Catherine Kaye/Queen Mebd:
They don’t get to be crones. When you get to be a crone, there’s a sisterhood in that.
It’s undeniable. We talk about the good old boys’ club.
The crone has the good old sisters’ club. You come to appreciate, love, respect, and admire your sisters and you’re supportive of them; sympathetic, with no jealousy, and no envy. You’re there to buoy them up and support them.
That only comes to you when you reach the crone stage of maturity.
Men don’t have that. It doesn’t happen to them in the same way.
They’ve lost their youth. They don’t have an evolvement into cronedom.
Women, when they lose their youth, evolve into cronedom; a wonderful
and blessed state.

M.S. Mary Chadwick in her book, “The Celts”, created a major controversy
when she said that Druids were not priests.

Q.M. No, they were not priests.

M.S. That’s interesting. I think what actually happened is that we have a patriarchal, hierarchical society super-imposing their hierarchical structure on the Druids because that is all they can understand.
Celtic Men and women were Druids, defined by their aspirations to knowledge and enlightenment. They were not priests, which indicates hierarchy.
The pinnacle of freedom, as I understand a Druidic perspective, is the acknowledgement of the ultimate freedom of the individual; the fact that the individual has no choice, truly, but to acknowledge freedom.
You only know what you know in relationship to one other person.
That’s the only reality you can define. It cannot be written in books, it cannot be recorded for history, it is a living experience between two people.
We don’t acknowledge that truth anymore. Our society does not acknowledge
or give value to the truth that one can live completely free of dogma:
That it is safe to not lean on an external definition of reality;
that one is safe to not define relationships with other people;
that one can't even talk about the true essence of relationships
outside the relationship, with other people.

Q.M. You can’t even define your own relationship with yourself sometimes.
Sometimes you find yourself at complex odds with yourself.
If you cannot resolve those issues, how can you possibly resolve issues with someone else?
After I met Mabd, I was able to look at death and all the things that go to define what we consider life in a much more dispassionate way, with less fear and trepidation,
more willingness to accept whatever comes;
To make provision to be pragmatic and handle the necessities of life.
Knowing that these were just parts of the dream, they weren’t realities.
There is no reality.

M.S. I think its not that we are recalling history because it’s a wonderful source of enlightenment, necessarily, or even a wonderful source of entertainment to suddenly be discovering precedents for our wisdom. I think we are actually doing personal therapy. We are coming to know that we are capable of strength and capable of exploring the concept of freedom.

Q.M. Not just exploring, but accepting the concept of freedom.
I would love to think that I could go to any circle and, like when a rock is dropped in the middle of a pond, have waves ripple out around me in ever widening circles.
This would be a wonderful thought of joy for me, to think that I could effect people deeply. But if I can fully embody the idea of freedom, live the elements of freedom,
from just example alone, there will be some person, or persons, who will learn
to go within and find freedom for themselves because you can’t define it
and you can’t give it to someone.
I find that I am already there now, in myself, and I am not on a journey.
That is the interesting thing about coming to the realization of who you are.
Once you uncover the reality that you are already “there”.
You don’t have to journey on. You are free.
In all tribal living, until very recently in human history, in terms of time of history of the world, babies were just born of woman. There was really no need for her to share anything of hers in order to give that child a full life.
I believe that in Queen Mebd Encampment we have lived this precept.
As you know, we have children who are born without the benefit of formal acknowledgement of wedlock. These children are well disposed, happy, and productive, they are thriving and, yet, they don’t have fathers. It is the women who teach the children to be disciplined.
The males defend the community and the women groom and care for the children
in a sisterly way. The concept of marrying for children is probably one of the primary reasons why marriages don’t work today.

M.S. It is all about property.
Around 1000AD, King Phillip of France, after a long struggle with the church, made an agreement with the church that became the original separation of Church and State.
The state took control of matters of state and the Church took control of matters of marriage and the family. That is when the Church found that throughout the whole of Western Europe, women ran the family and, because they had no role in the Church, did not take the Church seriously. That is when the Inquisition was extended to charge women with witchcraft, thereby creating an opportunity to confiscate the property of women and take over the secular control of society.
It all became a matter of the ownership of property.

