Wake Up, Human
Wake Up, Human is an exploration of the native powers of the human being. This podcast examines the ways we humans have become disconnected—from our innate wisdom, from each other, and from the natural world—and explores practical strategies for reconnecting to wholeness. Drop in for information and inspiration to help us reawaken and heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet.
Wake Up, Human
Ep.13: Ancient & Sacred Sites of Ireland | A Conversation with Jack Roberts
What if the ancient sites of our ancestors still held living wisdom that could reconnect us with our forgotten heritage? Ireland stands as perhaps the last repository in Europe where this connection remains unbroken, where stone circles and fairy mounds aren't silent relics but continue to speak through mythology preserved across millennia.
In this captivating conversation, independent researcher Jack Roberts shares why Ireland's ancient sites matter profoundly to our modern world. Born in England but living in Ireland since the 1970s, Jack has spent decades documenting the megalithic monuments, stone circles, and sacred landscapes of his adopted homeland. His passion for these sites goes far beyond archaeology—he reveals how they embody a continuous spiritual tradition that predates Christianity yet survives alongside it.
We journey first to Newgrange, Ireland's most famous Neolithic monument, where Jack explains how mythology gives voice to this 5,500-year-old structure in ways that Stonehenge, standing "mute" in England, cannot match. We explore the concept of "the Shee"—not the diminutive fairies of Victorian imagination but powerful earth spirits representing Ireland's original belief system. Jack shares fascinating insights about Ireland's unique experience with Christianity, brought not by outside missionaries but by knowledge-seeking Druids who created a distinctive blend of pagan and Christian traditions.
Most compelling is Jack's perspective on what these ancient sites teach us about collective consciousness. "You do not build a massive monument like Newgrange on your own," he explains. "You do it as part of a massive consciousness, and that's what we've lost in the modern day." This disconnection from our ancestral roots affects our ability to love ourselves, each other, and the natural world.
Whether you have Irish ancestry or simply seek to understand how ancient wisdom might address modern alienation, this episode offers a profound journey into a landscape where the past remains present. Listen now and discover why, as Jack passionately declares, Ireland is "bloody important" for understanding our place in the human story.
The other thing about that ancient site in Ireland is to stand there and realise you've got to lose your individual identity. On that site you stop being the individual that you've been programmed to think that you are by this modern world. You are a product of your ancestors and that stone circle was built in respect to that understanding and you do not build a massive monument like Newgrange or Stonehenge on your own. You do it as part of a massive consciousness and that's what we've lost in the modern day. We've lost this ancient sense of consciousness.
Shannon W.:Hello everyone and welcome to episode Lucky 13 of the Wake Up Human podcast. I'm your host, shannon Wills, and in this episode, my guest and I dig deep and tap into a world where archaeology meets mythology. We're exploring the history and the mystery of the ancient and sacred sites of Ireland. Welcome to the Wake Up Human podcast. I'm Shannon Wills, a curious wanderer with a passion for digging into life's mysteries and mining them for wisdom to apply to our modern lives. This podcast explores the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing what we have lost and what we can gain by coming back into wholeness. Each episode will explore this theme of reconnecting with our innate human power in order to heal ourselves, our relationships and our planet. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's jump into the latest installment of Wake Up Human. In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with Mr Jack Roberts, an independent researcher and publisher on the landscape, mythology and sacred sites of Ireland. Born and raised in England, jack has been living in Ireland since the 1970s, where he's been researching ancient and historical sites of the Irish landscape, like stone circles and ring forts, fairy mounds and dolmens, and the symbolism embedded within them. Jack is the author of various books, including the Sacred Mythological Centers of Ireland and the Sun Circles of Ireland, as well as a number of illustrated maps and guides to Celtic and megalithic sites. He's one of Ireland's leading investigators of the Shielenegeg, a symbolic representation of the goddess culture of ancient Ireland. His books and guides are richly illustrated with his own striking pen and ink drawings based on observation and field research. And if that weren't enough, jack is also a jewelry designer, his designs acclaimed for featuring accurate depictions of original megalithic and Celtic art and imagery.
Shannon W.:My conversation with Jack begins with the ancient sites of Ireland but quickly expands to include our relationship to those sites, the human history and culture that bring them to life. We'll talk about Newgrange, the most famous Neolithic monument in Ireland, and the importance of mythology to understanding the meaning of such a site in its own context. We'll spend a good deal of time unpacking the development of Christianity in Ireland and the interrelationship between the Christian religion and the pagan world of the Druids. We'll talk about why Irelandireland is so bloody important, as jack would say, for modern people, especially of european ancestral heritage, to understand our place in the evolution of human culture. And no conversation about mythic ireland would be complete without talking about the she, the fairies of the other world, and what they can teach us about ancient ways of seeing and being that can serve us in the modern world.
Shannon W.:I had the good fortune of meeting Jack in Ireland recently and I was impressed not only by the extent of his knowledge, but also by his passion for preserving Irish culture and sharing its richness with future generations. For this interview, jack is calling in from his home in the west of Ireland. He's chock full of information, gracious as all get out, and he's also just a lot of fun. I hope you'll join us for this lively conversation coming up next. Oh, and if you think you hear a squeaky noise in the background, don't worry, it's not fairies in the basement, it's just Jack's squeaky office chair. You can learn more about Jack and find his research, books and publications, as well as his beautiful jewelry, at his website, bandiadesigncom. That's B-A-N-D-I-A designcom. And now for the interview Designcom. And now for the interview. Dear Jack, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Jack R.:Oh, thank you for asking me. It's a pleasure to be here Wonderful.
