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www.celtic-connection.com
NOVEMBER 2004
Ghostly Phenomena Walk in November Mist
EYOND the scrim of bare trees, the solar disk sets. From the window I can see mist 'forming over the pond. A chill breeze blows a weary leaf on its way. Twilight, so atmospheric, has always seemed welcoming to me.
Settling into a big chair, the mist swirls. The burned out bulbs of a dusty chandelier remind me of souls passed on - the light spent, an empty physical form left behind.
What of the lights, the souls, that having flickered out, leave traces behind for the living to see, hear or feel - what of ghosts?
Ghosts have flitted across the minds of the living for thousands of years. Every culture has its stories, its explanations and its denials of the existence of apparitions.
Apparitional phenomena are not limited to the human sphere. Folklore, literature and contemporary accounts make mention of ghostly animals and birds, objects such as buildings, ships and cars and anomalies like shimmering lights, sounds, smells and situational cold spots.
There are few who do not take some interest in the ghostly realm. Even a cynic will find an authentic ghost story riveting. Tales of the supernatural bridge the distance between this and the Otherworld. It is a journey that someday we all will make.
While institutionalized religion may offer a citadel for Heaven and Hell, everyday human life is the setting for most paranormal experiences. The ability to perceive phenomena, known as "second sight, " does anecdotally seem to run in families, especially ones of Celtic descent.
However, this "ability" may be rooted in the familial willingness to believe and hence provide an open, rather than closed, conduit for Otherworldly content.
The fact is that we are all capable of perceiving beyond our defined senses; it is a matter of awareness, attitude toward unusual experience and state of consciousness at a particular moment.
It can be difficult to qualify what is to be considered a ghost. Is it a brilliant, seemingly intelligent light that gives comfort in a crises, a sudden visceral understanding that someone unseen is near you or is it the particular look in the eyes of an 1800's era soldier standing by the side of a desert road as you drive by who on second glance isn't really there?
Some believe that such phenomena are self-existing beings, literally another type of being. Phantasms of this sort include the legendary Irish banshee, the Breton Ankou, the Welsh Cyhyraeth, the Scottish Bean-Nighe. Interestingly, these are all female spectres and cause no harm, only foretelling the sorrow for which they keen.
As the Old Worldpasses away, these characters are seen and heard less frequently, replaced by the
By CYNTHIA AUSTIN
ubiquitous "White Lady, " a solitary female phantom who "walks" in places where grief once visited, no longer portending trauma to come.
There is nary a town or village the world over that does not host a spectral resident. Although it is the vengeful or frightening wraiths that garner the greatest attention, they are experienced far less frequently than those that appear to help, guide or to give comfort to the living.
In fact, occurrences of benign or watchful apparitions are common enough that few families are without at least one ghost or supernatural story to pass on.
Why do these more benevolent spirits appear? Often they appear to say farewell and offer evidence that they are at peace. Others appear in times of great distress to tender needed guidance or even warning.
Sometimes the identity of the spirit is apparent, sometimes it is distinctly anonymous. Despite the brevity of the visit, percipients of this type of phenomena report the emotional benefit they receive in understanding that love survives death.
The benevolent spirits are frequently perceived as radiant, sometimes too bright to view. After death, the Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to the "Dharma-Kaya, " a dazzling luminosity which represents perfect enlightenment, the state into which the soul
dissolves.
Perhaps the shining light that so often accompanies these spirits is the illumination of the divine state upon liberation from the physical body. Created by no god, this primordial brilliance is journey's end and the endless beginning.
What about the unhappy spirits, the grey souls that flit and walk and remain? If we consider radiant ghosts as projections of the soul moving on, possibly the grey spirits are projections of a soul whose journey was incomplete.
If the soul image itself could be considered an archetype, a universal image, perhaps the unhappy shade is a sliver of that image, a fragment split from the whole by whatever reason of nature we can never understand.
If energy be the currency of the spirit, it seems reasonable that split archetypal fragments might become deposited in a space such as a house or a locale where significant emotional or spiritual drama occurred.
heft there, the energy might replay and replay and replay itself, forever seeking reunion with the whole, the soul that has moved on.
From many accounts, the conduct of a grey soul is at least somewhat dependant on the demeanor and respect offered to the apparition by the percipient.
That is, if one views archetypal energy with benevolence, it is more likely to respond in kind. Dealt with malevolently, it will respond as such in due course. This holds true as much in life as it does apparently, in death.
It does not seem implausible to me, that in a moment of depth, when consciousness is lowered or suspended, that one could experience the past and the future, the continuum of human experience, be it one's own or that of someone else.
This, of course, is the basis for the shaman's journey, the traveling of the psychic realm through the diminishment of "real-time" perception.