Q.M. This evidence leads me to believe that it goes beyond the realm of the capacity
of men to be nurturers. Testosterone hormones drive men to become conquerors.
While women have different hormones that drive them toward becoming nurturers. Marriage was not designed for creating security for children.
The women trained the children and, subsequently, the elder sister.
When one cannot create something of worth you are left with a feeling of emptiness. War had fulfilled that need for men.

M.S. So where do you think this is going?
We are looking back at known history, to a time when women were honored as the 'mother goddess'; when that whole symbol of nurturing was the over-arching view of society. Subsequently, we found ourselves subjected to the tyranny of the patriarchy, which has brought us material progress and material wealth; the technological world we live in. Through all of this, and through the efforts of the Women’s Liberation Movement, we have won a good degree of economic equality and personal freedom to pursue our interests equally with men. There scarcely is a profession that women cannot take up, and work side-by-side with men; Doctors, Professors, Lawyers, etc. Women are reclaiming their strength and their confidence and tenacity.

Q.M. Those were the skills that women always practiced.
I think women may be colleagues with men but I don’t think they can ever be friends with men. I think they can be companions, they can be associates, and they can be in significant relationships with each other.
The word "friend" has such a deep and profound quality. The very nature of men and women is so divisive that I don’t believe men and women can be true friends.

M.S. What about the concept of Anam Chara, soul friend?

Q.M. Well, in my lifetime, I haven’t seen "soul friendships" between men and women.
The soul-friendships I have experienced with men have a very definite limit on it.
Even with women, the thing that I dislike the most about relationship with women is
that they limit their soul-friendship with me, in the same way a man does:
Go this far and no further.

M.S. Maybe that is due to the estrangement that society has created over centuries between men and women. Maybe in the future this will change.

Q.M. It is social programming. Just like a computer. Our minds over centuries have been programmed with certain feelings of distrust and fear of sharing and caring and giving that, somehow, in letting go you will lose your own identity, instead of finding it.

M.S. In relation to how I understand the concept of Anam Chara, as more of a 'spiritual' avenue of relationship that you can choose. Where you can feel safe, you don’t feel exposed or challenged in the relationship. The relationship won’t be physical but it will be physically nurturing. It won’t be sexual but it could be emotionally nurturing -
like a mother nurtures a child or a father and a child.

Q.M. My best men friends, in my relationship with them, are androgynous. Why is that?
It is because they have allowed me to share their soul with them.
I am able to get from them that which is the best of them.
They’re inner peace, tranquility, their joy, and their humanness, because regardless of the exterior we are but one spirit. So few men are willing to break down those barriers which separate them from women, its not their fault. It is the result of social programming.

M.S. Can’t we reprogram ourselves?
The pinnacle of Druidic thinking is that we accept freedom, as you said.
Moreover, we love it. We are inspired by it. We are actively engaged in the acceptance of freedom. If we are actively engaged there is an energy being activated.
If you are with somebody else who is able to do that, doesn’t that set up a means,
a ritual, almost, for acknowledgement between you?
For example, when I see the very best Irish dancing, I see at as a metaphor for Personal Sovereignty. I look at Irish dancing as though it is a form of yoga.
You stand up straight and focus, with full consciousness, on the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. You feel your body become as light as possible in response to the music. You look for the feeling of levitation in the rise of the dance.
When you then move toward someone else, you really feel the energy field around yourself and the other. You can perceive the place where the energy of someone else moves into your own range.

Q.M. That concept is very good. I would say it is true.
I would not say that I have achieved that meltdown you need to achieve to meld with the soul of another. That is my personal journey

M.S. I think that is where we are headed.

Q.M. We already know how. We just haven’t accepted it.
We know everything we need to know but we have yet to accept the fact that we know everything we need to know for our own fulfillment. That is the big problem because we have been taught that we are fallible, as humans.
We are dependent on outside benevolence.
We don’t have god-like divinity to acknowledge that we know everything.
That we can be everywhere, we are omniscient, omnipresent.

M.S. That, for all these centuries, is not quite provable or user friendly!

Q.M. Society doesn’t endorse that confidence.
But I think real crones have got there. That is acceptance.

M.S. We are talking to Queen Mabd. We are talking about a woman living on this earth, dealing with politics, dealing with economics, dealing with the management of her people. We are talking about her power to bring that consciousness into her life.
Whereas I am going to interview all these women performing artists who use their art
as their medium, being on the stage or on the recording, where they have the ability
to reach out to others. Being able to take what we’ve been talking about as a medium, for the art of connecting with people in a special moment.
The artist is there with the people, and creating a ritual.
The singer/musician is there with the person and able to use that as the avenue
to connect with the person. This opening up really sets you free to go into another realm of being. People have a real capacity to bring this inspiration into their lives through the medium of the arts.