Shannon W.:Well, researching and publishing on ancient or sacred sites is a rather unusual occupation.
Jack R.:How did you come to be involved with this work so many years ago? It's a long story, but it began in Dublin, and it really began with my association with a certain person an American, actually, but an American-Irish person who was researching Newgrange and the Bowling Valley Newgrange being an ancient Neolithic site, one of the most famous in Ireland.
Jack R.:It is the most famous. Yeah, it's the world heritage site now, but we're going back 40 years now. Well, yeah, years uh, when that happened and I was completely besotted, struck, lifted off this earth by what he introduced me to, you know, the first time I was ever there. Every, every year, people gather there because it's aligned to the winter solstice sunrise. It's a huge mound with a long tunnel and a chamber, loads of carvings. It's a fantastic structure and that passageway and chamber are aligned to the winter solstice sunrise, so the sun comes up and illuminates the chamber. There's loads of this stuff on the internet about new grange and, um, it's really mad because it's it's like stonehenge. You see, it's famous that people gather at stonehenge at summer solstice sunrise and this is like the corresponding Irish version of that. So even 40 years ago, the first time I was ever there for the winter solstice sunrise, there were hundreds of people there.
Shannon W.:Okay.
Jack R.:Even though a lot of people had never heard of it. Even in Ireland it wasn't that well known. Nowadays it's like Stonehenge. You go anywhere and ask people about Stonehenge. Everybody knows Stonehenge, it doesn't matter where you are.
Jack R.:Go to outer Mongolia and ask somebody that doesn't know Stonehenge. You might not even know where it is, but it's that famous and within Ireland and now more and more worldwide, new granchers gaining that same reputation. 40 years ago it didn't, but still there were hundreds of people at the winter solstice, sunrise, early in the morning, freezing, cold morning, all standing outside chanting, singing here comes the sun, the Beatles song. But what happened to me was I actually lived in Cork and went to Dublin for business reasons basically, and got involved with this whole research into an area and it completely revolutionized my view of a whole bunch of things.
Jack R.:Like you know, I was born in England. I knew Stonehenge, I knew all sorts of things. There were Stone Age things around where I lived in the south of England as a kid, but the Newgrange and the carvings on the stones, everything that's going on there is just beyond it's magical. You know, and, and people like me, um, I think the world's kind of like divided up in between people who are just gobsmacked when they see it and people who go oh, that's kind of interesting. I'm one of those. That was just completely taken off. I say to people the fairies got me at that point. I went down the rabbit hole, I went down the fairy hole, and we'll be talking about fairies, for sure, today.
Jack R.:Yeah, well, we start with fairies. Fairies is a very good place to start with any discussion in Ireland, because fairies is what it's all about. The Newgrange is one of three massive mounds in the Boyne Valley the Broo na Boynge, and broo means a fairy house, literally in Irish, but by fairy we don't mean little flitty, little butterfly wing things. We're talking about the she, the people of the she, so those mounds. Newgrange is a brew, which is basically that it's a house of the fairies or a house of the sheep loads of different names in new grand, actually, in in mythology but they all amount to the same thing. It's actually a house of the spirit, you know, and she, she and fairies are totally intermingled. You can't talk about fairies in Ireland without talking about she, because that's what they are. Fairies aren't particularly nice, are they?
Shannon W.:Yeah, I wanted to ask you, since we started talking about the fairies, let's go ahead for a moment with that, because if the fairies are not, as you say, you know, whimsical, light-hearted beings, what? What are the fairies? What are the she?
Jack R.:the she, um. I'm a friend who is a mythologist, uh, and basically a medieval scholar. He's been that all his life. He's retired now. Dara Smith and I've known Dara for a number of years. He's used illustrations of mine in his book and he is the guy that turned me on to the deeper meaning of mythology in the first place back in the late 80s early 90s in the first place. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, when I said to Dara, was there any religion in ancient Ireland? She said no, what there?
Jack R.:was was a belief in the she, and actually there's no religion in ancient Ireland. There's nothing that you can describe as religion until christianity so what?
Jack R.:is the belief in the she, uh well, the belief in the she is different levels of meaning. So you've got this. She is basically the kind of fairy spirit, but it's all trapped in the earth, it's all part of the earth, it's like an earth spirit and like all the gods and goddesses that are built on top of this early pantheonic structures, they're all members of the sheep and there's no one single god. There's these pantheonic structures of gods and goddesses. So, to go back to Newgrange, newgrange is the Bruna Boina, which is the fairy house on the bend of the River Boyne, and the River Boyne is named after the goddess Boo, and Boo is the goddess of the boy. So you know, boo and the river and the mounds, they're all connected. So the closest you get to a supreme deity in the old pantheonic structure is actually Boo, which is the mother goddess who gives birth to all the other gods and goddesses.
Shannon W.:So this is a mother. Is it the mother of all fairy mounds then?
Jack R.:Yeah yeah, and it's kind of womb shaped as well, which is really interesting. It's not even completely round and it's definitely imaging this wound structure with a passageway and a chamber. Come on, it's so obvious Symbolism, you know.
Shannon W.:It's so interesting hearing you describe Newgrange in this type of detail, because one thing it suggests is how important an understanding of the language is to understanding what the symbolism is of the site. So, in breaking down that language and the name of the site, not only is there an understanding of what that site may have meant to the ancient people who built it, but also, embedded in that is, the mythology of those people and the stories of them well what I, what I was trying to remind people is.
