Discover Ireland's forgotten history, hear reawakened stories and myths from yesteryear and stand on top of mountains that are carved into the Irish consciousness.
Perhaps the most widespread spiritual aspect to the full moon is the association with ancestors and past family members.
The full moon is said to create a thinning between the realms of life and death.
Often it is the case that powerful and poignant dreams both remind us of those we have lost but also serve to help us remember to appreciate our own lives and those around us.
In Asia, in their pre-Buddhist, shamanic traditions, the August full moon signals a more liminal window through which the hungry ghosts might emerge.
These are ancestral spirits who may be lost themselves or yearning for something in their past. They may be unable to forget a loved one or an event which still holds them back from progressing in their spiritual journey.
Tradition says that we have a chance to help such ancestors at this time by making offerings and sending guiding intentions which can help these lost spirits find their way to their next incarnation.
You can notice some similarities to Irish and European Samhain traditions and beliefs in this. The fields are now full of mushrooms often forming ‘fairy rings’ and for many these are places one should only enter with caution.
Perhaps there is a crossover here considering the ritualistic use of certain psilocybin-containing mushrooms?
Some researchers suggest that ancient sweat-houses were used as places to consume these mushrooms where the seer would enter trance-states to contact ancestors and spirits.
As nature offered the opportunity to contact the otherworld, the time of the year was similarly associated with corresponding rituals.
A piece of very obscure Irish folklore regarding a positive encounter with the Bean Sídhe records how she is deemed to heal the sick through moon bathing.
This custom was called ‘All Heal.’
Considering how we are told in the folklore that it was “old people” who carried on the name ‘All Heal’, I think we can safely say that this is a long regarded tradition.
The practice took place on the evening of six days following a full moon, which is in itself quite unusual.
In this tradition, it seems that the sixth night following a full moon is regarded as particularly magically potent.
The ritual proceeds as follows.
If a person was sick they were brought to the shore of a lake in order to bathe, but not in the water, and instead in the reflected light of the moon upon the lake’s surface.
This moon-bathing for wellness is very interesting considering much more recent evidence regarding how different types of moonlight might affect us.
Many people might be surprised to discover that it has such a long history in Ireland.
This tradition also has parallels with some Bealtaine customs earlier in the year and the warding of malevolent forces. In that particular case it is moonlight in the morning dew which is said to both repel evil influence, as well as bestowing beauty and health upon those who wash their faces in the dew at dawn.
Another curious factor is that Bealtaine is associated with fairy queens and, as we shall see, so is the night of All Heal.
The twist to ‘All Heal’, and its cure, though, was that if you did not get well after two or three nights you would then be visited by the bean sídhe.
However, the aforementioned twist is that her song would be one of comfort for those about to die, as opposed to one which instils fear.
In this case, the bean sídhe is identified as Áine who is sometimes considered both a fairy queen and, according to some, a potential Irish moon goddess.
This latter point is often argued, it must be said, but it is very interesting to read of her being associated with the lunar cycle in this account as well.
Also associated with this moon bathing ritual is a red haired dwarf named Fer Fí, identified as Áine’s brother. His task was to accompany Áine’s song on his harp and comfort the person as they fell into ‘sleep’ by the moonlight.
This ‘All Heal’ tradition is recorded as occurring at Lough Gur which has always been associated with an entrance-way into the Otherworld.
Here is the full piece as recorded in the archives at Duchas.ie.
“On the 6th night of the full moon the people brought their sick close to the lakes so that the moonlight shone brightly on them near the waters of the lake. The old people called this night- “All-Heal” and if a sick person was not better by the 8th or 9th day of the moon he would then hear the “Ceol Sidhe” which “Áine” the bean-sidhe and spirit of Lough Gur would sing or play to comfort the dying.
The sick person would fall asleep as the music “Suantraige:- which was said to be the whispering song of sleep which Aine’s brother Fer Fí played.
Fer Fí was a kindly red haired dwarf and it was said to be a sign of good luck to hear him laughing.
He played only 3 tunes – Wail, Sleep and Laughter – on his 3 Stringed harp.