As Sandra Dennis writes, "an encounter with numinous images can change our lives, since the interpretation, fueled by the inherent transformative power we give them, can potentially shatter or enhance our worldview. "
Spirits have accompanied humankind since the beginning, their quieting (or disturbing) effects may be of fundamental importance to the collective development of the human psyche.
An unequivocal explanation of ghostly phenomena is not possible at this point in history. More closely aligned to the dream world, paranormal events speak to the world of mythos, not logos.
Random, sometimes synchronistic, they may be glimpses of a world that is not necessarily beyond but that supports our world and our own paths to brilliance.
The German philosopher Immanual Kant wrote, "death is only the end of man, not the end of the soul's life. " In the mists of November, should you happen upon a shade in your mind's eye, bid it grace on the journey that one day will be your
HOW GREEN WAS
MY VALLEY: A Hollywood View of Welsh Life
By EIFION WILLIAMS
HE Irish Film and Television Academy recently awarded a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement M Award to the great Hollywood actress Maureen j) O 'Hara, now in her eighty-fifth year.
Dublin-born Miss O'Hara is remembered for some memorable movies, among them Director John Ford's 1941 film How Green Was My Valley, which received 10 Academy Award nominations.
How Green Was My Valley is probably the most famous movie ever made about any aspect of Welsh life. Yet despite the plaudits it received, including those for Maureen O'Hara s beauty and acting ability, the film has frequently aroused controversy.
To a great majority of critics the most significant fact about Ford's film is that it beat out Orson Welles' Citizen Kane for best film at the 1941 Academy Awards. Ever since, Citizen Kane has been overwhelmingly judged by critics and movie goers as one of the greatest films ever made. Almost every list of great movies compiled at the end of the millennium put it in first place, whereas How Green Was My Valley has rarely if ever appeared on any list of great movies.
Not only did it win for Best Film but How Green Was My Valley won awards in several other categories, including one for Ford as best director. The film's depiction of life in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the century, as represented by the Morgan family, was based on a novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn, a writer subsequently found to have had only second-hand knowledge of the Welsh mining valleys.
Among reasons given by critics for the film's success was the belief that honouring the film was a tangible way for the Academy to express its support for the heroic way in which the British people were resisting the Luftwaffe's nightly bombardments in 1940-1941.
Other critics maintain a more likely reason is that Orson Welles was considered an upstart in Hollywood, whereas John Ford had already demonstrated his ability to direct outstanding movies such as Stagecoach and The Grapes o/Wrath He later went on to solidify his reputation as one of the greatest movie directors of all time.
Despite its popularity, How Green Wis My Valley has frequently been criticized in Wales, especially by those familiar with life in the mining valleys, for its stereotyped characters and unrealistic scenery and situations. This Hollywood view of Welsh life became established as fact in the minds of many people outside Wales and was the picture of Wales most often shown to the world.
A recently-published Welsh-language book by Gwenno Ffrancon, a lecturer in film at the University of Wales, Bangor, takes the criticism a step further. The book's Welsh title is Cyfaredd y Cysgodion: Delweddu Cymru a 'i Phohl ar Ffilm, 1935-1951 (The Spell of the Shadows: Portraying
Wales and its People on Film, 1935-1951).
Ffrancon maintains that the values and mindset portrayed in How Green Was My Valley are more Irish than Welsh, reflecting the Irish-American background of John Ford, who was born Sean O'Fearna in Maine.
Not one of the leading actors in the film is Welsh, resulting in a variety of accents that grate on anyone familiar with South Wales voices. Maureen O 'Hara, Roddy McDowell and Barry Fitzgerald were of Irish background, while Walter Pidgeon was a Canadian. Ffrancon even maintains that one scene features a distinctly un-Welsh Irish jig!
To Ffrancon the most laughable indication of the director's and his crew's lack of knowledge of the valleys is the unbelievable Malibu-built set, where the coal mine, the centre point of the village, is perched on top of a hill while the miners' cottages appear to hang on the steep incline leading up to it.
The set is supposedly based on sketches of Cerrig Ceinnen and Clyddach-cum Tawe, which are either misspelled real places or fictions of the Hollywood mind. Either way, the set is as far removed from any place in Wales as Hollywood is from the real world.
It could be argued that none of this matters any more. Yet it is surprising how often How Green Was My Valley is mentioned, especially by older generations of North Americans, whenever the subject of Wales comes up in conversation. The film has also found new adherents after its recent release on DVD. Many still retain the image of Wales and its people presented in the film even though it is and was mostly false.
Gwenno Ffrancon also points out that this one-sided view of Wales is reinforced in other popular movies about the country such as The Corn is Green and The Citadel. Many Welsh people find scenes such as hymn-singing miners leaving the mine after a shift unrealistic and a boring cliche.
To nobody's regret, coal-mining is now a dead industry in Wales and the valleys are green once more. It would be unfortunate if anyone's lasting impressions of this beautiful country were formed by Hollywood movies depicting only one relatively brief aspect of its rich history.