THE GREEN PAINTING:
AN EXAMINATION OF
OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE REALITIES ©
by Tira Brandon-Evans

(In our public group Celticshaman, we often discuss objective and subjective reality. Consequently, this is something I have examined in great detail over the years. A shaman has to have these two straight in her/his own mind so he/she can deal with living and working in this and Otherworlds. Here is an excerpt from my book "The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World". It is brief and rather simplistic but does address this issue in – I hope ‐ an easy to understand way.)

It is, perhaps, a good idea to sometimes examine the difference between objective and subjective realities. This is especially true when we are adventuring right out of this world into Shining Realms, and into the even more mysterious realms of history.

Imagine that you and I are in an art gallery. On the wall in front of us is a painting. It is an oil-on-canvas painting that is 2' x 2' square. The painting is entirely green. It is a single shade of green with no other hue or colour.

The objective reality is that we are both in a building, an art gallery. There is a painting of a certain shape and dimension on the wall of that gallery. And that painting is composed of specific materials. That is the objective reality.

Furthermore, light is falling upon the painting and reflecting off the painting in specific wavelengths. That light is entering our eyes and our physical equipment - our eyes and brains - are causing us to perceive those wavelengths of light in a certain way. That is objective reality.

The subjective reality is that you cannot be sure I see the same colour you see. I may be colour blind. Or my eyes and brain may interpret these particular wavelengths of light in a way that is different from the way that your eyes and brain interprets them.

Therefore, even though we share a common objective reality - the art gallery and the painting and the light waves - the colour green is more or less subjective in that it is a matter of personal perception and interpretation.

Now, let us take this a step further and enter the perilous realm of semantics. Semantics is the art of defining exactly what words mean, and it is a philosophical pursuit that can lead to some pretty silly quibbling, which I will try to avoid.

So, to set our feet on this slippery semantic slope, let us agree that we both perceive the green painting in exactly the same way. That you see the colour green in exactly the same way I see it. We both see the same colour.

You say to me, "Isn't that a beautiful painting of Kelly green."
I reply, "Kelly green? That's emerald green."

At this point we must try to decide two things:

1. Am I seeing a different colour than the one you are seeing?
2. Am I calling the colour that we both see in the same way by a name that is different from the name you apply to that colour?

Of course, you can see the problem here. There is no way that we can resolve these questions. You cannot see through my eyes and I cannot see through yours and so we will be forever unable to answer these questions because the word we use for the colour is subjective.

This is a very simple example of what the scholar encounters when studying Celtic traditions. The only objective reality is the archaeological record. The actual artefacts form a part of the archaeological record. Where these artefacts are found in relation to one another are the archaeological record. That is the objective reality of history.

How the archaeological record is interpreted from year to year, decade to decade, century to century, is to a greater or lesser degree subjective. There are fashions of thought just as there are fashions of clothing. Only two centuries ago most people believed the Druids had built Stonehenge, and three centuries ago they thought the Romans had built it. Now we know that Stonehenge was built by Stone Age inhabitants of Britain who may or may not have been among the ancestors of the later Iron Age Celtic Druids.

In addition to the subjective nature of interpretation of the archaeological record, the objective fact is that, due to new discoveries and improved dating techniques, the record is constantly changing, and therefore subject to reinterpretation. We do not know what new information discovered tomorrow will reveal about our pre-history.

Add to this the additional objective fact that the medieval monks who wrote it all down were not trying to preserve the ancient Pagan traditions. They were seeking to make those traditions correspond with their view of the Christian world. And their view of the Christian world may have been entirely subjective.

Just as you and I cannot know that we both see the same colour green in the painting, so we can never know that the Irish and Welsh clerics saw their world in the same way as their Latin and Byzantine counterparts. But we can be pretty sure that they did not see their world in the same way we imagine their world to have been.

All in all, we must be very careful when we study anything to do with history and pre-history. We can never be sure that what is written is 'true' in the sense that it is - or ever was - objective reality.

THE PUZZLE

Another way to look at this is:

Imagine that you open a big box full of jigsaw puzzle pieces. There are thousands of pieces and, as you begin to put them together, you start to see that there are five or six different puzzles all mixed up in the one box. You realize that before you can assemble even one of the puzzles you must figure out which pieces go with which picture. And to make matters even more complicated, there is no picture on the box.

The puzzle once belonged to your great-grandaunt who told your mother that she thought it was a picture of the Cliffs of Moher, but she wasn't sure, and your mother is no longer certain that is what the great-grandaunt actually said.

That is what we are doing. We know nothing. It is our adventure to discover something. Even if all we can do is put together a tiny bit of one of the puzzles we will have accomplished a great deal. But we must always remember that ordinary men wrote the source documents and that they contain many internal errors. For instance, in the Lebor Gabala Erenn we find:

"The gods were according to will, with Ethliu, father of Lug: Ethliu came into the Brug in disguise in the form of a lapdog."

In Old Irish this is:

"Batar na dee iar tola hic Ethlenn (sic) athair Loga; doluid Ethliu forsin mBruigh i richt oircce fo daimuir."

Genealogies of Lugh generally state that he is the son of Cian of the Tuatha de Danaan and that his mother is Ethlinn, the daughter of the Formorian king Balor. It looks very much as if, in this case, the scribe mistook Ethlinn/Ethlenn, the mother of Lugh, for his father and altered the spelling of her name to Eithliu. This is only one example of scribal error. Is it any wonder that the various accounts are so often in disagreement?

This is why we must always bear in mind that the Celtic gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and legendary figures are not people of this world. They do not form a part of objective reality. They dwell in the Shining Realms, which is not a part of our material world.

Puzzling over whether this one was the son of that one and/or the father of another one is important in the sense of trying to sort out which pieces go with which puzzles. But it is not important in the sense of trying to make subjective reality fit into objective reality.

One of the ways we may be able to piece the puzzle together is to try to get into the minds of our ancestors and view the world through their eyes. A good way to begin is to discover what the literature and archaeological record have to say about the everyday lives of our Celtic forebears. In this section we will attempt to do this. We must, however, always remember that whatever we discover, we cannot go back in time and live ancient lives.

(From "The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World", Copyright (c) 2003 by Tira Brandon-Evans. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, copied or reproduced in any way whatsoever, including Internet usage or other electronic means, without permission in writing from Elder Grove Press, except for short quotations for the purposes of review and criticism.)
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Tira Brandon-Evans is the Founder and Moderator of the Society of Celtic Shamans, editor of Earthsongs: Journal of the Society of Celtic Shamans, and is, herself, a Faery Shaman. Her books, The Green and Burning Tree: A Faery Shaman's Handbook, Portals of the Seasons: A Celtic Wheel of the Year, Through the Unremembered Gate: Journeys of Initiation, The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, and Healing Waters, are all published by Elder Grove Press. She is presently writing a book about the Ogham. You may contact Tira by email at info@faeryshaman.org.

The Green Painting: An Examination of Objective and Subjective Realities, excerpted from The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, © 2003 by Tira Brandon-Evans. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Top of Page

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