The Five Wits and Seven Senses of Celtic Folklore
For the purpose of folklore and its kin, feeling is an awawareness, a sensation or an emotion felt or expressed in daily interaction with Otherworld environments and the creatures which live in them. Feeling, then as now, embodies a host of human emotions.
Animation is well-known in the world of Disney and Cyberspace as movement. Its function to the ancients is similar but refers to the motion of their life-cycle. It also points to the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force or that all things in nature are endowed by the gods with a life force. It is similar to the religious belief known as Animism. Celtic animation is a Gordian Knot in their Otherworld belief system.
The Otherworld is the inner realm of the mind and can be viewed by us today as the opposite polarity of rational thought, which bases its objectivity on material collected by the senses.
The Greek Nymph, Arethusa, was the Keeper of the Five Wits. According to Greek legend, the river-god Alpheus fell in love with Arethusa. In fright, she fled from him to Ortygia, an island near Syracuse, where Artemis changed her into a fountain.
Alpheus flowed under the sea from Peloponnesus to Ortygia and thus found his beloved Arethusa. In actuality, the River Alpheus does, in places, flow underground. Arethusa was one of four well known nymphs, the other three being Thetis, Calypso and Echo.
While many of us are intrigued with the magical qualities and quantities of everything Celtic, it is very easy to forget that the Wits and Senses were religious concepts and were greatly respected and feared.
The myth of Arethusa and Artemis. The tale of how the nymph was transformed into a spring.
The Elemental Kingdoms are said to represent the inner spiritual forces of the four elements--earth, air, fire and water.
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