Q.M. The act of going out side of yourself, sets up the expectation that you have reached the pinnacle of greatness which allows you the freedom to roam in different realms of inspiration, in order to make the connection with others.
If one accepts the “I Am” of self, “I am that which is”, and there is nothing outside
of me. I cannot be divided I cannot be cut into parts, there cannot be little bits of me.
I am a full being. I AM the universe, all of you people, and I am the earth and the sky.
I am divine. I am one. I am striving for that acceptance.

M.S. That’s the “Song of Amergin”

Q.M. I don’t have to reach out. The acceptance and knowledge brings it all in.
We know this. We have the capability. We have received the keys to this knowledge.
But we repeatedly say, “Dare I unlock this Pandora’s box of self-acceptance.
Am I strong enough to open this box?"
We doubt ourselves because we have been trained from generation to generation
in doubtful thinking.
This is a serious period of time that we have been subjected to this thinking.
And to try in a short lifetime to deprogram all of these attitudes is not going to be an easy task. I have several little models that I set up for my mind.
One is that in the earliest days of recording, recordings were made in wax cylinders.
You could clean them if you were very careful, by skimming off the top layer of wax, lifting all the impressions off. That is one of my models for reprogramming my memory.
My mind is like a wax recording deeply embedded with programming.
Jealousy, hatred, fear is all part of race consciousness, not just from my own parents but from race consciousness going back, deep into time. I am the one who must clear that away. My problem is, do I have the capability and do I really want to do it?

M.S. Are you going to be able to consistently apply the care required to do it properly? The stillness or intention within?

Q.M. It is a difficult situation.
One thing I know for sure… I gave away a picture that I was given by a lady many years ago, when I was starting out on my journey of self-awareness, as I thought.
She painted a picture of a pilgrim for me. A lonely pilgrim, with a hood and cape and a stick, walking in burnt umber over big hills. Walking with a shadow behind, walking towards the light. I was able to give that picture away finally, which was a great breakthrough because I have it up here in my memory.
I understand what she was telling. I don’t need to be journeying forth, on that long painful, lonely, pitiful journey of darkness because I’ve already arrived at the light place. I understand that. I just have to be willing to take off my hood and look at the light.

M.S. That’s a very charming metaphor, even in quantum physics.
That’s the wonderful thing about today. We’re looking at all the old ideas, all the ancient wisdom, seeing how the very same conclusions are being brought to us through scientific research. E.g. the Quark's visibility in energetic light.

Q.M. I think it’s all there.
If you touch one person. If one person has the questing lamp lit in their mind, and are reachable, they will understand.
When I met Mabd, I didn’t know it at the time, but I had lit the lamp.
Your teacher will always find you.
You think you have to go about finding someone who will pull you up the next step on the mountainside, and you seek someone. But, someone will be reaching down to hold your hand.I think that is why my acceptance of Mabd was so complete and absolute
and without question. I was able to completely and fully offer myself, and feel at home with her because I had a questing lamp in my mind.
She saw the lamp and came to me because she knew it was she who I looked for.
I didn’t know in my physicality, being Katherine Kaye, I didn’t know I was looking for somebody called Mabd of Connadth, a strong Celtic woman who was definitely one of my forebears.
What Mabd did was quite harmful, if you will, in the way it is written by the Druids-turned-monks. I think the Druids would have written it differently, had they been given an opportunity to write in Latin. What she did that was painful and destructive. She wished to protect her people, the Connachta, her family and village, against the traditional relationships, which at the time were that whoever held the most wealth continued to rule. In order to continue to provide for the good of her people, she had to be the wealthiest.
Her motivation was not pride or revenge, but to insure her position as matriarch of her camp, so that she could continue to take care of them. So you see that is in all women.
The underlying part of their personas is the desire to take care of, to nurture.

M.S. Therefore, what we’re saying here is that in order to overcome the old paradigm, we women have to form circles that encourage each other, rather than constantly compete and belittle each others' efforts. The new paradigm must be that women do what they deeply want to do, because I don’t think any woman is satisfied competing and criticizing others.