For this piece I wanted to open the door on the social pressures and, indeed, stigma, regarding reporting fairy encounters.
Related to this is the more occulted tradition of knowing how to instigate and safely navigate practices bringing one into contact with fairies and spirits in the first place.
While not necessarily initiatory, this can definitely be a shielded knowledge.
In Dion Fortune’s introduction to The Mystical Qabalah, for example, she explicitly states that some of her writings are deliberately misleading in order to safeguard knowledge: the seeker will, if truly earnest, find the way regardless.
We will come back to the topic of deliberate obfuscation but for now I will focus on reasons for the unwillingness to report fairy sightings.
The psychologist Keith Thompson, writing in his book Angels and Aliens, remarks on the seeming disparity between experiencers in senior management positions and those who work in menial and low paid jobs.
Thompson is responding to critics who ask why it is mostly “uneducated” people who report strange encounters with otherworldly beings.
Some of the answer may lie in sociological links and pressures.
A senior manager, or person with a position in authority, is much more susceptible to being ostracised, demeaned and potentially losing a high societal role than a person in a less influential position.
At least, that’s a good explanation, but maybe not the full truth of the matter either.
This does not conform to Irish society in that a working class person reporting a fairy encounter has as much to lose by doing so than anybody else.
There are two paths here and we will look at both. The first is the initial reception the experiencer usually receives.
This will, by and large, consist of ridicule from the general community.
The consequences can be humiliating and an entire family may bear the brunt of the reputation.
This is also, in many cases, generational, as we shall see.
There will also usually be a smaller group who believe the encounter may be real. Again, from the Irish folklore archives we can examine how those close to the family, especially in rural areas, will associate the encounter with stories and traditions already passed down.
Now, there is a specific nuance here which is often overlooked. Yes, there may be embarrassment and trepidation when a person decides to tell of their experience but this is not just because of the fear of being mocked.
There is also the factor of having been foolish enough to have broken a taboo which a community may have always observed even if it was not openly acknowledged.
To some degree we might include clearing a fairy bush or committing an indiscretion against the good people, but further examples can be added.
A family may decide to not speak of what they believe to be a fairy punishment simply because they have knowingly broken the ‘rules’.
Another point to consider here is when Ireland’s view of fairies and non-human persons began to change because of religious influences.
We know that from 500 AD there was a concerted effort by the church to move populations away from so called pagan deities and spirits to those of saints and Christian icons.
Pope Gregory specifically asked for an almost transfer-by-stealth approach as opposed to the presumably more violent tactics being used up to that point.
The effect of this letter and change of approach is arguably one of the foundational changes which led to ‘Folk-Catholicism’ in Ireland: that is, the unspoken tact of incorporating older, polytheistic and animistic views into how Christianity was both practiced and imagined. Further, these blurred boundaries were to lead to what many saw as a ‘Celtic Christianity’ less inhibited by Rome’s authority and more flexible to how a people grew a spirituality with roots in rule and individuality.
Nevertheless, the prevailing view of fairies became of a type of fallen angel or lesser demon; neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell.
For any person who was willing to speak about an encounter with such beings this brought with it a potential association which, while not having the later fatal ramifications of Scottish witchcraft, certainly had the potential to place a person to the periphery of a community.
I would recommend Dr. Andrew Sneddon’s book, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland, for a more thorough exploration regarding these consequences.
We should therefore be prepared to consider that many more people experienced the same supernatural-type encounters which had always been recorded in native and indigenous cultures than were actually written about.
Returning to Keith Thompson, who I mentioned at the start of this piece, he writes that, “The thing to remember about Dionysus is that he wears masks not to disguise himself but rather to reveal himself. [ ]Try as we might, life refuses to be reduced to any flat singular interpretation. Interesting, that the word “symbolism” is derived from the Greek symballein, which means “to throw together.” The word denotes the drawing together of two worlds. Hermes is a spanner of boundaries, a mediator between realms, an ambassador between domains which seem separate but are connected by subtle thresholds.”
While many might agree with Thompson’s analysis today, for rural Irish populations the reach and availability of such philosophy was in most cases impossible.
