the three days of the full moon esbat are over and I am recovering. Yes, they are restorative and necessary, but the round of ceremonial bathing, meditation and trance is... well, intense. This has got to be the most transformative esbat I've been through. for a seanachai storyteller in a particular Celtic tradition, the usual method of reading and discounting a fariy tale or myth is not employed. Nor is it sufficient to simply study the myth and tear the dear thing to pieces. The legends are sacred, like any Bible story, and must be lived in, experienced breathed over again and again.

Oprah interviewed and author once and asked her if the characters in her stories just come to her and start talking. The author looked rather awkward at this question. Some, who I do not read, when asked this question say, smugly, "Of course not. My characters are my pawns in my hands." That is not being a seanachai, that is telling a story that's dead before it's born, and those tales won't last. When Tolkien confessed than one day, while grading papers, he looked down to see he'd scribbled the word "hobbit" and then a whole story grew up from that scribbling, that was being a seanachai. When JK Rowling said that one day while sitting on a train, Harry Potter just walked up to her, that was being a seanachai. That is why their works are powerful and touch people to the heart. When I confess to the so called craziness that makes me carry on full conversations and sometimes even take on the personas of my people, that is the art of bardry, and a druidic craft.