Q.M. We have to do it. We have to do this, and this is a natural imperative for us.
Yet, we are so ill equipped to do it.
Because, the indoctrination of so many years of distrust and looking down upon women permeates every fiber of our being.
Even in moments of great hysteria we call instinctively out for a man to be there and to take care of, and it bothers me, because I fall into the trap too.

M.S. I’m interested, of course, in how the teenagers, the thirteen and fourteen year old girls, are growing up today: What they’re listening to, and how they’re thinking.
They have no idea how this historical transition has been made.
But their culture endorses it.

Q.M. I really wish I could take comfort in the knowledge that they’re wiser,
but they’re not. They’re not informed.

M.S. They need to be informed of history, dogma, and politics.
That’s why a study of history is so important.

Q.M. If you don’t know where you’ve been, how are you going to know where you’re going? You just can’t ignore the fact that history is very, very influential.
The culmination of our history has brought us to where we are.

M.S. Someone said: “History wouldn’t keep repeating itself if we would listen.”

Q.M. And we’re not going to listen.
The Japanese have an expression, “resist like water”.
When you come up against life and its drudgeries, you act like a ship in water;
you resist that water, you pass through it.
If you act like a stone wall and harden against the sensitivities of life, then life will pound against you, whereas if you let the sensitivities wash over you, you know that this is where you’re supposed to be.
I know that right now I’m supposed to be here with you.
Therefore, if everything that happened to me in the past few years led up this moment, and I was wise enough to have followed without knowing, blindly, I would be much more fortunate having known
I had to get through all this to get here.
It would have been so much easier than to have fought along the way.

M.S. Let’s talk about the other heroines in Celtic culture who deliver this message.

Q.M. Bridgid was an abyss and an abbot at the same time.
She had the same spirit that Mabd had in that I think the reincarnation of Mabd is the spirit of woman, reincarnated, over and over, in different ways.
I think that Bridgid was Mabd.
She lived around the fifth century. It must have been a very liberal time.
I’m using Mabd as an opportunity for me to develop my own best self with her as my companion. Only to the point of fulfillment of my self, so I can feel integrated with myself. The broad long, wonderful fallout, which is something I certainly don’t anticipate,
would be because I’m a fully integrated human being. I operate at a very high level because I have been able to withstand the vicissitudes of life and not worry about people approving or disapproving of me.
I will be able to make the way smoother for people to come along to their own awareness.
I don’t want to be a teacher or a leader, because I’m so convinced that you have to want to come to it in your own way.

M.S. That’s the way of the Celts.
It isn’t hierarchical. You’re not being a teacher or a priest, or setting up rituals.

Q.M. That’s why the Druids were teachers.
They studied, and their improvement was for themselves.

M.S. They conveyed it too. They shared it.

Q.M. It typifies their freedom, their acceptance of freedom.
When they would go into battle naked, they had a rationale that if they died they would be going to a better place anyway, and their clothes would be finer.
And if they did die, they wouldn’t need their clothes.
One of the things that I like most of all is that they really had a good concept of freedom.
When I was growing up, one of the things I was not free from was my fear of death.
When I realized that the Celts did not have that fear - that they didn’t have the angry God of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses hanging over their head.
They had these more benevolent loving Gods who had prepared a grand little place called Tir Na Nog where all their friends were hanging out, and had great clothes,
having fun, and they could carry on with the hunt.
I realize that they were freer than I ever achieved, because they had no fear of death.
I knew for sure, I had not lived a good enough life to satisfy my God.
The God of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses would never accept me;
I just wasn’t good enough.
The God of the Celts would have said, “Hey, you’re not bad, you know”.
They had a grasp of that understanding of liberation.
One fear that pervades our existence and is the occasion of all hatred, all war, and all disease, is the fear of death.
That one final fear, if you can conquer that and recognize it as a transition
from one life-livingness to another life-livingness, as the Celts seemed to be able to do in a very natural way. They understood the concept of freedom.
The magic has become real and the real has become magic.
What we accept as reality isn’t reality at all.
What we accept as magic isn’t magic at all. It's reality.

The magic potion is an interesting process. I think it comes from the same well-spring we all come from, which is the divinity of self and that’s the embryonic fluid in which we survive. It’s tangible evidence of something, which is intangible to us.
I don’t know what that chemistry is that draws one person to another,
but it seems to exist.

Back to top