By Nick Griffiths-Haynes
In druid rituals we often call on the three world's, those of earth, sea, and sky. This has become a traditional way of addressing all the spirits in the world and all of its aspects. Yet (with a few exceptions) when I look through the writings of modern druids, both in print and on websites, I find many beautiful and inspiring pieces about mountains, trees, forests, birds and all manner of creatures, but where is the water, the seas and oceans that surround the land, that cover over 70% of the worlds surface and is absolutely essential to all life?
Despite the great tankers and container ships that transport our consumer goods across its surface, the seas remain a truly untamed and untameable wilderness filled with creatures straight out of myth. For centuries sailors hugged the coastlines afraid of crossing the seas, worried that they would fall off the edge of the world. Their imaginations populating the deep dark waters with monsters like the kraken, leviathan, sea serpents, culthulu and other Lovecraftian nightmares. Fishermen still find the carcases of giant squid occasionally washed up on the shore, only known otherwise from the analysis of whale stomachs caught for ‘scientific research'. Several species only known to palaeontologists have been found alive and well in the black waters of the deep, like the coelacanth rediscovered in the 1930s.
Mythologies around the globe have the seas as the birthplace of the world, where primordial deities create the land and set it in the oceans. Seas are places filled with heroes on impossible missions, like Jason sailing the Argo between the crushing jaws of the cliffs of Symphegades, or Ulysses on his great Odyssey around the Mediterranean trying to get home to his wife and child. There are Vikings trading and raiding in their dragon-proud ships, pirates and privateers hungry for gold on the Spanish main, explorers like Columbus and Captain Cook, naval commanders like Nelson...The seas are a place of great courage, where men are tested against the elements and the gods to see what they are made of, surviving by luck or by curse.
Humans, as land creatures, skip across its surface, occasionally probing its depths in the name of science or oil, but the truth remains that we know less about the oceans of our own planet than we do about the surface of the moon or Mars. We have always been fascinated by it. The liminal space of the shoreline that lies between the sea and the land is still the destination of millions of people the world over. Heading out to the seaside on holiday to lie on the beach baking in the sun, paddling in the water to cool off when it gets too hot, cheap ice creams, sand in sandwiches, getting changed without revealing your self behind a damp itchy towel... clichés of family holidays by the sea. These ordinary excursions are taken in an extraordinary place. Caught between the worlds, never truly land or sea, the shoreline is shifting constantly from one to the other, dancing the relationship between earth, sun and moon.
The sea air has long been thought to have healing properties. Fashionable people would go to the seaside to walk along the civilized promenades and piers to ‘take the sea air'. This same air, laden with salt, will happily corrode anything left exposed to it for too long.
The sheer depth and breadth of the oceans has lead to unfortunate consequences. If humans believe the oceans are bottomless and without end, what better place to throw all our unwanted rubbish? Surely that volume of water would be enough to safely dilute even the most toxic sludge and sewage? to absorb any amount of radiation? It is hard for us to imagine that the phrase ‘...always another fish in the sea...' is no longer true. The great cod fisheries off the coast of Newfoundland collapsed so dramatically in the early nineties that many commentators fear that fish populations may never recover. Do we take this as a warning of the risk of using up limited resources? Or do we decide that another species of wild swimming creature tasted better anyway? Industrial deep sea trawling is leaving great scars in the sea floor, cutting through cold water corals and ecosystems humanity has only just discovered.
The oceans perform a vital role in managing our climate. The UK is only the comfortable temperate place it is thanks to the Gulf Stream bringing warm waters and mild air up from the Caribbean. The El Nino/ La Nina southern oscillation that occurs at 2-7 year intervals is largely the result of subtle fluctuations in sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific. The weather systems that bring rains to water crops and feed streams and rivers start over the oceans, as do the hurricanes and tropical storms that come ashore with such devastating effects.
The complex relationship between the seas and the atmosphere is one that humans are only just beginning to understand. They lock away carbon dioxide in the tiny bodies of plankton, the basis of the oceans food chain, that float wherever the currents take them, photosynthesising sunlight into sugars. One type of plankton called cocolithophorids is partially responsible for the release of dimethyl sulphite, which in the atmosphere acts as condensing nuclei, helping the formation of clouds.
Why is the sea important to druidry? We humans live out our lives on the land, the earth. The sky provides us with energy to grow our food and water to nourish it. Why is the sea so vital?
The sacredness of the seas comes from its ability to surround us, engulf us delineating the land along its shoreline. Whatever bit of rock we stand upon we can be sure that it is encircled by the ocean. The sea's unpredictability, its mystery adds into the mix. Tides ebb and flow, eddies and currents sworling around rocks hiding unknowable secrets deep in the blue green depths beneath the waves. It is a place filled with emotions, filled with stories we can never quite see the end of. It reminds us of our primordial roots, those deeply hidden animal instincts sunk in the base of our brains.
When we call to the Sea, we are not just calling to the great salty oceans, we are calling to one of the most powerful and essential forces on the planet. We are calling to water, to rivers, streams, rain, fog, mist, tears, emotion, blood... We forget their importance at our peril.