A magical way of thinking was not easily separated from Christian doctrine and while miracles associated with saints were seen as God-given and divine, otherworldly powers of fairy were much more likely to be considered diabolical.
Even if the punishments were less severe on the surface, being banished from a village or being ostracised from a community might end with the same consequences.
The religious view of fairies, then, meant that a perception existed regarding both their nature and their influence. Fairy Doctors and the Bean Feasa were often persecuted to varying degrees by both priests and doctors.
For the priests, these people were leading their flock back to ancient pagan ways which needed to be wiped out.
For doctors, the cures and healing methods of the Irish cunning folk were superstitious nonsense.
Often, a sensational case with tragic consequences, was used to vilify an entire group, such as the case of Bridget Cleary. Even today, contemporary accounts of this episode continue to use sensationalist language in order to describe her fate.
It is little wonder, then, that for Irish people, describing a fairy encounter could lead a person into situations where their reputation and income might be affected.
Looking at the numbers of people who have come forward over the years, we can then ask just how many more incidents there have been and how does that impact upon our perceptions of magical places and liminal infringements upon ordinary life.
And, we must also ask just how many may feel they are somehow forbidden from speaking at all!
I once read a novel in which the wisest character in the story was approaching the end of her own life.
Her death would not be traumatic or unexpected, though.
She knew her years, her seasons and her days were falling away, and those around her knew this too.
She was lucky in this type of quiet passing, of course, as she had lived for many years and witnessed many worse kinds of death.
As her time approached, she became more mindful of the world and those she loved, and those who loved her.
Her friends would catch her watching them, her smiling sometimes, as she settled into her final slowing down.
Her own appreciation for all she had lived through was matched only by the fear and anxiousness of those around her.
They had yet to live such a life.
They had not walked her path, nor had they made the always-kind decisions she had made as she watched over her loved ones as they grew.
And, because of this, they did not have the wisdom to understand a life’s closing and how death draws down upon us all.
So it was that for those she was leaving behind, the final days were filled with a sense of panic.
What would they do?
Who knew the world like she did?
Who knew the herbs and healing plants with slim stems which, when collected and dried, could alleviate pain or reduce fever?
Who would know when it was the right time to pick the fragile wild garlic plants, or the flowers that grew by the riverbank?
It was always her who could best tell when the petal shades were just the perfect colour, signalling their potency.
Who else could read the patterns of migrating birds and know when to sow, when to harvest, and when to gather what would be needed to survive another winter.
The fear of turning and change, though, is both needless and futile.
As one thing passes, another comes into being.
The exchange of death for birth and the old for the new is what creates life in the first place, after all.
The wheel of the seasons sometimes strains as it turns, pulling the land, drawing the waters and reshaping the stars and constellations in their wake.
As above, so below.
Always turning.
Just as those before us handed down their wisdom and legacy, one day we will do the same.
Whether we pass this on with a sense of peace depends on the lives we have lived, I think.
We are all only here for the briefest time.
Even when we live a long life, it is, really, always a too-short life.
Our friendships, our loves, and our own lives are themselves only seasons waiting to change and leave their mark upon the world.
(C.) David Halpin.
Image: ‘At the First Touch of Winter, Summer Fades Away by Valentine Cameron Princep.
In his essay, Reconnecting To Everything, Professor Ronald Hutton argues that “…fairy narratives serve to re-enchant the natural world at a time of unprecedented ecological crisis.
They animate and personalise it, creating emotional links between practitioners and places, plants, and animals.”
Professor Hutton goes on to state that re-enchantment requires imagination, and visualisation which stimulates the senses, moving us from disbelief to belief, making fairies and spirits real.
You might notice parallels to the concept of egregores to some degree here; thought forms created by the thinker and practitioner.
What is interesting, though, is how Professor Hutton also reminds us how such experiences are guided and constructed from our own preconceived ideas and imaginings: images of fairies from literature and film are waiting within the autonomous imagination for us to reuse over and over again.
We can also notice the recognition of how we are using fairies to populate new spiritual religions, which I have written about in previous posts, as well as the likelihood that we are framing ongoing and new experiences within the restriction of the beliefs of previous generations.
