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The Crest Wave of Evolution by Kenneth Morris

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Ireland meanwhile was the heart of a regular circulation of
culture. Students poured in from abroad, drawn by the fame of
her learning; we have a poem in praise of generous Ireland from
an Anglo-Saxon prince who spent his exile there in study. Irish
teachers were at the court of Charlemagne; Irish teachers
missionarized Austria and Germany. When the Norsemen discovered
Iceland, they found Irish books there; probably Irish scholars
as well, for it has been noted (by Matthew Arnold) that the
Icelandic sagas, unlike any other Pre-Christian Teutonic
literature, bear strong traces of the Celtic quality of Style.
They had their schools everywhere. You hear of an Irish bishop
of Tarentum in the latter part of the seventh century; and a
hundred years later, of an Irish bishop of Salzburg in Austria.
This was Virgil--in Irish, Fergil, I imagine a native name of
Salzburg: a really noteworthy man. He taught, _at that time,_
that the world is a globe, and with people living at the
antipodes; for which teaching he was called to order by the
Pope: but we do not hear of his retracting. Last and greatest
of them all was Johannes Scotus Erigena, who died in 882: a very
bright particular star, and perhaps the one of the largest
magnitude between the Neo-Platonists and the great mystics of
later times, who came long after the new manvantara had dawned.
He is not to be classed with the Scholastics; he never
subordinated his philosophy to theology; but approached the
problems of existence from a high, sane, and Theosophic
standpoint: an independent and illuminated thinker. He taught
at the court of Charles the Bald of France; and was invited to
Oxford by Alfred in 877, and died abbot of Malmesbury five years
later,--having in his time propounded many tough nuts of
propositions for churchmen to crack and digest if they could.
As, that authority should be derived from reason, and not, as
they thought, vice versa; and that "damnation was simply the
consciousness of having failed to fulfill the divine purpose,"--
and not, as their pet theory was, a matter of high temperature of
eternal duration. The following are quotations from his work _De
Divisione Naturae;_ I take them from M. de Jubainville's _Irish
Mythological Cycle,_ where they are given as summing up Erigena's
philosophy,--and as an indication of the vigorous Pantheism of
Pre-christian Irish thought.

"We are informed by all the means of knowledge that beneath the
apparent diversity of beings subsists the One Being which is
their common foundation."

"When we are told that God makes all things, we are to understand
that God is in all things, that he is the substantial essence of
all things. For He alone possesses in himself all that which may
be truly said to exist. For nothing which is, is truly of
itself, but God alone; who alone exists _per se,_ spreading
himself over all things, and communicating to them all that which
in them truly corresponds to the notion of being."

I think we can recognise here, under a not too thick disguise of
churchly phraseology, the philosophy of the _Bhagavad-Gita._
Again:

"Do you not see how the creator of the universality of things
hold the first rank in the divisions of Nature? Not without
reason, indeed; since he is the basic principle of all things,
and is inseparable from all the diversity which he created,
without which he could not exist as creator. In him, indeed,
immutably and essentially, all things are; he is in himself
division and collection, the genus and the species, the whole and
the part of the created universe."

"What is a pure idea? It is, in proper terms, a theophany:
that is to say, a manifestator of God in the human soul."

You would be mildly surprised, to say the least of it, to hear at
the present day a native, say in Abyssinia, rise to talk in terms
like these: it is no whit less surprising to hear a man doing so
in ninth-century Europe. But an Irishman in Europe in those days
was much the same thing as an Oxford professor in the wilds of
Abyssinia would be now;--with this difference: that Ireland is a
part of Europe, and affected by the general European cycles (we
must suppose). Europe then was in thick pralaya (as Abyssinia is
now); but in the midst of it all there was Ireland, with her
native contrariness, behaving better than most people do in
high manvantara.

