CURIOUS

Missive #78 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation

[This past Monday was my birthday: the Day of St. Patrick, or of St. Gertrude of Nivelles. In the family tree I have access to, the 47th Great-Grandfather on my father’s side is Eógan (Eoghan, ‘Owen’) mac Néill, son of Niall. The story goes that Eógan was one of the first baptized by St. Patrick. Along the shores of the glacial fjord Loch Súilí he and Patrick spoke long into the day. They walked seven miles north to the foot of the royal hill, second only to Tara in grandeur and importance. An ancient road climbed to the summit, where a fortress had stood for already some 1500 years. From this high point, Eógan received the famed blessing of Patrick:

My blessing on the tribes
I give from Belach Ratha;
On you descendants of Eoghan
Grace till Doomsday.
So long as the fields shall be under crops
Victory in battle be with their men;
The head of the men of Erin’s hosts be in their place,
They shall attack every high ground,
The seed of Eoghan, son of Niall,
Bless, O fair Bridgid.
Provided that they do good,
Rule shall be from them for ever.
The blessing of us both
On Eoghan, son of Niall,
On every one who shall be born of him,
Provided he act according to our will.

Oral and literary tradition record many other blessings given by Patrick to Eógan and his children, including one that made him grow in stature to be as tall as a spear raised high! The Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii (the ‘Tripartite’) and Leabhar Ard Mhacha (Codex Ardmachanus//Book of Armagh) give even more details, for those who are interested. As we learn and digest these stories of our ancestors, our own lives become increasingly mythologized, enriched. Being born on St. Patrick’s Day becomes not just about four leaf clovers and beer and the spring equinox and all things green and growing. It is also a reminder of the blessing which I too have inherited as a descendant of Eoghan. It is a reminder of the intricate interweaving of Christian and pre-Christian lineages and worship. Blessings from both Jesus and Brighid (Brigit) of the Tuatha Dé Danann. And, this is but one of the many lineages which have descended into me, into all of us. Our trunk comes from countless branches. Most of my branches are unknown to me. There is, however, one which details an uninterrupted chain of names back to Adam (98th Great-Grandfather, on my father’s side); and another to Odin All-Father (51st Great-Grandfather, on my mother’s side). Go back far enough and all branches inevitably transition from root matter to the luminous glow of legend. In 2013, a pair of geneticists showed how all people of European descent share the same ancestors once you go back about 1000 years. Famously, Charlemagne — “Grandfather of Europe” — is the direct Great-Great-…-Great-Grandfather (34th, for me) of every person today with European ancestry (the whole range — from east of the Carpathians to the western edge of the Iberian peninsula). As you go back further, the geographic range of ancestral reach expands. There is even a mathematic model (Chang, in 2003) that shows how, if you go back to around the time of Moses (~3400 years ago), everyone everywhere alive today shares a common ancestor somewhere in Southwest Asia. How can this even be possible, given the vast cultural spread of humans across various continents, each with tales of their own distinct creation stories? We remind ourselves: these are all stories. Math, and genetics, and myth, and culture, and ancestry. The question remains: what do we do with them? How do we tell them? How do we relate to them? What variety of truth~ness (Wahrheit) do we ascribe to them? There is no obligation how — no necessity of how. And how! Yes. It is up to all of us~
This year I turned 33 — a fateful year. The vertebrae, the traditional year of Jesus's crucifixion (and resurrection); the Trāyastriṃśa, the number of Vedic deities (koti devatas); Islamic prayer beads arranged in sets of 33 up to 99, the number of Divine Names of Allah; the number of years it takes for the Lunar phase to return to its original position in relation to the Solar calendar. The sum of the first four positive factorials. It goes on and on! One of the great magic numbers. A meeting-place of stories, told and untold — and telling. There remain stories to tell that have not been told~ ] Received 3/20/25 | 6:13pm

Listen to the Recitation: (the dictation was repeated countless times in different patterns of inflection and emotional tone, so I am including four audio variants in line with the four structural variants below)

CURIOUS
How
Strange
To be
Unknown
To itself

---

{#78’s dictation arrived several hours before I would be able to share it with you all tonight. A very short missive, with a very long foreword. I kept going back and forth on spacing between the lines. Many different versions appeared to me upon hearing it at 6:13pm. I decided to include three more of them below, which all conjured different experiences for me: }

[Variant II]

CURIOUS

How

Strange

To be

Unknown

To itself

[Variant III]

CURIOUS
How
Strange

To be
Unknown
To itself

[Variant IV]

CURIOUS
How

Strange

To be
Unknown

To itself

---

Some images from Acadia, the holy island of Avalonia, where the first sunrise of my time being 33 years old was viewed — invisibly, through the mists

Visiting an old sea cave — now 250 feet above sea level