As an example, I was recently reading a collection of ‘ghost’ stories by the writer Robert Aickman and I couldn’t help but be struck by how many ‘ghosts’ actually seemed to behave more like fairies.
Indeed, even the strange phenomena that these beings brought with them belonged more to how we conceive of fairy experiences than anything else.
From time slips, to not accepting food or hospitality from such otherworldly or threshold beings, the dangers manifested the same way: being lost forever in a never ending loop, losing memory, becoming enslaved to a particular form, or even dying but remaining with the ‘ghost’, all seemed recognisable punishments or outcomes from fairy lore.
For some pagans, though, not moving from one particular way of thinking is of paramount importance, and a person must adhere to the rules of an exact ritualised liturgical slog.
For others, like myself, there is a feeling that rather than any one infallible ‘way’ there are myriad connections and a wild, chaotic, and localised, animism, which we are always connected to.
Our consciousness is awake to this numinous song to varying degrees, depending on circumstances, conscious clarity, and metabolic make-up.
This idea that a person must consciously reach out and imagine in order to experience the transcendent is often contradicted by fairy lore, though, it must be said.
From being carried away by a fairy wind, captured by hearing a fairy tune, or even accepting a gift from a stranger at a stone circle at dawn (!), folklore tells us that in many cases a fairy encounter is not something actively sought.
Indeed, in many shamanic traditions such as the Ulchi, as one example, a person may train for many years to become a healer or shaman only for the spirits to choose their brother, sister, or spouse.
Such accounts and traditions illustrate that while an argument may be made for beings to exist within imagination, they are also capable of traversing and crossing the boundaries of our limited conceptions of such realms, demonstrating both their liminal qualities, and, perhaps, more so, our own.
Or, perhaps the answer is more in line with what Gordon White reminds us about imagination, “It is not in you. You are in it.”
DUBLINTIMEMACHINE: Today, we visit an eccentric Irishman who inherited a mansion in London and dug a massive illegal underground complex beneath his gaff…just because! William Lyttle (1931–2010) was a civil engineer, and when destiny brought him to 121 Mortimer Road in Hackney during the swinging sixties he decided his fancy new digs 20 rooms weren’t quite enough, so he excavated a wine cellar in the basement.
So far, so sane. However, Lyttle discovered that digging was strangely stimulating for him. He said he’d “found a taste for the thing”. So his little dabble with making a single subterranean room turned into a forty-year addiction. The Irishman soon mined not only his own grounds but single-handedly generated a massive, multilevel tunnel complex that would put an ant colony to shame. His labyrinth boasted lofty rooms, and grand underground avenues 18 metres (59 ft) long. Contrasting this were little shafts barely a child’s height. Most were lit with adhoc electrical lighting.
Foreshadowing the Shawshank Redemption or perhaps inspired by the Great Escape, William Lyttle dumped the dirt discreetly about his garden and local parks. However, in a possible symptom of his mental health, he also filled entire rooms of his above-ground domicile. So even as his secret project flourished his once fine mansion fell into disrepair.
Obviously, this improvised underworld was a very dangerous undertaking.
Wrecklessly the adventurous civil engineer invaded the earth beneath his wealthy neighbours’ homes too and excavated as deep as the water table. His greatest and most illegal excavation connected his mansion with the local Dalston Lane rail tunnel.
Inevitably the project aroused unwanted attention. Yes, there had been rumours the eccentric Paddy was up to something. Considering the times it would’ve been amazing if he wasn’t considered a possible terrorist by Scotland Yard. But the penny dropped when a local publican expressed concerns about his cellar collapsing. And the water supply became disrupted…and lighting a mini underground village drained local power supplies. Then the understandable complaints rolled in. Bizzare noises in the nighttime. Inexplainable sinkholes appearing in neighbours flowerbeds, gaping chasms in the leafy yuppie streets.