The impulse that made that age great for her never came far
enough down to awaken great creation in the plastic arts; but it
touched the fringes of them, and produced marvelous designing, in
jewel-work, and it the illumination of manuscripts. Concerning
the latter, I will quote this from Joyce's Short History of
Ireland; it may be of interest:--

"Its most marked characteristic is interlaced work formed by
bands, ribbons and cords, which are curved and twisted and
interwoven in the most intricate way, something like basket work
infinitely varied in pattern. These are intermingled and
alternated with zigzags, waves, spirals, and lozenges; while
here and there among the curves are seen the faces or forms of
dragons, serpents, or other strange-looking animals, their tails
or ears or tongues elongated and woven till they become merged or
lost in the general design. . . . The pattern is so minute and
complicated as to require the aid of a magnifying glass to
examine it. . . . Miss Stokes, who has examined the _Book of
Kells,_ says of it: 'No effort hitherto made to transcribe any
one page of it has the perfection of execution and rich harmony
of color which belongs to this wonderful book. It is no
exaggeration to say that, as with the microscopic works of
Nature, the stronger the magnifying power brought to bear on it,
the more is this perfection seen. No single false interlacement
or uneven curve in the spirals, no faint tiace of a trembling
hand or wandering thought can be detected.'"

The same author tells us that someone took the trouble to count,
through a magnifying glass, in the _Book of Armagh,_ in a "small
space scarcely three quarters of an inch in length by less than
half an inch in width, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight
interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines
edged with black ones."--One of these manuscripts, sometimes,
would be given as a king's ransom.

An unmasculine art, it may be said; and enormous laborious skill
spent upon tribial creation. But once again, the age was pralaya;
all Europe was passing into, or quite sunk in, pralaya. The Host
of Souls was not then holding the western world; there was but a
glint and flicker of their wings over Ireland as they passed
elsewhere; there was no thorough entering in to take possession.
But the island (perhaps) is the Western Lay-center, and a
critical spot; the veils of matter there are not very thick;
and that mere glint and flicker was enough to call forth all this
wonderful manifestation of beauty. If I emphasize over-much, it
is because all this talk about 'inferior races,'--and because
Ireland has come in for so much opprobrium, one way and another,
on that score. But people do not know, and they will not think,
that those races are superior in which the Crest-Wave is rearing
itself; and that their superiority cannot last: the Crest-Wave
passes from one to another, and in the nature of things can never
remain in any one for longer than its due season. It is as
certain that it will pass sometime from the regions it fills with
strength and glory now, as that it will sometime thrill into life
and splendor the lands that are now forlorn and helpless; and
for my part, seeing what the feeble dying away of it, or the far
foam flung,--no more than that,--raised up in Ireland once, I am
anxious to see the central glory of it rise there; I am keen to
know what will happen then. It will rise there, some time; and
perhaps that time may not be far off.--Oh if men could only look
at these national questions with calm scientific vision,
understanding the laws that govern national and racial life!
There would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no
heart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations;
there would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that
sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock
for the Gods. Instead we should see one single race, Humanity;
poured now into one national mold, now into another; but
always with the same duality: half divine, half devilish-idiotic;
--and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came
to inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business
to help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them. But it will
need the sound sense of Theosophy,--knowledge of Reincarnation,
the conviction of Human Brotherhood,--to work this change
in mankind.

Well; now to the things that brought Ireland down. In 795 the
Norwegians began their ravages, and they seem to have had a
peculiar spite against the monastery-colleges. That at Armagh
was sacked nine times in the ninth, and six times in the tenth
century. In the same period Glendalough was plundered seven
times; Clonard four times; Clonmacnois five times betnveen 838
and 845, and often afterwards. These are only samples: there
were scores of the institutions, and they were all sacked, burnt,
plundered, and ravaged, again and again. The scholars fled
abroad, taking their precious manuscripts with them; for which
reason many of the most valuable of these have been found in
monasteries on the continent. The age of brilliance was over.
For a couple of centuries, the Norwegians, and then the Danes,
were ruining Ireland; until Brian Boru did their quietus make at
Clontarf in 1014. Before the country had had time to recover,
the Norman conquest began: a thing that went on for centuries,
and never really finished; and that was much more ruinous even
than the invasions of the Norsemen. As to the Celtic Church,
which had fostered all that brilliance, its story is soon told.
In Wales, the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England were at
pains to bring the see of St. Davids under the sway of Canterbury
and into close communion with Rome: they and the Roman Church
fought hand in hand to destroy Celtic liberties. The Church of
the Circled Cross had never been an independent organization in
the sense that the Greek Church was: it had never had its own
Patriarchs or Popes; it was always in theory under Rome. But
secular events had kept the two apart; and while they did so,
the Celtic Church was virtually independent. In the eleventh and
twelfth Centuries the Welsh Church fought hard for its existence;
but Norman arms backed by Papal sanction proved too strong for
it; and despite the valor of the princes, and especially of that
gallant bishop-historian Gerald the Welshman, it succumbed.
As to Ireland: an English Pope, Adrian IV, born Nicholas
Brakespeare, presented the island to King Henry II; and King
Henry II with true courtesy returned the compliment by presenting
it to the Pope. The Synod of Cashel, called by Henry in 1172,
put Ireland under Rome; and the Church of the Circled Cross
ceased to be. There, in short and simple terms, you have the
history of it.