Jack R.:It's fantastic that in ireland we have these ancient monuments which, unlike something like stonehenge stonehenge, for instance, is an amazing and quite remarkably unique stone circle. There's nothing like it anywhere. That is a completely unique thing. It shouldn't even be called a stone circle because there's nothing like it. But the thing about it is that Stonehenge massive projects going on the Stonehenge landscape project. They were trying to work out what was going on and it seems like it was massive populations of people around there using the whole area, not just Stonehenge, but a whole series of monuments in that region, with thousands of people meeting and actually going there in winter winter solstice, not solstice like we always thought.
Jack R.:But the thing is there's no relationship in mythology to talk about it. It's just a bland bunch of stones sitting on a plane in Salisbury in England and a bunch of stones sitting on a plain in Salisbury in England of which we make up our own story around it. In Ireland. The monuments like Newgrange and Newgrange isn't the only one, there's loads of them actually have a story, a mythological story handed down which gives you an idea of what it's there. It actually says why it's there. It's the house of the goddess Boone. It's the birthplace of the gods. It's a god house. It's for giving birth to gods. You know, they say in mythology why it's there.
Shannon W.:Yeah, I heard you say in another interview when comparing the ancient sites of England to Ireland. I think you said that Stonehenge to you is mute, but that the stone monuments of Ireland are still speaking to you. Maybe this is why.
Jack R.:Perfectly remembered. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, they're mute Not all of them, but by and large they are yeah.
Shannon W.:The mythology and the story are imperative, then, to understanding the site.
Jack R.:The mythology and the story and the archaeology are all intermingled in Ireland. You see, newgrange up until the late 1600s was just a big mound. It could have been a hill. There was no visible sign that there was anything special about it at all, perhaps one or two standing stones sitting around it, which wouldn't have been a big deal in the Irish countryside but there was no actual physical presence. It wasn't like Stonehenge that everybody has always known. Wow, you know, it was just a little grassy hill with trees growing out of it.
Jack R.:There's photographs taken still of how it was before they excavated it. But the thing is for an unknown millennia. It was built 5,500 years ago and it collapsed or it seems to have collapsed. It's not a subject but it became just a hill. But people still visited it into the Bronze Age. So the memory of it, like they built things around it, it's got a whole different layers of archaeological history. Right up until the Iron Age and into the medieval period people still knew that it was a special mount. They knew that it was the brew of the goddess Bhu right, they knew that and the name was retained. The mythology around it, even though it wasn't a visible monument Amazing.
Shannon W.:So they kept a cultural memory of it.
Jack R.:Yeah, so into the 20th century it stayed alive within the Irish culture, within the local people, what that mill was about.
Shannon W.:This is something that has struck me about various sites in Ireland, which is that there can be layers of histories to those sites. There's the original structures that were built, and then people come, various groups of people come and build upon existing sites and add to it again and again. And I'm just wondering what is it about a particular site that makes it so desirable? Or is it just that there is that cultural memory that people want to build upon and hold on to and make it their own in their own age?
Jack R.:One of the most important things about these sites in Ireland is that all of them, the vast majority, are continuous sites. So, blake, if you take, we went together to a couple of ring forts. Yes, what I took you to might have been completely reconstructed sometime in the late Iron Age or the early medieval period, but if you were to dig into that property and look at it, you'd probably find that somebody had been doing something there way back in the Neolithic. This continuity of use of sites is a really, really big thing. In Ireland you track it everywhere, even medieval stuff. They're like all on top of something else. There's just these layers and layers going on all the time.
Shannon W.:And related to that. One of the things that I found of interest is that sites that would have been used or built by pagan or ancient peoples and you find them repurposed or rededicated. For example, a holy well, a pagan, pagan holy well, might be rededicated to the virgin mary. So I just I think you can see how even christianity has not built itself up new in the country but has built itself up upon those ancient, existing pagan sites.
Jack R.:Well, when we jump forward to the Christian world, the thing about the Christian world of Ireland, if you stop looking at it as a Christian world and see it as just another layer of development on the ancient world layer of development on the ancient world.
Shannon W.:It's really hard to find the Christianity in it, if that makes sense.
Jack R.:It does but say more. You see, christianity in Ireland, christianity actually all across Europe, was built on top of pagan structure, but in Ireland it's really evident. It's another reason why Ireland's so important with its history, because we retain this memory of how Christianity developed in Ireland. The monks themselves actually wrote it down and those monks were actually not the monks that we kind of think of today. They were actually not the monks that we kind of think of today. They were actually Druids. You see, christianity was brought to Ireland. It wasn't a missionary system where Christian missionaries came to Ireland and converted everybody, like they say, in the same country. It was complete foolish. Sorry, but what actually happened was as Christianity started to spread out over the Middle East and places like Egypt and Alexandria, places like southern France and then Lyon, which were old Druid centers, were getting involved with this thing called Christianity that was coming out of Egypt, et cetera.
Jack R.:And the thing about the Druids, or what we call the Druids, which has got loads of different names in Irish their main focus was on learning. That's what they wanted. That was their prime desire in the world and their prime drive was for more learning. They were stars, they were studying history. They were studying everything, they were learning.
