prayer used
to find that which is missing.
© R J Stewart, 2004
1 God over me
God before me God behind
me,
I on thy path oh God,
Thou oh God
In my steps.
2 The augury made by Mary for her own son,
When he was for a space missing...
Knowledge of truth,
Not knowledge of falsehood,
That I shall truly see my entire quest.
3 The offering made of Bride through her
palm.
Sawest thou it, o king of life?
Said the king of life that he saw.
4 Son of beauteous Mary
King of life,
Give thou me eyes to see my entire
quest
With grace that shall never fail
Before me,
That shall never quench or dim.
(The numbering of the sections 1-4 is my own: there
are many variants of this traditional charm
for frith- pronounced
free or “augury”.)
Verse
1: Affirms the sacred Directions: above, before,
behind, and the path beneath. Each Direction
is dedicated to Divinity before the augury
is made, with a prayer for central Spirit within…thou
oh God in my steps.
Verse 2: refers to an apocryphal legend about
the child Jesus, who went missing. His mother
found
him teaching
in the courtyard
of the temple, confounding the elders. This
apocryphal reference validates the frith,
originally pagan,
in Christian context.
If Mary did it to find the child Jesus, it
is acceptable for us to do it. But there is
also
an esoteric
content to this
motif. The child (like the boy Merlin in
Welsh legend) embodies a quality of pure spirit,
truth,
and innocence.
When he goes
to the outer court of the temple and confounds
the elders, we may sense a spiritual movement,
of the
inner spirit
towards the hardened outer consciousness.
A further esoteric and magical motif is found
in the phrase “when
he was for a space missing”. While first level validates
the practice of the frith through its use by Mary mother of
Jesus, and the second level implies a movement of spirit through
human consciousness, the third is a cosmic movement. “When
he was for a space missing” refers to the Son of Light
crossing the Abyss. The Great Mother, Mara/Mari (who becomes
Mary in Christian legend) gives birth to the Child of Light,
and at first, as with all motherhood, the child remains
close to the mother. But when the Son of Light crosses into
the manifest
world of stars, time, space, the Mother reflects upon the
Void that arises through his Absence. This theme is important
in
the context of frith, as it is the Absence of something
that enables an empty space to be filled with knowledge
of Presence.
A further esoteric sense of this image refers
to the time between the crucifixion and
the resurrection,
when Jesus
was “missing” in
the Underworld.
Verse 3: Bride
or Brigh or Brigit is the Gaelic saint/goddess of frithir or
the arts of divination
and augury. She
is also the patroness of smith craft,
poetry, and healing. All of the
foregoing derives from the Sacred Fire,
the Inner Fire, which kindles Stars
and Souls
equally. She
is also known
in Scotland
and Ireland as the midwife and/or foster
mother of Jesus.
The offering made of
Bride through her palm refers, in the outer sense,
to the
method
of augury. The
hand is
curved
to make a tube, through which the
seer or seeress looks with one
eye, the other eye being closed.
There is also an inner or esoteric content,
for the
traditional
hand
position
reminds us of the ancient Gaelic
posture for augury and for seeing
into the other world, called “one eye, one hand, one
foot”. The seer/seeress stands on tiptoe on one foot,
with the other foot tucked behind the knee of the standing
leg. One arm is placed behind the back, while the other
hand is curled before the one open eye. Try it! Note how
this resembles
The Hanged Man, who crosses the Abyss of Time and Space,
hanging from the Tree of Life, with his hair flowing out
into the river
of manifest worlds.
A further implication may be sensed
in the use of the palm, for Bride,
like a
number
of deities,
is
seen with
a flame emerging
from her palm, and from under
her feet.
The appeal to the King of Life,
in verses 3 and 4, to bring
truth and
grace to the
seer,
is an
appeal
to Jesus
as Christ,
the arisen and transcendent
Son of Light. This brings the frith
around
full-spiral,
for the
King of Life
empowers the vision
for the seer, by virtue of
the history that (in human form)
his mother
used the augury
to find
him when
he was missing.
Without it, he might have
been lost forever, and may not have
fulfilled
the cosmic
promise of his
ritual
life, death, and
resurrection.
Much more can be discovered in the
simple charm and its variants from Gaelic tradition, and I hope
that this short exploration will encourage you to meditate upon
the Augury of Mary, to practice it as a spiritual exercise (in
addition to being an augury), and to try the posture of One Eye,
One Hand, One Foot, in your spiritual work.
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