And therein, too, as I guess, you may see all sorts of interesting
phases of karmic working. For the Church of the Circled Cross,
that had done so well by Ireland in some things, had done
marvelously badly in others. There was a relic of political
stability in ancient Ireland,--in the office of the High-kings
of Tara. It is supposed now that it had grown up, you may
say out of nothing: had been established by some strong
warrior, to maintain itself as it might under such of his
successors as might be strong too. I have no doubt, on the other
hand, that it was really an ancient institution, once firmly
grounded, that had weakened since the general decay of the Celtic
Power. The Gods in their day had had their capital at Tara; and
until the middle of the fifth century A.D. Tara stood there as
the symbol of national unity. When Patrick came the position was
this: all Ireland was divided into innumerable small kingdoms
with their kinglets, with the Ard-righ of Tara as supreme over
them all as he could make himself. The hopefullest thing that
could have happened would have been the abolition of the kingdoms
and kinglets, and the establishment of the Ard-righ's authority
as absolute and final.

Dermot son of Fergus Kervall became High-king in 544. A chief
named Aed Guairy murdered one of Dermot's officers, and sought
sanctuary with St. Ruadan of Lorrha, one of Findian's twelve
apostles, to whom he was related. The king hailed him forth, and
brought him to Tara for trial. Thereupon the whole Church of
Ireland rose to a man against the mere layman, the king, who had
dared thus defy the spiritual powers. They came to Tara in a
body, fasted against him, and laid their heavy curse on him, on
Tara, and, in the result, on the kingship.--"Alas!" said Dermot,
"for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged against me,
seeing that it is Ireland's good I pursue, and to preserve her
discipline and royal right; but it is Ireland's unpeace and
murderousness ye endeavor after." *

------
* I quote this from Mr. Rollerstone's book.
------

Which was true. The same trouble came up in England six
centuries later, and might have ended in the same way. But the
dawn of a manvantara was approaching then, and the centrifugal
forces in England were slowly giving place to the centripetal:
national unity was ahead, and the first two strong Williams and
Henrys were able in the main to assert their kingly supremacy.
But in the Irish time not manvantara, but pralaya, was coming;
and this not for Ireland only, but for all Europe. In the
natural order of things, the centrifugal forces were increasing
always. That is why Dermot MacKervall failed, where Henry II in
part suceeded. There was nothing in the cycles to support him
against the saints. Tara, accursed, was abandoned, and fell into
ruin; and the symbol and center of Irish unity was gone. The
High-kingship, thus bereft of its traditional seat, grew weaker
and weaker; and Ireland, except by Brian Boru, a usurper, was
never after effectively governed. So when the Norsemen came
there was no strong secular power to defend the monasteries from
them, and the karma of St. Ruadan's churchly arrogance and
ambition fell on them. And when Strongbow and the Normans came,
there was no strong central monarchy to oppose them: the king of
Leinster invited them in, and the king of Ireland lacked the
backing of a united nation to drive them out; and Ireland fell.

Well; we have seen how often things tend to repeat themselves,--
but on a higher level,--after the lapse of fifteen centuries.
Patrick, probably, was born in or about 387. In 1887 or
thereabouts Theosophy was brought into Ireland. Patrick's coming
led eventually to the period of the Irish illumination; the
coming of Theosophy led in a very few years to the greatest Irish
illumination, in poetry and drama especially, that had been since
Ireland fell. But Patrick did not complete things; nor did that
first touch of Theosophy in the 'eighties and 'nineties of last
century. Theosophy, known in those days only to a score or so of
Irishmen, kindled wonderful fires: you know that English
literature is more alive in Ireland now than anywhere else in the
English-speaking world; and that that whole Celtic Renaissance
was born in the rooms of the Dublin Theosophical Society. Yet
there were to be eventualities: the Dublin Lodge was only a
promise; the Celtic Renaissance is only a promise. Theosophy
only bides its time until the storm of the world has subsided.
It will take hold upon marvelous Ireland yet; it will take hold
upon Sacred Ierne. What may we not expect then? When she had
but a feeble candle of Truth, in those ancient times, she stood
up a light-giver to the nations; how will it be when she has the
bright sun shining in her heart?

