A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE CELTIC TRIADS
The Celts were an Indo-European group which migrated to, and settled-in, northwestern Europe, which includes Brittany in France, Britain and the British Isles, and Ireland. The number three was important, even sacred, to the Celts. A few of their deities, such as Brighid and the Morrigan, had three-fold aspects to them. The Druids, the priestly class of the Celtic peoples, studied for up to 20 years to be a full-fledged Druid priest, and their teaching was all-oral. If the Druids ever wrote anything down, it’s never been found. Students of Druidry were expected to learn all druidic knowledge by listening to it and committing it to memory.
The triads are an artifact of Celtic folklore, centuries-old. It’s been speculated the triads are a surviving remnant of the years-long-teaching which master Druids passed on to their students, but this remains speculation. Their structure is basically, ‘There are three things that (fill in the blank): (this), (this) and (this)’ and clearly served as a mnemonic device for conveying key insights, rules, bits of information on human behavior, morality, law, the Gods, and fate. Many are witty, some noble, others bitterly-sharp or deadly-serious, but all are wise. Given their wide-ranging and almost Pythic nature, I thought they’d also make a good divination tool.
I GET DOWN TO BRASS-TACKS
Being the divination engineer/scientist I am, I’ll sometimes look at a divination tool, method, or approach and ask myself, ‘how can I do this differently? Perhaps better? More efficiently? In a manner which will not step on too many copyright-toes? And downloadable as a PDF? And won’t get me struck by lightning?
Or, as in the case of the Adinkra symbols, I looked at something which was never meant to be a divination tool and ask myself, ‘can this be turned into a divination tool?’ In the case of the African Opele, I asked myself, ‘how can I transform this divination tool into a format that won’t bring Orunla’s eternal wrath down on my head?’ The end-result was the Geomancy Cards, which I think of as ‘Euro-Ifa’ since the sixteen symbols of the Opele are featured in the cards by the Latin names European mystics knew them by. Most often, I think my efforts result in some measure of success.