“I come from lands of strange things, from lands of familiar things, so that I may learn from you the spot on which died, and the spot on which were born, knowledge and ignorance.”
(from The Conversation of Colum Cille and the Youth)

These talks will use medieval tales to explore aspects of the realm of the indigenous supernatural in Irish tradition. While this realm was imagined in terms evidently rooted in pre-Christian beliefs, our sources are the work of Christian authors, who were somehow able to accommodate such ancient concepts within the framework of their faith. Although intimately linked with the landscape, the Otherworld does not exist in time and space; it is both the basis of the human community, and its antithesis. As various texts indicate, the barrier between ‘there’ and ‘here’ lies in our established ways of thinking and seeing.

The picture is Oweynagat (The Cave of the Cats), Rathcroghan, County Roscommon. Fissure at rear of souterrain.

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John Carey was educated at Harvard University, where he was subsequently appointed Associate Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures. Thereafter he held research fellowships at the Warburg Institute (University of London), the Institute of Irish Studies (Queen’s University Belfast), and the School of Celtic Studies (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies); he is now Professor of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork. His books include A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland (1999, 2011), Ireland and the Grail (2007), Ten Basic Principles That Inspire the Work of Temenos (2015), The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature (2018), and Magic, Metallurgy and Imagination in Medieval Ireland: Three Studies(2019). He is a member of the Academic Board and Council, and a Fellow, of the Temenos Academy, and general editor of the Temenos Academy Review.

Carey, J., ‘Time, space, and the Otherworld’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 7 (1987):1-27.

Carey, J., ‘The waters of vision and the gods of skill’, Alexandria, 1 (1991): 163-185.

Cross, T.P. & Slover, C.H., Ancient Irish Tales, New York: Barnes & Noble (1996 and other printings; first published 1936).

Meyer, K. & Nutt, A., The Voyage of Bran, son of Febal to the Land of the Living, 2 volumes, London: Nutt (1895-1897).

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