-------------

So now we have followed the history of the world, so far as we
might, for about a thousand years. We have seen the Mysteries
decline in Europe, and nothing adequate rise to take their place;
and, because of that sorrowful happening, the fall of European
civilization into an ever-increasing oblivion of the Spiritual
things. We have seen how in the East, in India and China,
spiritual movements did arise, and succeed in some sort in taking
the place of the Mysteries; and how in consequence civilization
there did in the main, for long ages, go forward undeclining and
stable. And we have watched the Crest-Wave, indifferent to all
national prides and conceits, flow from one race to another,
according to a defined geographical and temporal plan: one
nation after another enjoying its hour of greatness, and none
chosen of the Law or the Spirit to be lifted forever above its
fellows;--but a regular circulation of splendor about the globe,
like the blood through the veins: Greece, India, China; Rome,
Spain, Rome, Egypt, Persia, India, China: each repeating itself
as the cycles of its own lifetime might permit. And then, as the
main current passed eastward from dying Europe, a reserve of it,
a little European _Sishta,_ passing west: from Gaul to Britain,
from Britain to Ireland; from Ireland to Tirnanogue and
Wonderland,* there to hide for some centuries until the Great
Wave should roll westward again from China through Persia, Egypt,
Africa, Sicily and Spain, up into Europe: when the Little Wave,
returning magic-laden out of the Western Paradise should roll
back Europewards again through Ireland, twelfth-century Wales and
Brittany; and spray Christendom with foam from the sea! that
wash the shores of Fairyland: producing first what there was of
mystery and delicacy to uplift mankind in feudal chivalry; then
the wonder-note in poetry which has probably been one of the
strongest and subtlest antidotes against deathly materialism.
Hence one may understand the _raison d'etre_ for that strange
correspondence between Chinese and Celtic happenings which we
have noted: the main wave rolls east; the backwash west; and
they touch simultaneously the extremities of things, which
extremities are, Celtdom and China. In both you get the sense of
being at the limits of the world,--of having beyond you only
nonmaterial and magical realms:--Peng-lai in the East, Hy Brasil
in the West;--the Fortunate Islands of the Sunset, and the
Fortunate Islands of the Dawn.

We have seen opportunities coming to each nation in turn; but
that how they used them depended on themselves: on whether they
would turn them to spiritual or partly spiritual, or to wholly
material uses: whether they would side, in their hour of
prosperity, with the Gods--as China did to some extent; or with
the hellions, as in the main Europe did. And above all, we have
seen how the Gods will never accept defeat, but return ever and
again to the attack, and are in perpetual heroic rebellion
against the despotism of materialism and evil and human blindness;
and we know that the victory they so often failed to achieve
of old, they are out to win now, and in the way of winning it:
that we are in the crisis and most exciting of times, standing
to make the future ages golden; that the measure of the victory
the Gods shall win is somewhat in our own hands to decide. The
war-harps that played victory to Heaven at Moytura of old are
sounding in our ears now, if we will listen for them; and
when Point Loma was founded, it was as if once more the shaft
of Lugh the Sunbright took the eye of Balor Balcbeimnech in
the midst.

And so, at this point, we take leave of our voyaging together
through the past.

------

* Perhaps, if we knew anything about American history, to
America. One is tempted to put two and two together, in the
light of what we have seen, and note what they come to. The
great American Empires fell before Cortes and Pizarro, between
1520 and 1533. That surely marked the end of a manvantaa or
fifteen hundred years period of cultural activity; which then
would have begun between 20 and 33 A.D.--upon a backwash of the
cycle from Augustan Rome? We are not to imagine that any outward
link would be necessary. Is it possibly a fact that in those
centuries, the first five of our era roughly, when both Europe
and China were somewhat sterile for the most part,--the high tide
of culture and creation was mainly in the antipodes of each
other, America and India? And that after the fall of the Tang
glory in China (750) and the Irish illumination in the west
(775), some new phase of civilization began, somewhere between
the Rio Grande del Norte and the borders of Chile? The Incaic
Empire, like the Han and the Western Roman, we know lasted about
four centuries, or from the region of 1100-A.D.--But there we
must leave it, awaiting the work of discovery.

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