to an ancestor, an angel, a spirit guide, or a fairy presence, we might find doors into eternity opened for us not of our own choosing, and signifying a path which no one else can see, let alone follow. Especially for a child or a teenager, such unfolding of visionary or spiritual talent can be unsettling and could be mistaken for madness. To become a seer requires not only a gift for spiritual insight (what has been called “second sight” or simply “the sight”), but also a mentor, a guide, who can help that budding visionary discern their singular destiny. This is not to say that one who desires to serve Spirit as a visionary might not also be called. If you should feel such a yearning, then it only makes sense to learn all you can about psychic and intuitive skill, to develop a meaningful, committed practice of prayer and meditation, and to develop your mental capacities to the fullest. All this, and then asking for spiritual guidance. In other words—perhaps you cannot choose to be a seer, but you can always ask to be chosen.
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One might well ask, why would anyone want to be a seer? Consider the life of poor Thomas the Rhymer: he could not say anything other than the truth. One hopes that he was gifted at keeping his mouth shut, for otherwise he would be forever getting into all sorts of trouble, by both frightening and angering those who may not appreciate the truthful words spoken by him. Such a person might not always make for cheerful dinner conversation, and could certainly gain a reputation as being dour and pessimistic! Of course, with the discipline of a well-shut mouth, he could learn to speak only about the good things due to happen, but even that would exact its toll—for, after all, we cannot always tell if something is good or bad, even as it happens, and perhaps not even for years afterward. A seer like Thomas could survive only by warning his listeners that, like a good referee, “he calls them likes he sees them”—and leave the value-assessment up to others.
The role of a seer is essentially social. There’s no point in visionary ability strictly for yourself (sure, there’s the idea of being able to clean up at the stock market, but what good is that, if there’s no one to share it with?). The only sustainable and meaningful reason to access hidden wisdom and spiritual vision would be to give it away.
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Scientific tests have revealed that if subjects who are familiar with a standard deck of playing cards are given a deck with a “wrong” card (such as a red ace of spades or a black queen of hearts), only a small number of those who examine the cards quickly will catch the mistake. Apparently, we are such creatures of custom and convention, trained to see what we expect to see, that even an erroneous playing card can slip by our powers of observation. So how many other anomalies or “paranormal” (beyond normal) events simply fail to catch our eye? Herein enters the true task of a seer: to be the one who sees the wrong-colored card at first glance, who notices the glitches and gaps that invite us into the places where “reality” is simply not so tightly sewn up as we might wish to believe. This function of the seer is not meant to foster chaos, but rather, liberation. We catch what Joseph Chilton Pearce called “cracks in the cosmic egg” so that we might be more truly faithful to things as they are—not as we might wish, hope, or be trained to believe they are.
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The concept of the seer ought not to be taken too literally. One might “see” mystical and extraordinary things, but there are many ways to approach the threshold of spiritual mystery. The French word clairvoyant is familiar to most people with an interest in psychic phenomena—it is basically the French equivalent of seer, meaning “clear watcher”—but there are also clairaudients (clear hearers), clairsentients (clear feelers), and even clairscentrists (clear smellers), clairgustants (clear tasters) and clairtangents (clear touchers, or psychometrists). Many ways to access spiritual information exist; and anyone who is chosen to be a seer may find that their guidance comes in any of a variety of (extra) sensory ways.
The key point here is for all of us—even if we have no concept of ourselves as “seers” or “psychics”—to remain open to receiving guidance and insight through intuitive means that can reach us in an almost endless variety of ways. Celtic wisdom reminds us that the spirit world is always nearby—and so, the ways of communicating with it are always within reach.
In MacLennan’s A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, the word neart is defined as “force, pith, power, might, energy, vigor; vast quantity; number, superabundance.” As the dictionary attests, it’s a wonderful word that represents how a variety of spiritually-meaningful concepts intersect within the Celtic mind. Neart represents the life-energy of abundance. It signifies the fundamental energy that flows at the heart of all things—an energy that not only keeps things going, but also fills everything with potential and possibility. If you want to look at it spiritually, it is the energy of Divine love. If you prefer a more non-theistic approach, neart could symbolize something akin to the impersonal “Force” of Star Wars fame. Except that there’s no dualism within neart—no “light side” and “dark side.” In the words of a new and delightful idiom that has surfaced in contemporary American speech: “It’s all good.” Neart is the energy of Celtic non-duality: it holds all things together in its flow of power and prosperity.
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In his book Where Three Streams Meet: Celtic Spirituality, Irish monk Seán Ó Duinn suggests that neart could be thought of as mana, the Polynesian concept of “life-force.” Which brings to my mind a variety of other ways of thinking about neart: it is reiki, the Japanese concept similar to mana—of “Universal Life-Force.” It is prana—a similar concept found in the Sanskrit tradition. Sure, it’s dangerous to draw sweeping parallels like this that blithely hop across cultures and their distinctive ways of understanding the cosmos—and yet, one of the treasures of neart is how it offers us both a sense of the energy that pulsates through all things, and how that energy is a source of plenty. In this way of seeing things, neart may not be exactly the same as similar concepts from other cultures, but it is close enough to celebrate common ground. We can leave it to the academics to split the hairs that separate reiki from neart, and so forth. In the meantime, Celtic spirituality can join numerous other wisdom traditions in affirming that the world we live in is not a place of scarcity and hardship—at least not essentially. No matter what material challenges we face, we are all custodians of immense spiritual wealth.
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So how does neart function in our ordinary lives? Let’s begin with faith. Believing something can often be the very essential key to making it so. People who believe in the power of prayer are far more likely to report it making a real, observable difference in their lives. For those who don’t believe, maybe it’s just a matter of prayer not being given credit where it’s due—or perhaps, lack of faith can be an obstacle to the flow of energy (read: neart) in our lives. You want a miracle? Begin by believing it. No, not just paying it lip service; but choosing to live your life in a way that creates the amazing open-minded possibility that a four-alarm way-too-big-to-be-a-coincidence miracle just might manifest for you. Sure, not everyone gets miracles: as a friend of mine put it, “the Goddess is not in the habit