Incredibly (if you’ve never worked for Fingal County Council) despite Hackney Council receiving tip-offs and serious complaints they did feck all for decades. Eventually, an ultrasound inspection of the grounds of Lyttle’s gaff was carried out in 2006, and the rest is history. Sadly (for him) Lyttle was evicted in 2006. Then Hackney Borough Council began the mammoth mission of backfilling the Mole-mans tunnels with aerated concrete. Over 33 tonnes of soil and debris were removed! In 2008 the High Court made him pay £293,000 in expenses. They generously housed Lyttle in a hotel for three years. Finally, he was rehoused on the top floor of a high-rise apartment building, hoping this would put an end to his antics. A not-so-random inspection of his new “digs”. The inspector discovered he had knocked a hole in a dividing wall!
We’ll give the last word to “The Mole Man of Hackney” himself.
When journalists asked why he did it all, he said, “I’m just a man who loves to dig. There is great beauty in inventing things that serve no purpose.”
DUBLINTIMEMACHINE: On this day in 1980, Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey made his notoriously hypocritical address to the Irish people live on RTE. The Republic of Ireland was experiencing a massive budget deficit, one of the worst in the developed world.
Unemployment was approaching 10% and rising.
And whose fault was it? The decadent Dáil members? The aristocratic Catholic Church. The near feudal state of socio-economic policies that the middle class were maintaining for their benefit? Nope. It was the impoverished, hungry, jobless working class.
Haughey’s insincere scolding began with: ‘I wish to talk to you this evening about the state of the nation’s affairs, and the picture I have to paint is not, unfortunately, a very cheerful one.’ However, it was the next sanctimonious admonishment which would become infamous in hindsight.
“As a community, we are living way beyond our means.”
Then, in one of the greatest acts of political gaslighting in 20th century Irish history, C.J. said ‘apportioning blame, however, is not going to get us anywhere’.
To say Champagne Charlie lived like a banana republic playboy-dictator is a gross understatement. With Irish citizens experiencing poverty and hardship at record levels, our vane 3-time Taoiseach and his cronnies were cynically lining their pockets. Whilst he was telling us to “tighten our belts” he was wearing Parisian-tailored Charvet shirts worth more than a months wages.
The hawk-faced robber baron bought a 14 bedroom Abbeville mansion and it’s 250-acre estate in Kinsealy, County Dublin. He owned racehorses and a luxury yacht called Celtic Mist. Oh, and his own private island called Inishvickillane! And these are just some of the assets he didn’t bother to hide. Neither did he ever disclose where these Midas-like riches came from. Because in his greed and arrogance, he felt completely entitled to garnish the finances of his impoverished serfs like a feudal lord.
Years later, the Moriarty Tribunal confirmed for the sucker Irish voters what the dogs in the street already knew. Whilst Haughey was lecturing Ireland’s poor for borrowing to feed and clothe their kids, he had personal debts of £1.143 million with Allied Irish Banks.
DUBLINTIMEMACHINE: Today in 1877 a woman called Eliza Walker Dunbar became the first female to earn a medical licence in Ireland or Great Britain. The trailblazer passed her medical exams with flying colours in The Royal College of Physicians, which was then called the “King and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland.”
Of course, this late-in-the-game first for women was no reflection of female intelligence or talent, but rather just another symptom of a misogynistic status quo that treated women as unequal in intellect or ability. Conveniently, this oppression also kept men on top of every social stratum whilst also freed males from domestic responsibilities they might have regarded as less than heroic or glamorous.
Dunbar was a true child of the Empire. Born in the Raj of British India, her Da was Scottish and she was educated in Cheltenham, England. It was that very international flavour of her CV which convinced the Council of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians that her graduation wouldn’t count as competition for her medical peers in Ireland. On the basis she told them she would take her qualifications elsewhere….an early victim of our brain drain!
The 1858 Medical Act technically didn’t bar women, so much as make it effectively impossible to qualify as a doctor by making it illegal for them to study medicine at Royal Colleges, universities, and medical institutions.
The Enabling Act of 1876, long campaigned for by a significant underground network of renegade female physicians and academics, like Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, finally broke the stethoscope ceiling. King and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland was the first institution to use this new legislation.
in 1903 in the unlikely location of the cellar of a gaff near Mountjoy Square!
