Sacred and Profane

A View Of The Earth

Dara Molloy

Article for Spring Issue of Living Heritage Magazine . April 8th 1992.

Recently I travelled along a motorway in Europe from Heidelberg to Frankfurt. As I looked out on my right we passed a range of mountains. The mountains reminded me of the Twelve Bens in Connemara which I can see from my front door on Aran.

I was aghast to see whole slices cut out of these mountains. It was as if some giant knife had been used to slice the mountain, like you would butter. The slice was sheer leaving no possibility of future vegetation. The possibility struck me that if I returned in a few years' time the whole mountain range could be gone. A shiver ran down my spine as I thought of what could equally happen to the Twelve Bens.

On the Late Late Show earlier this year, there was a lively debate about the proposed siting of a Heritage Centre at the foot of Mullaghmore in Co. Clare. John O'Donoghue, opposing the plan, spoke of Mullaghmore as a 'Tabernacle'. To him, Mullaghmore was the Holy of Holies in a Burren that was altogether sacred. The Heritage Centre would be like the money-changers in the Temple.

On that television programme, those who favoured putting a Heritage Centre at the foot of Mullaghmore described the mountain as a 'tourism resource' that would bring jobs and prosperity to a deprived and neglected area.

Similar instances of a clash of perspectives can be found elsewhere in Ireland.When gold was found on Croagh Patrick in Mayo, those in favour of mining it saw it as a national resource that should be tapped. Those who experienced the mountain as sacred and holy were outraged.

Inismór, the largest of the Aran Islands, has historically been a sacred island for thousands of years. Dun Aengus, an ancient fort on the island built at the edge of a sheer cliff, is at least 2,000 years old. If we accept the likelihood that it was built for ceremonial, symbolic and ritual purposes, then it is indeed a sacred site.

Up to 100,000 visitors tramped up the hill to Dun Aengus last year. What did they go to see? The dry stone walls may be massive in scale but could have been built by any amateur with a bit of common sense.

Dun Aengus is not great architecture in the style of the Colosseum in Rome or the Greek Temples. The centre of the site is a natural platform of rock about two feet high that looks like a stage, placed at the very edge of the 300 foot cliff. People have to visit the site on foot. Whether rich or poor, old or young, they must take the 30 minute rough climb to the top. Mini-buses, pony-and-traps, cars and bicycles all get left at the entrance.

Whether people are aware of it or not, they become pilgrims when they cross the rough stile and begin the journey upwards on foot to Dun Aengus. There is little doubt that most of the visitors return deeply impressed. They have had what can only be described as a spiritual experience. For some it is awe and wonder, for others it is a sense of the eternal, or of our own human smallness, or of the power of the sea, or of peace or healing.

The strength of the earlier Celtic peoples in Ireland was their keen awareness of the spiritual forces all around them. For them, two worlds were side by side and often intermingled. They searched out places where the holy could be sensed, where the energy was strong. Dun Aengus is one of those places. Having found a sacred place, they merely marked it off with mounds of earth, as at Tara, or mounds of stone as on Aran. They then go there to conduct their ceremonies and rituals and to communicate with the divine.

The view of the earth promoted by industrial civilisation is of spiritless matter. A theology that thinks of God as being 'up there' or 'out there' suits this approach. The earth can then be seen as Godless or as a machine that God has created. This theology creates a relationship to the earth that is similar to that of a man with his car. He can use it as he sees fit, and he must keep it in repair. The vocabulary of engineering is used to describe how we relate to the earth. We talk of 'managing the planet', 'exploiting resources', 'sustaining the system'.

The archetypical image for a modern day approach to the earth's environmental problems is the satellite picture of the globe. In this picture we view the earth from outer space - where God is. We can put ourselves in the place of God and manage the earth in the way you might adjust your television set. Man is like God and the earth is like a machine that was invented. By viewing the earth from outer space our alienation is complete. We finally achieve the status of an alien.

To me this alienation of humans from the rest of nature is at the heart of the environmental problem. Everything has been desacralised, its mystery removed, its untouchable otherness dismissed. Mountains are for mining, rivers for damming, forests for cutting, wind for harnessing, cows for milking, pigs for fattening, hens for laying, soil for cash-cropping, and places of beauty for touristification.

The tourist is the alien who treads across land that has been sacred for thousands of years. The Aran Islands are rapidly being touristified. Each day in the summer mini-buses and pony-and-traps stop outside our thatched cottage for photographs to be taken. For many, of course, the experience of the island in its beauty, its peace, its history, its culture, its language and its people triggers a deep hunger within them and opens them up to a world they have lost but still long for. But essentially, tourism is an economic activity that can only exist as part of an industrial society.

Of course, there have been visitors coming to these islands for thousands of years. Inismór could be termed the novitiate of monastic Ireland. To it flocked the young men and women who were later to set up their own monasteries in other holy places. The monasteries on Aran, and there are ten sites still clearly marked with ruins of churches, remains of crosses, burial sites and holy wells, were centres not just of holiness but of scholarship and of skills both practical and artistic.

But those who came to Aran could not be classified as tourists. They came with an acknowledged spiritual hunger and were welcomed through the exercise of the virtue of hospitality. The essential relationship of visitor to visited was spiritual not material. They came acknowledging the sacredness of place and people.

The reverse is now the case. The essential relationship between visitor and visited is now financial. The tourist is looking for value for money. The virtue of hospitality, which has been the hallmark of Irish spirituality for as far back as can be remembered, has been turned into another commodity for consumption and it has its price. Fáilte has been turned into Bord Fáilte.

From this perspective it is clear that the time has come to call a halt to so-called 'development' and 'progress'. Nature herself is calling a halt. The progression to a Single European Market and a common currency, if it means further growth of production and further expansion in the range of commodities for the consumer, will simply hasten the end of this industrial era.

Thankfully our own Irish spiritual heritage offers us another way forward where again the mystery and magic of trees and birds, mountains and rivers, seasons and sunsets, hills and valleys will be an integral part of human life and where we will walk gently upon the earth in tune with all around us.

David Hickie, An Taisce, The National Trust for Ireland, The Taylors' Hall, Back Lane,
Dublin 8. Telephone 01-541786. Editor: Geraldine Walsh.

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