Jack R.:So as christianity came in as part of this process of it's a new learning, you know, I mean, in the beginning the early christians were basically greek speaking, greek writing. You know, early ogham, oh, as we say in irish, it's a script on a stone that is actually in Greek at the beginning and becomes Latin towards the later part of the early medieval period. Originally it's Christianity of Ardenala, under the language of Greek, but the Irish were like that. They were the old druids. They were out grabbing knowledge. You know. So christianity, instead of being, uh, sent to ireland by missionaries, it's actually bought, it's they, the druids, send their children to these universities in leon, in southern france, and they bring back the knowledge of christianity, the knowledge of grief, the knowledge of alexandria, and they bring back the knowledge of Christianity, the knowledge of grief, the knowledge of Alexandria, and they bring back a form of Christianity that just looks exactly like the Coptic church in Egypt.
Shannon W.:This reminds me of one site that we visited together that I found fascinating, which is that medieval church at Kilnaboy.
Jack R.:Yeah, with the Coptic cross on the side.
Shannon W.:Yes, that's the one, and I'm particularly fascinated by that one because it seems to reveal that direct connection that you're talking about between the Druids and the more ancient sources of christianity, particularly in egypt and it's, and it's also a site that is built upon. You can see the layers that have been built one upon the other by different groups of people, but the symbolism of that church does seem to span time.
Jack R.:Well, the thing is, I regard that as probably the most important site that has a Sheila Nugget in Ireland, because of that history that you're just talking about.
Shannon W.:Would you just share a bit about who Sheila Nugget is? I know that this is a symbol you've spent a great deal of effort researching and writing about, and I'm guessing that most listeners won't be familiar with the symbol. Who is she?
Jack R.:She is an image of powerful spiritual women. It's a figure. Your viewers can't see them, but it's always difficult to describe what a shoe litigate is. Yes.
Jack R.:You know another word for them. The sort of archaeological term would be exhibitionist figures. They're like images that would be traditionally thought of as fertility images which go right back to the Paleolithic, and that's always women bro-toned, pregnant-looking and with a prominent vulva, or something like that. Now, that church was founded by a mythical woman called Inna Bwee, and Inna Bwee was the daughter of a Druid. That's the mythology about her.
Jack R.:We don't really know the truth of that, any of it, but we do know that when the early researchers, edith Gast and her friends a bunch of women from County Leash who were the first people to actually her and her group were the first ones to actually start seriously listing all the shelling gigs in Ireland. So they went on these little jaunts all over the country and Edith Guest went down to killing a boy on the Saints Day, which is in March, and I've forgotten exactly which day, but anyway, she went down there on the feast day in the 1920s. And in the 1920s there were still loads of people visiting that church on pilgrimage. It doesn't happen, it's all died. And she asked the people that were on pilgrimage there because they were standing praying to that shaman. Again, she said what is that image and they said it's an image of Inna Gwee, the saint of the church, and that's crucially important stuff in relation to what Shilinigigs are. Yeah.
Jack R.:The thing about Shilinigigs is there's different levels of myth built up around them. So there is the official line, like if you literally go to the National Museum in Ireland and start talking to some of the archaeologists, whatever, the official line is that Sheen and the Geeks were put on churches in the medieval period to mourn against sin and lust. They were trying to straighten everyone out, you know. But you see, that whole thing was predicated on the old Irish being kind of slammed down by the church all the time. You know, you mustn't sin, you mustn't sin.
Jack R.:All that's a very, very recent thing. In the church you might have got priests and popes and all that going on about celibacy and that, but celibacy wasn't a slummed-up issue in the church right up until the English takeover of 1600. Before 1600 and the English took over, it was the church that we're talking about, you know, and the memory of that church has been perverted and lost and messed around. So people, you know, they're not really conscious of what that church was and how different it was to what we regard as Christianity today.
Shannon W.:Well, that's interesting because we do have to sift through some layers of our modern consciousness, I think, to get back to what the people of those times would have held in their consciousness, you know, because we can filter it through what we may know about the church, and then we may be wrong in our assumptions. So I wonder is there a way to study those ancient sites without being affected or distracted by our modern worldview?
Jack R.:Well, it depends. I mean, the trouble is there's been this hallucination of Christianity on people since the late Middle Ages. It's got increasingly bizarre. So the memory of what we were, you have to dig past that. The thing is, it actually doesn't take that much digging, it just takes a little bit reading the right books or, you know, going into the right information structure rather than, uh, just relying on this kind of weird messianic sort of religious stuff that goes down for christianity now, which isn't.
Jack R.:I don't think christianity nowadays is real christianity. It's not, it's a makey-uppy, it's, um, it's a constructed sort of commercial version. It's roman actually. It's what it is. It's what romans developed at the end of their period when they decided to go Christian. I mean, you want to know what Christianity, the Christianity is about, then you have to look at how it developed in the first place as a major religious structure, and then you have to accept that Ireland originally inherited or, like I say, went and gathered for itself and brought back to Ireland this other Christianity which is its roots in Coptic.
Jack R.:And what's Coptic? It's a Gnostic structure. So it's a Gnostic, coptic structure of Christianity that they bring. And that is, if you know anything about Gnostic, coptic structure of Christianity that they bring. And that is if you know anything about Gnosticism. Gnosticism is all about sharing knowledge. So the Gnostics the little that we really know about them, but we do know that they would meet and share knowledge and argue. You know they all had different views. None of them agreed who god was, or whether there was a god, or whether it was 50 gods or you know whatever. It's all arguments. You know the density scrolls are just a bunch of arguments between those things. But they're meeting I love that yeah, and that's what.