It turns out the “black gold”, which was actually more a milky paraffin slime, had been discovered a month before. However, the discreet owners of the site at number 100 Summerhill, had kept their fortuitous find secret till the local papers got wind.
So how could this precious commodity occur in the heart of inner city Dublin? British scientists incorrectly believed that peat bogs, which were abundant in their peasant colony, produced oil. Well, turns out the whole Summerhill neighbourhood was built on reclaimed land which was once an ancient bog. This seemed to confirm their erroneous theory.
So would Dublin be the new Dallas? Before you grab your pickaxes here comes the science bit. A prominent geologist of the day, Professor Grenville Cole, sent samples for testing. Sadly for the greedy British oil industry and the fledgling Dublin industry, results showed the fluid had little commercial value and the fountain itself was finite. Thus the bog theory was a case of correlation, not causation. Sure we wouldn’t know what to be doing with all that Saudi sheik billions anyway!
SOURCES
Frank Hopkins, Hidden Dublin (2007) Mercier Press
C. McCabe, Sins of the father: tracing the decisions that shaped the Irish economy (Dublin, 2011)
The year 2023 resulted in a seismic shift in the Irish political landscape. The previously impregnable walls of mainstream media have been breached by those opposing the free-for-all immigration system.
Suddenly, the so-called ‘far right’ talking points are inside the castle’s fortifications, attempting to break it down, bit by bit, argument by argument. But there is a long long way to go.
In this information war, our side, through sheer force of numbers, has eventually managed to storm the garrison, but an almighty battle awaits as the incumbents attempt to reinforce their numbers with the new proposed hate speech law and a crackdown on social media platforms like Twitter.
Amidst the tumult, Sinn Féin is now trying to position itself to hoover up the mostly mythical ‘far right’ vote.
But can they be trusted?
Could this be simply a ploy to neuter the protestors and lead the silent majority over the edge of a cliff?
SF has long been running with the hounds regarding the government’s free-for-all immigration policy, but now their duplicitous approach of attempting to run with the hares may well backfire. There is a risk they may alienate the extreme hard-left ‘wokesters’ within their ranks.
At the same time, how can any self-respecting protestor who has stood alone against the status quo’s extremist immigration policies trust SF when, for the past several years, they’ve been shouted down and called fascists and Nazis by the very same party now attempting to position themselves as their defenders?
A cynic might say that this is an establishment (recently rattled by events on the streets) attempting to neuter the burgeoning but leaderless cohort of the population who are wise to the wider EU and globalist agenda of ‘ever closer union’ or, as the late Peter Sutherland stated, to ‘undermine national homogeneity’ via mass unlimited immigration.
They are wise to the disenfranchisement of the Irish people within their own country. And even if they aren’t fully aware of the tactics and goals at play, they can sense that something deeply sinister is afoot against little old Ireland.
A new tactic?
The recent protest at Ringsend, where a SF representative called a group blockading a road a ‘splinter group’ and then urged them to get off the road, is a case in point.
The protestors, who possess a meek arsenal of legal weapons with which to wage their campaign, were being told by the SF rep to decommission their one useful tool: blockading.
It reeks of attempting to lead the protestors into a pen. Just get them off the streets and placate them with empty platitudes, divide and rule, and then slither off into the undergrowth like a snake after the damage has been done.
It’s instructive how Mary Lou McDonald recently stated that the government should have been engaging with ‘good people involved in sporting organizations…constructive, decent people for whom the inn is not full.’ This tells a story in itself. She wants engagement with sporting entities who are largely beholden to the government for funding. Organizations that didn’t even raise a murmur these last few years.
Organizations who watched on and said nothing as large swathes of the Irish population were disenfranchised and increasingly treated as second-class citizens in their own country. In other words, she wants captured voices to represent the protestors.
Captured voices who are not only on the hook for government grants, etc., but who, one suspects, may be profiting directly from the state’s insane free-for-all immigration policies.
