The Truth against the World

Truth speaks though the tongue were dead.

"Above all Truth applies to our ideals and our actions in the Bright Heart of our Druid souls where the Spirit burns brighter than a thousand suns. "

- Michael McGrath, Archdruid of Ireland, on Tara, 1993.

The Truth against the World - that famous Druidic motto- is a contentious phrase. It is one that deserves our closest consideration, especially among Druids, because meditation upon its meaning reaches to the heart of our being, what we are, what we do, the way we live our lives on both our inner and our outer planes.

One of the questions often asked of adherents of religions, faiths or churches (and especially of mystery traditions like Druidry) is - Why ? Why Christianity ? Why Islam? Why Buddhism ? Why Druidry ? Of course the question has much to do with where you were born. In these islands of Britain and Ireland, and in North America, Australia etc. we have to a great extent a choice concerning what spiritual path we tread. Although England, for instance, has always been a Christian country, this is now little more than a political facade. The old ways are still strong and there is a relatively free choice in how people decide to express themselves spiritually (we have not completely reached this point in Ireland yet). If you were born in Belfast, Tehran or salt lake City, your path is chosen and it takes a particular kind of courage and strength to break away from the path presented as the 'true' the 'only' one, and choose another.


This may not seem relevant to the questions we here address, but it is. No matter how much we may discuss matters and come to conclusions, such disputations are of little use if the results are not applicable to our everyday lives and to our spiritual quest. This is one reason why philosophy has become so devalued over the past couple of centuries. It has become, like the Law, so concerned with semantics that it has lost sight of the concerns of everyday life, and has recently failed to keep abreast of the scientific discoveries and medical advances and to explain their significance.


Let us therefore step back to our first purpose, which is to consider what we might mean by placing the Truth against the World. An Fhirinne in aghaidh an Domhain - The Truth against the World - The first extant expression of this saying is to be found in one of the versions of the Audacht Morann (The Will of Morann MacCairbre, a first-century Druid Brehon).

It is a curious and even a quaint phrase worthy of inclusion, say, in The Sermon on the Mount. Certainly its ambiguities make it difficult to comprehend in one sense, but this very quality makes it an excellent teaching device. Remember, our ancient Druids spoke in riddles so that only those dedicated to learning could easily understand.

So in trying to unravel its shades of meaning we have to investigate ideas and concepts of meaning that might otherwise be passed over. Moreover, no one interpretation will provide a definitive explication. We must bring our own experience, thoughts, traditions and our years of hard study to its elucidation.

It therefore stands for all times a means of helping us to look at the Truth, the World, and how these have stood, and stand, in relation to each other across the aeons, particularly today when Fact, Law and Justice can actually conflict and be at such odds, one with another, as they so often are. There is too a Druidic defiance about it.

The Bright Heart of Truth.

Truth does not lend itself to comprehensive definition.

(I have actually been slandered by a man who read that tiny sentence, stopped here, and chopped these 8 words out, presenting them in isolation on the Internet, what earthly chance have you, especially on the Internet, against a 'talent' like that ! ).

The more complex any attempt at a definition of Truth, just like Justice or any other such concept, becomes, the further it gets away from one. Truth has to be felt in the heart as well as understood in the head. Truth is always relative - it depends upon the culture in which it is held. One of the big problems with Truth is that it can all too often be concerned solely with language. In our society it has become all too prevalent to believe the printed word, bedevilled by the world of public relations, multi-media advertising campaigns and Internet social competition.

In our world today Truth is really about language. Can you be innocent in Irish and guilty in English ? So Truth must not be limited to language, which in itself is but a small part of the realm of Truth. Nor does Truth belong to the big battalions as they bombard us night and day from the mass hypnotiser in the corner of the living room. Truth belongs to the much wider world of our Being. It applies to our thoughts, words, deeds and behaviour, and even more...

Above all Truth applies to our ideals and our actions in the bright heart of our Druid souls where the Spirit burns brighter than a thousand suns.


It only takes common sense to realise that language is a very limited and indeed ill-suited medium to express Truth. Not only, as you realise when you listen to lawyers in court and politicians in parliament, is it so very easy to manipulate language to create plausible falsehoods, but language is also a medium that deals with only a small part of human experience. Any follower of the Druid Mystery Tradition will be only well aware of that. If we confine our discussion and understanding of Truth solely to language then we confine ourselves to a tyrannical system that does not reflect the bright world. Language is a narrow-valued medium used to convey information about a multi-valued world.

Too much emphasis on language can mean less of Truth. Language is a black-and-white photograph trying to convey a multi-coloured world. It simply cannot be done. White Man may not speak with forked tongue but his language may do so.

Even of Druidry only one quarter of instruction can be carried out in writing, one quarter in oral language, one quarter in practice, and the rest in experience of the World of Spirit.

We must consider Truth in a much wider perspective. A reconsideration is highly necessary at this important juncture in Druidic evolution. Truth itself has to apply to and derive from all things, taking on extra dimensions that may take it out of the realms of mere language onto a higher plane that applies to the rightness and fitness of all things in ways that are made manifest to the world. Falsehood can then be recognized in its many mazes and hidden dangers. .

It is very easy to wander around the Druid forest, aimlessly, and to emerge having seen or heard nothing at all. After gathering the flowers of the forest, if we wish to see the true light of the sun, if we wish to teach unto others something of what we have learned, if we seek emerging out of the trees to serve the outer as well as the inner planes, we must be careful where we go.

In stating that Truth in its widest sense has much to do with the rightness and fitness of things, I am not simply putting forward some new-fangled notion as we see modern cultists spring on the unwary, I am stating the belief of our ancestors that all things are connected, part of the whole. To our ancient Druids this was the natural order of things in which Truth is the preserving shrine. They did not separate spirit, politics, culture, this world, Otherworld, although they recognised fully the differences between them, all these things that we separate into faculties, professions and bureaucracies today.

Nor did they separate their thoughts, words and deeds, their temporal and spiritual being, nor the world from the universe, star from stone.

(To be continued)