Jack R.:That's what christianity actually is in core, you know, which is basically heretical. These are the people that were actually eaten by lions in the Colosseum. It wasn't Catholic ancestors of the modern popes or a structure of Christianity people being destroyed in the Colosseum or places like that. Well, the Christians, they didn't like it. They wanted their own little brand of Christianity, so they developed it and that's the Christianity all the churches and everything. That's what it's all about.
Shannon W.:Something that's occurring to me as I hear you talk about this is thinking about the druids inviting in Christianity as part of their passion for learning. Then they're adding Christianity to their existing knowledge base, their existing mythology. That's very different from, say, in England, where you would have outside sources bringing in and forcing Christianity upon the people, and I wonder if that's where we get this modern phenomenon of, say, stonehenge having lost its connection to its mythology and Newgrange, for example, still feeling more whole and connected with its original spirit.
Jack R.:Absolutely, absolutely. The key to what I'm talking about is the fact that those early Christian monks who set up the early monasteries in Ireland wrote down the mythology of ancient Ireland. We know about the mythology because it was written down by so-called Christian monks in Christian monasteries. That alone says a huge amount about what early Christianity was in Ireland. That the Christians themselves wrote down this stuff. They were Druids, they were writing down their own history in an institution that was theirs. It didn't belong to a Pope, it belonged to them and they were writing Irish history. That's what I mean about. It's really hard to see the Christianity in it.
Jack R.:The first thousand years of Christianity in Ireland is just a process of the Irish doing it a different way but carrying on Basically setting up universities, monasteries to write down the history of Ireland. That's what's missing in England. That's why they don't know any of their history, because their early Christianity is completely different and it wasn't run by the English people or the British people. In Ireland, christianity for the first thousand years was run by the Irish.
Shannon W.:It's just so sad to think about what has been lost in Britain, for example, in England, for example, because of that history, and then yet we're so fortunate to have the Irish record, we're so fortunate that it wasn't wiped out.
Jack R.:This is part of the reason why people like me write and try and publish and stuff is. We're trying to make the world more aware of how bloody important Ireland is, that it has this miracle, this absolute miracle. The miracle goes on, actually, in that as we go into the Middle Ages, from the Norman invasion, 13th century, say, to the 16th, 17th century, that whole period is a period where the monastic structures build up to these big monasteries that you would have seen when you came to Ireland, quite big institutions, and in those would have been these scriptoriums. And what were they doing in those scriptoriums? They were making sure that the old manuscripts that were being moth-eaten and rotten away were rewritten during that period to make sure that we got it today. It's bloody remarkable, it's a miracle. That's the spirit of the she moving through the whole bloody thing.
Shannon W.:Ireland really is a unique and special place right now, isn't it? As far as within Europe, as far as the modern connection that can be traced so far back. I was actually reading a passage recently about the words in Irish for the English word wave and that there are some words in Irish for wave that suggest, perhaps, a cultural or folk memory going back all the way back, potentially to the Ice Age, an unbroken folk memory that persists yet today, day yeah how many places in europe, or in the world for that matter, can we say that there may be an unbroken cultural memory and linguistic thread connecting us to our ancestors of 10 000 years ago?
Jack R.:actually it's unique, quite unique. I mean there's traces of it all over, in different ways, but not in the same way at all. An island's absolutely unique, you know. You'd find essential aspects of it in certain cultures, say, like the Basque culture or something like that, you know. But you see, all those cultures on the continent have all taken a hammering a hammering in different ways so that they're unrecognizable. That the links have been severed. Yeah, but you look at europe, it's just been one blood bath after another. You know, countries ripping each other apart, crossing each other. It's just crazy. The only only countries that would have any kind of level of similarity with Ireland would be the old countries like Greece. And then on places like well, I was in Crete. Once you get the same feeling in Crete, there's a contact with the past there, because they've got that same thing, they've got Plato, They've got all these Aristotle and all these people writing down the history.
Shannon W.:Interesting connection between the Irish monks and the ancient Greek philosophers.
Jack R.:I just thought I remember I said the first language it was all used in Christianity in Ireland was Greek.
Shannon W.:Yes, you did say that, yeah.
Jack R.:There again you see Greek. Yes, you did say that. Yeah, there again you see Greek. Alexandra is a real hotbed of this core of Christianity that comes to Ireland. We don't know all the internals, but you know it's cocked, it's useful. In real terms. It comes out of Alexandra and that part of Egypt. What's Alexandria? Who's it named after?
Shannon W.:Alexander the Great.
Jack R.:Yeah, it's a Greek colony.
Shannon W.:Yeah, good point. It's beautiful to draw these connections between the ancient world. So I want to ask you, let's take a step back and get back to talking about some of these sacred sites. You've referred to this a couple of times. You and I met in Ireland rather unexpectedly, I would say.
Jack R.:It was an accident.
Shannon W.:It was an accident Literally it was an accident Literally it was an accident and you agreed to be sort of an impromptu tour guide to a group of women I was traveling with and we got this incredible opportunity to drive around and explore some of the countryside of County Clare with you as our pilot.
Shannon W.:With you as our pilot, and I felt so fortunate because I saw so much more, with you as the driver, than I would have seen if I would have been traveling on my own with my untrained eye, and it seemed that around every corner you were pointing out this or that rock formation or ancient site.