The second part of her statement is even more instructive and self-explanatory: ‘The inn is not full.’ Which basically amounts to business as usual. Nothing to see here. The show must go on. The establishment’s cash cow, or the golden goose laying the golden egg, must remain untouched. Never mind the wider implications on social cohesion or how these unprecedented actions may tear apart the very fabric of Irish society for years to come.
How far will the establishment go when you hear noises about vast numbers of ‘climate refugees’ coming in from Africa? Or what about the Palestinians, for whom most of us have deep sympathy, coming to our shores en masse? Does anyone remember the civil war that was sparked in Lebanon when huge numbers of Palestinians moved there? Or the conflict that ignited when vast numbers of Palestinians moved into Jordan? Cold, hard facts need to trump altruistic one-world utopian tendencies.
The fact is the dangers of religious division ripple through the DNA of nearly every Irishman and woman. And if they don’t, they should.
Nobody has any issues with a sensible and reasonable immigration system, but this should not be to the detriment of the people who built this country up. It should not fracture a nation along ethnic or religious grounds. It should not facilitate a Trojan horse agenda which is to ultimately destroy the nation-state.
Ireland’s immigration policy is akin to getting a knock on your door and then letting the person into your house without even looking at who is standing there in the first place. The more rational of minds know that it’s wise to look through the peephole, open the door if the person seems like a reasonable individual, talk to them for a few moments to discern whether said individual may be a threat or not (basic vetting), and then, and only then, let the person into your house. And if, after you’ve let them into the house, they start breaking stuff and acting up, you remove them from your premises (deportation).
Open door policy?
Whereas the far-left policy is to blindly open the door and welcome every last person into the house. And then, when the guest starts breaking the guitar that was meant to be played when singing ‘Kumbaya My Lord’ over their head, their first action is to exonerate them with some bleeding-heart story and repeat the cycle ad nauseam.
The latter knows the system will always provide them with get-out cards. The former knows they have only one house, one island, and protect it they must. And will.
Why should the people of Ireland be forced to endure someone happy to reap the fruits of the labor of the nation without ever putting their hand to the wheel? (i.e., the murderer of Ashling Murphy).
The far left loves rolling out the old trope of ‘cultural enrichment,’ clearly if the system was doing its job properly, it would have known that in the case of Joseph Puskas (Ashling’s murderer) and many other cases, there was never any cultural enrichment. Quite the opposite.
The far left will argue, ‘What about the criminals we already have here?’ And it’s a valid point. But the fact is, there is very little you can do with the inherent structural defects of a house. Isn’t it your obligation, your duty, to take preventative measures to prevent further deterioration when you can clearly do so? Isn’t it a dereliction of duty when you fail to do so?
Just because you have one crack running through your house, should you invite someone else in with a sledgehammer to create another? Isn’t there an onus on you to stop further rot when you can do so?
This dereliction of duty across the political spectrum will leave lots of casualties in its wake, and perhaps even the heirs apparent, Sinn Féin.
The way I see it, they have blown their chance of overall power. These past few years, Sinn Féin courted the mainstream media, the woke mob, LGBT, climate alarmism, the EU, but the one group they haven’t courted is the Irish people.
They haven’t listened to 75% of Irish people who have voiced reservations regarding the free-for-all immigration policy.
The media even credited Sinn Féin for this self-inflicted own goal. Praising them for sticking with traditional establishment viewpoints even when upwards of 80% of their own political base had grave reservations regarding their direction. Sinn Féin lapped it all up.
In essence, the media was crediting Sinn Féin for taking a pistol out and kneecapping their own political ambitions. Whether they were blinkered enough to see this folly or not is anyone’s guess. Perhaps with the ultimate goal of power in their grasp, their tunnel vision blinded them to the trap they were falling into.
Now, with this apparent about-face, they are attempting to stem the flow of blood from the self-inflicted wound. But it remains to be seen whether they can stop the hemorrhaging of votes which polls suggest is occurring. The damage may be irreparable.
For many, the supposed last vanguard of nationalism has been exposed as nothing more than die-hard globalists. The same as all the other parties. For some in the traditional republican voting base, a sense of betrayal wafts through the air.
