Gaelic Otherworld

Yes. Yes we should. So I can watch people talk about it and think about asking questions or participating but then getting too scared to do so. Jokes about my nerves aside I think it'd be helpful to have a thread where we can talk about it.

That's the thing I find most intriguing about it really. And when I'm writing things that involve it in some fashion it's the thing that I like to look at most. Just how thin the layers can be.

That reminds me of an experience I had while we were camping one day. In these woods that we liked to go to. I decided to stray away from the family because I was a big kid now and could explore. By myself.

This was an awful plan and I got lost.

Eventually I was struck by a very heavy feeling. I felt somewhat out of place. Whereas the trees and what not felt more horrendously real than anything else I had ever seen. These things were part of something that I did not even begin to grasp. Things were very different and not at all what I knew and was comfortable with.

Incidentally that's an experience that has managed to inspire some of my messing about with the "you could just end up stepping into it" thing in my writing. That and how I feel around the ocean.

That draw it has is fucking fierce.

this is one of those areas where lately i've been wondering, when things start getting weird in a certain way, if it's the place my mind is at with weird brains/hallucinations/etc. or if i've managed to accidentally step out of this world. not in a 'my mental disabilities make me magical' way, but in an 'i can't fucking tell the difference' way. so it'll be nice to read about others' experiences with this.

there was a night a few years ago where i'm pretty damn sure something happened. it led to this intense clarity i hadn't had in months and is what finally got me to seek help for depression and anxiety. i remember walking passed a certain point, and it was like the falling snow became different and everything became sharper like someone was messing with the contrast. and it got really really quiet. seeing 3 deer bounding across the snow in front of me was weird too. like, wait, this is a thing that actually happens? in real life? idk it was a weird night.

It's definitely not like the astral—the astral is a place you travel to, well, astrally, in spirit or mind or otherwise in non-physical form. In Irish mythology (and also Welsh stories, though that's Brythonic), the otherworld is not so much a single other realm as it is a multitude of faery kingdoms and magical islands, and it can be travelled to physically. It's often difficult to get to, but it's a real place in the same sense that New York is real. That's why people are talking about times when they feel like they accidentally found the otherworld—it can be sort of like "pockets" of another place interspersed throughout and intersecting with our world.

I wrote a paper about the otherworld as it appears in Irish and Welsh mythologies a couple years ago, you can read it here if you like.

I slightly disagree with what Ciar wrote--in that, there are theories around astral that you can travel to real places. I could spiritually project myself to New York City, for example. So in that sense, I think you could travel to the Otherworld via astral travel. But the concept of astral planes and the Otherworld are different, and traveling via astral is not supported by lore.

I just answered a question about the Otherworld on tumblr and so I'm just gonna dump it here too haha, the person was specifically asking about how to reconcile the physical description of the Otherworld as a visitable place as a reconstructionist: 

I’d first like to bring up some observations from Marie-Louise Sjoestedt in Gods and Heroes of the Celts:


So I mean yes it’s a place that can be travelled to, but it’s also a place you could pass through unawares, I think. I’ve heard it said that to many Gaelic Polytheists, sacred space isn’t created, it’s found. I don’t think drawing a stark line between this world and the Otherworld is necessary.



But that being said, I do understand there are obviously Very Odd Things that happen in the Otherworld that we don’t experience here, which does draw a line at least in the kinds of experiences possible in these places. One option of course is to view the events that take place as metaphorical or symbolic, rather than literal. Another option is to view it as things that happen in meditation or astral travel as has been suggested. I don’t do much with either, and they’re certainly not Gaelic in origin, but we do have evidence I think of some kind of sensory deprivation undergone to experience visions, I think? I can’t think for the life of me where that’s from, though.



So I think how you reconcile it is really up to you. There’s not a concrete answer that everyone accepts or anything like that.