Shannon W.:And having you point them out was fascinating because what I might consider just a rocky outcrop on a hill or just a dip in the landscape, you might point that out as a ring fort or a darkened passageway at the edge of a wood. You might point out as an ancient sweat lodge, point out as an ancient sweat lodge and the land just seemed peppered with the remains of ancient civilization. It's so close to the surface and I'm just wondering if, with those sites being so close to the surface to me, the spirit of the place feels closer to the surface as well, and I wonder if the irish people or something about the irish consciousness is affected by living in visible relationship to these ancient sites in a way that other people in other countries don't have access to.
Jack R.:That is a very good observation, because that is precisely it. That's why Ireland is so different. Ireland by and large especially out in the countryside, the people don't have a problem with differentiating between that which is pagan and that which is Christian. It all melds in. They might not be totally conscious of how it melds in, but it does big time. And I could give you loads of instances where people know that they're going to, like you say, a holy world that's dedicated to Mary or the Virgin, but they also know that it's not. It's actually. People have been going to that holy world for millennia, well before Christianity. So there's a kind of implicit understanding in Ireland that even the most devout Christian is conscious that they're actually worshipping something that goes back much deeper. What we've got to say in Ireland is you've only got to pinprick a Catholic and a pagan pop out. It's just laying there in the back all the time, and the more country-fied it is, the more you'll see that and as you said they can't be separated.
Shannon W.:It sounds like.
Jack R.:They try to separate it, but they can't quite see. They're always trying to separate it. That's why they built big churches right next to old churches but still they haven't wiped it out because people are still going down to that holy. Well, you know. Yeah.
Jack R.:And it's good to look at Catholic Christianity. It reminds you that when it comes to the crunch, catholic Christianity, it reminds you that when it comes to the crunch, jesus is there, sort of hanging around, bleeding all over the place. But if you're sick, if you really want something, do you pray to Jesus? No, if you're a Catholic, you pray to Mary. And they're the statues with all the votive offerings and everything the Catholic Church, all the holy wells, all the grottos that you see around Ireland. What's the central feature? It's not Jesus, it's Mary. So there's that layer underneath of goddess worship, which is very evident.
Jack R.:So for me, the two key things about Ireland is that it's got an archaic consciousness which it's been trying to deny. But give it a pinprick and it pops out underlying that archaic consciousness is a feminine consciousness, is a consciousness that this country, this land of Aira, the land of the goddess Eru you know it's not the land of William Kaiser or something, it's the land of the goddess Eru and it's never been named after a male deity In any of the mythological stories. It doesn't matter who the invader is, it's always been named after a female deity. When the IRA were trying to communicate clandestinely and try and talk about Ireland, you know, in communications kind of spy stuff, what did they talk about Ireland? You know, in communications kind of spy stuff, what did they talk about? They called Ireland Catholing the Hoolahol. That was the spy word for Ireland and all the Irish knew that's what they were meant. You know, ireland Catholing the Hoolahol.
Shannon W.:Well, it sure makes sense then, doesn't it, that the pagan people of Ireland embraced this version of Christianity that is so rooted in feminine consciousness. Yeah. And that's the version of Christianity that came to the shores of Ireland.
Jack R.:Yeah, it's the only one they would have had. They didn't like the Roman one right up until the end. And actually, just to make clear, there's two reasons for the takeover and the destruction of the Gaelic culture in the 1600 onwards. One, of course, is economic, because Ireland was its cultural revival of the medieval period up to then but actually made it really powerful and rich. You saw how many castles there are in Ireland. Yeah, All from that period. Right, that's not all people you know. And we actually have records from some of those castles and the trades they were doing with Spain and France. This is a rich country. So there was an economic reason to take over Ireland. But the thing was it was part of the core reason to take over Ireland was to straighten out the clerical structure here, because it was a danger to Britain and the rest of Europe. So it was economic and it was religious as well. All those walls were a combination of religion and sheer money, Aren't they?
Shannon W.:all.
Jack R.:Yeah, well, they are.
Shannon W.:Yeah, absolutely yeah uh, you just mentioned, um, when you were just talking about the castles and we were talking about the, the history of ireland being so apparent, it reminded me of an experience that I had on a previous trip to Ireland. On this trip I rented a car and I drove the car around the island and as I did, I had the radio playing, I was listening to Irish commercials and Irish music and Irish programming. And I remember listening to a commercial and the commercial. I don't remember what they were advertising, but what they were saying was oh, ireland has such a sense of history. Just imagine what it would have been like to live here in the tower of a castle, some type of language like that.
Shannon W.:And as I was listening to the commercial, I was driving past a castle and I was so struck by the reality of what was being said because you could be driving anywhere you want in the United States and in a commercial, the modern consciousness of an Irish person and the ancient consciousness that still lives on the land are tangibly related in their modern reality. Yeah, in their modern reality. Yeah.
Shannon W.:So I sometimes I wonder if people who are living in the U? S are missing the connection to our rootedness that is so available to. The Irish may feel more rooted to their ancestry by virtue of the sacred sites that they live amongst all the time, I would say that's undoubtedly true.
Jack R.:I mean, probably one of my personal advantages in life is that I wasn't born here and people in Ireland take all that stuff you're talking about, so just take it for granted. They don't even see when you come from outside. So you and I are both outsiders to Ireland coming in. I know what you're talking about because that's what struck me when I came to live in. I know what you're talking about because that's what struck me when I came to live in Ireland. I didn't come to live in Ireland until I was in my early 20s. I was born and I was raised in England up until then and it's a completely different consciousness there is no history. My dad didn't know any of his Irish history until I came to Ireland. And then he came to Ireland and then he realized that he had all this Irish ancestry and he ended up buried in Cork. Oh, wow.