They’ve voted for the most draconian hate speech laws ever witnessed in a Western society. A desperate attempt by all establishment parties to clamp down on political dissent and to preserve their aura as ‘best boys in the class’ image to their technocratic masters from abroad.
One suspects, this will prove a massive own goal if the Gardaí start rounding up people and prosecuting them for having memes on their phones, etc. Beware of creating martyrs in Ireland. It never ends well.
With the lurch away from traditional political philosophies across Europe and the world, there will be many eyes keenly watching Ireland with intense scrutiny. For our side, an over-the-top crackdown by the state should be welcomed, because it will expose the establishment as the authoritarian, totalitarian fascists that they are.
Even your most moderate voter will be disgusted if they start throwing people in jail for a few tweets or memes. The world will be disgusted. Let the establishment fall into the trap of their own making.
Pandering to overlords from faraway shores trumps domestic concerns.
The reality is, for the political class, Ireland is just a mere stepping stone before some plush job with the EU or an extremely well-funded NGO. Paschal Donohues proposed new role as head of the IMF is emblematic of this. They want nothing more than to proudly proclaim to some unelected foreign technocrat ‘Look at how we gagged and controlled the Irish population with our hate speech law. We have broken the backs of the nationalists.’ Little old Ireland is to be served up to the globalists like a Christmas Turkey. But they’ve forgotten that old Paddy Irishman is a formidable opponent when you get his blood up.
Recent protests and events have exposed Ireland as an antagonistic and unruly population that is endangering the prospects of Leo and Coveney, etc securing the much coveted EU job when they’re finished serving Ireland up to his EU and globalist masters.
The riots in Dublin prevent the political class from grandstanding their European “partners” when attending one of their regular summits. Because of this perceived failure, Varadaker and his ilk might have to accept a “secondary” job with an Irish NGO and make do with only 150k per year. The poor people. You can almost hear Leo whispering “Just be a good Paddy and do as you’re told. I have my career to think of here.”
With their contemptuous disregard for the wishes of the majority of Irish people, the only thing they have succeeded in doing is to awaken the nationalist leviathan from its slumber. Who knows where this fire will end up when she fully catches wind? In the words of Patrick Pearse, “They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!”
DUBLINTIMEMACHINE: We briefly leave Dublin today to visit a mad Irishman in London, who was buried alive for 61 days…on purpose! Mick Meaney was a brawny Tipperary born boxer-turned-labourer living in 1960’s London.
His macabre world record attempt happened in the grim car park of a London lorry depot. To make things worse, the crazy Irish lad’s poor wife and kids back home in Ireland only heard about the stunt as it happened on the radio!
The event was promoted by another Irishman, eccentric Kerry native Butty Sugrue, who owned The Admiral Lord Nelson pub in Kilburn. Sugrue was no stranger to sensational acts either, styling himself as “Ireland’s Strongest Man” he was known for stunts like pulling a bus across Westminster Bridge with his teeth!
Training for the horrific stunt began in 1968 when Mick Meaney started sleeping in a coffin in The Admiral Lord Nelson pub. Eventually, the specially modified coffin with its courageous captive was transferred with much fanfare to the lorry depot and buried.
But Meaney was not the only action man looking for glory by being entombed alive. At exactly the same time in the US, another character called “Country” Bill White was attempting to break the same record. The BBC even organised a historic satellite link to allow the competitors to trash talk each other.
Celebrities of the day visited Meaney in his temporary grave, speaking to the cheerful stuntman using the pipe through which he also got his food, liquid, and oxygen.
The live burial was even discussed in the British House of Commons. Meaney’s daily underground regime involved waking at 7am in the morning in his grave and doing some very careful exercises within its tight confines. He would be given a newspaper and breakfast down his air pipe. He defecated and urinated through a hatch beneath him, which seeped into bags of lime. Through some superhuman willpower and a lot of whiskey, Mick Meaney reached the 61-day record.
Sadly, however, his herculean efforts were not recognised by the Guinness Book of Records because they had no official monitors there to confirm his conditions! Despite that his surreal act earned him legendary status among the Irish diaspora in London, countless free pints, and when he returned home to his wife and kids he was a local hero who had risen from the grave!
