Mystery, Numinosity and the Collective Unconscious
The Gaelic Ancestors
One of my favourite words in the Irish language is the Irish word for “mystery”. “Rúndiamhair” (sometimes shortened to rúndiamhrach, as an adjective). This word literally means “God's secret” or a “secret-sacred” or “hidden-divine”. Another related word is “rún”, meaning “secret”, “mystery”, or even “beloved.” It is a word that, for me, reflects the layered beauty of this very ancient language, Gaeilge, the Irish Language.
Ancestral Wisdom and the Collective Unconscious
This is a word that is radiant and alive, carrying us into the hidden, sacred dimensions of being.
Human beings carry within them not only their own personal stories, but also the great, invisible web of shared memory and meaning that Jung called the collective unconscious. This is the deep layer of the psyche where archetypes, myths, and primal images dwell—a realm that belongs to all of humanity. To enter it is to step into the dream-world of our species, a place where individual life brushes against the universal. In dreams, visions, and moments of deep imagination, we encounter symbols that are not merely ours, but part of a vast inheritance shared by the human family.
Among the most powerful presences we encounter in the Collective unconscious are the stories of the ancestors. They are the roots of our being, the carriers of both blessing and burden. From them flow resilience, wisdom, and strength, but also the wounds and unfinished stories of generations. To meet the ancestors is to recognise that we are not separate from what came before, and that our task often includes tending to what was left unresolved, so it does not bind the future. Many healing traditions remind us that true healing is not only personal—it is ancestral. It requires mending the patterns of the past so that life may move more freely through those who come after.
Healing in this context is more than the relief of symptoms. It is the restoration of wholeness across time and psyche. It asks us to reconcile with shadow, to embrace forgotten or rejected parts of ourselves, and to honour the unfinished business of our lineage. As individuals integrate what has been split off, they carry this healing into their communities as well, allowing the collective to move toward greater harmony. Healing, then, is not only about the self, but about reweaving a larger fabric torn by trauma and neglect.
“The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.”
Carl Jung
CW Vol. 8, para 342
The Numinous Breaking Through - The Gaelic Otherworld
And sometimes, in the midst of such work, the numinous breaks through. The numinous is the encounter with mystery, the awe-inspiring presence that feels larger than us and yet intimately close. Rudolf Otto described it as mysterium tremendum et fascinans: both terrifying and fascinating. In the presence of the numinous, we stand before the sacred—whether felt as divinity, eternity, or simply the overwhelming strangeness of existence itself.
These themes—the collective unconscious, the ancestors, healing, and the numinous—are not separate but deeply interwoven. The collective unconscious provides the archetypal stage, and in the Gaelic imagination, that stage is peopled with deities, heroes, and ancestral spirits who still speak through story and song. In the Gaelic world, the numinous often shines through in the natural landscape—mountains, wells, trees, and seas are thresholds where the sacred breaks in. Encounters with the sídhe (fair folk), with sacred wells dedicated to Brigid and the gods and goddesses, and saints, or with the mysteries of Samhain, Imbolg, Bealtaine, and lunasa, can be seen as moments when the numinous becomes tangible. By invoking Gaelic ways of sensing the holy, you root the universal idea of the numinous in a particular ancestral imagination.
The ancestors carry memory and lineage, bearing both grief and blessing. Healing comes when we face what was broken or silenced and choose to mend it, reclaiming language, story, and belonging. Healing is the work of integration and reconciliation, and the numinous is the sign that we have touched the deepest layers of reality. To walk this metaphoric mist-filled path is to enter the dream of humanity itself, to meet the ancestors with their wounds and their gifts, to mend and weave their stories into our own, and, at times, to find ourselves face to face with mystery gazing back at us.
My Invitation | Upcoming LIVE Workshop
You are invited to join me, October 19th, for a 4-hour live online workshop experience, where we will explore the path of transformation through the mist to the inner world.
Upcoming Workshop
Embarking on the Mist Filled Path
Sunday 19th October 2025
9 am (PST) | 5 pm (Irish Standard Time)
The Gaelic Otherworld was a realm beyond linear time, woven into the fabric of everyday life for our Irish ancestors. It was a parallel world inhabited by the Aos Sí, (the faeries). We explore these ancestral tales and mythic roots, immersing ourselves in the realm of the sidhe, Tír na nÓg, ("Land of Eternal Youth"), faerie encounters, sacred wells, rituals, charms, prayers and landscape—not just as folklore, but as symbolic gateways into our own depths, our own hidden inner world.
