readoldthings | Triads of Bardism, Part I

I'm unusually busy this week, and so for today's post I need to choose between writing something short but clear or long but messy. Yesterday I chose "long but messy," so let's reverse course today, and resume looking at the Triads of Iolo Morganwg. The work that we have as "Barddas" was compiled after Morganwg's death by John Williams ab Ithel, and as such it contains a number of different documents, some overlapping, some rather different from one another. A brief but fascinating chapter in the "Theology" section is entitle Triads of Bardism. These are seven short triads which form a coherent whole. I want to look at each of them one at a time, and then see what picture emerges when all are taken together.

Here is the first of the Triads of Bardism:

God made the world of three substances: Fire; Nature; and Finiteness.

Let's look at each of these terms, in reverse order.

First we have Finiteness. "Finitude" or even "Finity" are less awkward than "Finiteness." I don't speak Welsh, and it may be that the Welsh of the Barddas is very beautiful, but the English is quite often awkward, and this forms the major barrier to entry. Push past it, and there is something to learn here. Finitude or "finiteness" is the condition of every created being. Paradoxically, it is also the activity of God within each created being.

Everything in our World Below, being one thing, is thereby rendered not another thing. As we have discussed elsewhere, Greek word ousia is often translated "being," but it especially means "particularity" or "particular being." In the physical world, ousia is primarily particular things as particular things-- and not members of a genus or species. "Hopper the Cat" is ousia primarily, "cat" secondarily, "animal," um, "tertiarily." and in the physical world, ousia is especially not-something-elseness. God, on the other hand, being one thing is also everything.

Nature, in common usage, means something like "woods" or "the out of doors." But it can be better understood by considering how we use it when we describe "the nature of" something. Why is my cat sitting on my keyboard? Why is she trying to catch the words I'm typing on the screen with her paws? That's just her nature. Why do I want another cup of coffee? That's my nature. From what are these particular natures derived? From Nature itself of course, which must mean something like "that which provides the particularity of things." But this Nature Itself will not be any one particularity, because then it would have a nature, rather than being Nature. It is a unity, then, and superessential-- above ousia-- but it isn't Unity Itself, because it is still involved in particularity. It can best, then, be seen as a medium between Finitude and our First Substance, which is Fire.

Fire unites all things to itself; to enter into fire is to become fire. And it is by fire that all things are rendered visible, and by fire, or its progeny, heat, that anything is able to move or act. Unity, Intelligibility, Act or Power are the three primary terms, the Triadic Unity which follows immediately from the First or Simple Unity. In the Oracles we read:

All things are the progeny of One Fire.

God proceeds these three, brings them forth, and from their mixture brings all the worlds into being.

And again we read,

When, after all the phantoms are banished, thou shalt see the holy and the formless fire, the fire that darts and flashes through the hidden depths of the universe, hear thou the Voice of Fire.

And so we may see all these three, Finitude, Nature, Fire as proceeding from One Power, which is God. And that implies, too, that we can follow them in reverse order. From particular natures, we can ascend to Nature, from the contemplation of Nature to the contemplation of the Holy and Formless Fire which preceedes it; from the Fire which is all things united to that fundamental unity which is prior to all things, and calls them into being.