Jack R.:And my parents are buried in Drimley in County Cork and so yeah, so we. That is so classic in England. Nobody knows their history in England they don't even bloody care, right? I mean, it has its advantages in that it's so mixed culturally that these people just take people at face value and not that. But at the same time I don't think any of my friends growing up knew anything about their past or where they were really from. I was one of the few that was like searching you know or was even interested.
Shannon W.:No, I think you could certainly say that about many, many Americans that we don't have a sense.
Shannon W.:Not only do we not have a sense of our history, we don't even know where to start looking for it.
Shannon W.:We're that separated from what our ancestral knowledge would have been.
Shannon W.:So, for example, going back to those sweat lodges that I mentioned earlier, when you pointed out that there was a sweat lodge in Ireland, as we were driving by it, I was shocked because in America in the US I should say we think of sweat lodges as native american traditional function, and it would never occur to me that there would be a sweat lodge in europe.
Shannon W.:It we see native americans being close to the land here as best they can under the circumstances of having been, of course, disconnected from their own traditions and lands. But they are connected enough to know that they have a sweat lodge in their history and that it's still a vibrant part of their culture in many ways, whereas we we can have completely forgotten that we may have something similar in our history, and I think to take that a step further, if we don't know that we have it in our history and yet we feel called to some kind of tradition like that we can think that we are co-opting it from, say, a tradition like the Native Americans, and truly it is also part of our tradition and we don't know how to own it.
Jack R.:I think what you've just been talking about is actually incredibly important on a number of levels. You see, all the things I'm talking about about Ireland, the Irish people don't appreciate them. The vast majority it's only you know. You cut it down to percentages, I don't know what it is, but it's only a certain part of this population within Ireland right now who appreciates what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about, though, the cultural heritage of Ireland. It needs immigration. In a sense, ireland requires the immigration of other people to appreciate it. 90%, at least, are the people that I know that really worked the same as me for Irish culture, for Irish culture, for Irish culture. Right, like doing things that I do, aren't from Ireland. I mean, the first person to walk into the chamber at Newgrange was Edward Ludd, a Welshman, and on and on and on. You know.
Shannon W.:Is part of that, though, sort of the fish in water phenomenon, where, when we're inside of that bubble, that is our reality and our ancestral home. Maybe we can't appreciate it the way the same way that it has been. Well, it's a number of things.
Jack R.:You know You've got to realize that there's been a hell of a lot of brainwashing on this culture here. You know which, as I say as a foreigner coming to live here, I didn't get that you know. So I know so many Irish people down the years, people that have left Ireland because they couldn't handle living here anymore. They woke up from the brainwashing they got at school about going to church and God knows what else that they've got. You know they're not here, they live elsewhere. You know the appreciation of Irish culture was actually exported. You know it's exported all its young, its brightest.
Jack R.:You know, when I started researching in Ireland, my journey into the world of the she and she-lignogeeks and everything else began with working with a guy from Brooklyn in Dublin who was researching New Green. He was first generation Irish, born and raised in Brooklyn. He was a Brooklyn boy. He was a gang member when he was a kid, you know, in Brooklyn and here he is in Ireland teaching me about Irish culture and understanding that he can't get the fellas down the pot to appreciate it at all.
Shannon W.:Yeah, which is the odd one here, the odd one there we appreciate what we don't have, I think, more easily than appreciating what has always been ours also, there's been a brainwashing aversion created to Irish culture amongst the Irish people.
Jack R.:They've been talked to it's bad to Irish culture amongst the Irish people. They've been, you know, they've been taught to. It's bad, it's you know, it's pagan, it's bad and also it's worthless. You see, what's the point of studying Irish history? Your job now is to go off and work for Boston Mechanics or whatever, and make money, make best of yourself, because we were so impoverished so Thanks for that reminder about there has been some real cultural trauma visited on the Irish people in that way. Jack.
Shannon W.:I'm looking at the time and I want to be respectful of yours and I'm wondering if you might have time for just one more question.
Jack R.:Yeah, carry on.
Shannon W.:As listeners will know, the intention behind Wake Up Human is to explore the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing and what we can gain by coming back into connection with that old knowledge. And I'm curious what the study of ancient sites might be able to tell us about the knowledge of the people who built them. In your opinion, did the ancient people of Ireland have such knowledge that we've lost or forgotten that we might reconnect with by studying those ancient sites and symbols?
Jack R.:um, the thing is, the key to understanding anything about is its mythology. It is the key to understanding the cultural background to everything, because there are bits and pieces in there in mythology that tell you what it's all about, give you a pathway to understanding. So we're never going to know. I mean, I'm writing this book about stone circles at the minute. I'm trying, so it's a guide, but'm trying in in my own way by getting these insights into why the hell they built stone circles right. I'm never gonna know. I'm never gonna know when. Every time I discover something, there's something, there's a whole series of things, there's a whole another ball going, going on. You have no idea what it is, but the journey of discovery is everything. It's the journey. It's not the destination, it's the journey, and the journey is to go back into what our ancestors have left us, and they've left us this core understanding in the mythology, understanding in the mythology Less about the sites themselves and more about the mythology behind them.
Jack R.:I think you need to. I think to actually appreciate the sites, and I think the sites themselves would appreciate if you know something about this mythology before you sort of start presuming stuff and putting your own layers on it, sort of start presuming stuff and putting your own layers on it. You know, the thing about mythology is it's a means to get beyond the layers that we've created for ourselves. It's it's all part of a, an understanding of um, why the monuments are. Why are the monuments there?
Jack R.:Ancestral worship is definitely a huge chunk of it. So when I say to my friend Dara, was there any religion in ancient artists? She says no, no, it was just belief in the she. Well, what's belief in the she? Another layer of belief in the she is belief in the spirit of the ancestors or the ancestral memory, and that once you start looking in that direction, you are looking at the world from the same point of view as every indigenous culture on this planet ever did, today and in the past, every single one, including massive Egyptian cultures, everyone. My journey actually started at Newgrange with Martin Brennan, american Irish, and I was whipped away through different circumstances to America and I spent a winter with the Indians in the AIM encampment at Sacramento, california.
Shannon W.:Oh, that was a massive effort back then. Yeah, massive thing going on back in the AIM encampment at Sacramento, California. Oh, that was a massive effort back then.
Jack R.:Yeah, massive thing going on back in the 1980s and it was a massive thing. I met Hopi Indians to Alaskan Indians. I met all sorts and they all agreed on a few very core things. They all had a goddess figure and a belief in the she and the ancestors and the key up between the three things it's all about ancestors. It's. The only thing we've got as human beings is the past. We don't know what the future is. All we've got is the past and all we've got is us is all we got is the past and all we got is us, who are a product of the past. The other thing about that ancient site in Ireland is to stand there and realise you've got to lose your individual identity on that site. You stop being the individual that you've been programmed to think that you are by this modern world you are a product of your ancestors and that stone circle was built in respect to that understanding.
Jack R.:And you do not build a massive monument like newgrange or stone hinge on your own. You do it as part of a massive consciousness, and that's what we've lost in the modern day. We've lost this ancient sense of consciousness. You know what the Romans feared about the Celtic tribes was that they didn't fear death.
Shannon W.:And is that because of that interconnected?
Jack R.:because of a much more collective consciousness. The consciousness, yeah, yeah you know, jack.
Shannon W.:I mean, it does seem clear that we have lost so much of that connection that we once had. But hearing you talk, I'm struck by how close that consciousness still is at hand. It's, it's still right there. It's, when you say it's with the she, the she is still right there well, they are it's not something that's lost that we can't well, they are. It's not something that's lost that we can't find. It's something that's lost that we are just not seeing.
Jack R.:It's just feels like it's just there it's just below the surface.
Jack R.:So the people this is why people in ireland have never touched those stone circles they know, you know and that's a whole different podcast you've got up just talking about the way the living sort of memory of that is in Ireland the people really are scared of knocking that ring for knocking that stone circle and it's actual living reality amongst these people that it's taboo to knock it over because the she are going to get it. It's protected by the sheep who were just underground there. So Ireland is actually still following the same religion it did for the last thousands of years, really in reality.
Shannon W.:It sure is, and it's just under the surface, as you say. Yes, absolutely Beautiful, jack. Well, I recognize. Our time is about up. Yes. It has been a true pleasure. I appreciate your time, I appreciate your knowledge and your wisdom and I thank you, for I know this is your own passion. But I also thank you for all the work that you have done to research and publish on these sacred sites so that so many of us can benefit.
Jack R.:Thank you. Yeah, it's kind of like that question you asked about. You know, when I was trying to answer that Ireland is open for everybody, I don't know if I made that clear enough. Really, ireland is open for everybody. I don't know if I made that clear enough. Really, it's a culture that's recognizable by everybody that has a sort of Caucasian European background, isn't it? You know, it's something that you can relate to. You don't have to be bloody Irish to do it.
Shannon W.:No, you don't. I think anyone who is European, I think, can benefit from learning about Ireland, because it is still. I don't want to say Europe is Europe, but in a sense we are all Europeans and so much of our ancient knowledge may have been lost on the continent, and so looking to Ireland for some guidance.
Jack R.:Yeah, yeah, you know, england's a lost country in that way.
Shannon W.:Well, I feel like European America is a lost country in that way too.
Jack R.:That's what's happening now that people are searching, they're lost, they're more and more lost. You know that church didn't work, that politics isn't going to work. You know it's all like they're all over the place. And you see, the thing is like what I'm saying that Ireland is available to everybody. That's got that European cultural background, it's because it's not specific. But it is specifically saying well, it's not the Native American Indian culture, that's right. That's theirs. You know that's right. That's theirs, you know that's right. It's something that is for you.
Shannon W.:Yes, yes, and we very much need that. We are very much lost, so many of us, and I think it's breaking our hearts and I think it's disconnecting us from our souls and I think it's keeping us from loving nature, the land, each other and ourselves, even by not having the roots that are really our birthright.
Jack R.:Yeah, and if you don't love yourself, you won't love anything else.
Shannon W.:So true, yeah, thank you so much, jack.
Jack R.:I enjoyed it, thank you.
Shannon W.:Thank you, bye-bye. That's it for this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. You can learn more about my guest, jack Roberts, at his website, bandiadesigncom. You can learn more about me and the Wake Up Human podcast on my website, shannonwillscom. If you enjoyed this episode and know someone else you think also would enjoy listening, please share it with them. This podcast is a labor of love for me and I'm thrilled if it can be of benefit to someone else. And, of course, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to subscribe and or leave a review, where possible, to help me get the word out. I'd love to reach more people with this work and share the voices of my guests with a wider audience. Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode of Wake Up Human.