a sub-web of Spirit Mythos
IONA - Island of the Druids
by Maia Christianne
Iona is one of several small islands off the western coast of Scotland. Historically, it is known as a ‘sacred isle' because of its pagan and then Christian spiritual activity through the ages. With the arrival of St. Columba on its shores in 563 AD, Iona became a Christian sanctuary. It's Gaelic name, Innis-nam Druidbneach means ‘Island of the Druids'. Forty-eight Scottish kings including Mac Beth and the Lords of the Isles were buried there.
The akashic records tell us that Iona was inhabited by a mystic community after the final cataclysms of Atlantis. The remnant Atlanteans had known of Iona, which they called Aberuk, or ‘distant place of the heart', from the canticles of the Hyperboreans, who came to Atlantis from the North polar region long before that Atlantic continent's demise. The Hyperboreans, who were descendants of a Sirian star race, called the place Iuma, meaning ‘bright land'. It was then part of the continent of Scotland before the event which sent Atlantis to the depths. By the time the post-Atlantean colony arrived, Iona was not much larger than it is today.
Iona is one of the group of islands known as the Inner Hebrides. Most of the Hebridean islands were at one time visited and inhabited by Hyperboreans, and then after Atlantis' demise, by the Hyperborean-Atlantean mixed race, the Rutans. The greatest priests and priestesses of Atlantis were the Rutans. As has been previously written upon in Temple Doors, the Isle of Ruta ascended into the inner-planes during the time implosion that destroyed the last portion of Atlantis. However not all Rutans were on the Isle at the time. Consequently, some found their way into what is now the Middle East and other regions of the world. One group consisting of seven males, three females and one child, established the Atlantean colony on Iona. They built a small library for sacred works dating back to Lemurian times. Around the library which they called their ‘heart seed', they built a strong, almost fortress like Temple. In the eras that followed, this isle continued to be inhabited by those with spiritual preservation and education in mind.
For several centuries before and after Christ's birth, Iona was the center for a select gathering of priestesses who had been established there by a pre-Merlin Mage. He had been given revelations upon which were based the tenets and purpose of this priestess stronghold. The entire study of these revelations and the established Temple complex of the priestesses on Iona (who called themselves the Priestesses of Ank, or ‘sacred well of life'), is not within the scope of this article. However, Tehuti (who's soul was one of the five layered souls that composed the identity of Merlin) states that the Ionian priestesses were the basis for the Celtic legends concerning sanctuaries of ‘Lady of the Lake' type women who regenerated the male psyche and often his physical form as well.
Certainly Iona is alive with the mists of its past. In ‘Magical and Mystic Sites' by Elizabeth Pepper and John Wilcock, they write of Iona:
"The colors of sea and sky are pristine, the beaches are of white sand, and great patches of wild daffodils turn the island into a blaze of yellow each spring. At both ends of the island the lovely low hills with their score of secret glens and hollows must hide a thousand memories of age old ceremonials or gatherings under the moon. At dusk, even today, they seem to be haunted by spirits of long ago. The turf is chopped short everywhere by the ranging sheep, but the ground has probably never been uncovered to reveal the ancient treasures that must lie beneath.
"Iona feels old: the air, the ground, the contours of the land seem saturated with ancient memories. Possibly because of its remoteness (no cars are allowed on the island), the island seems to shun contemporary life. The air is fresh and energizing but has the sweet aroma of hidden secrets; the ground is often rutted as though hundreds of thousands of feet have traversed the same routes."
When the Ionian priestesses feared invasion by lesser magical elements, they brought into their sacred stronghold certain Druids who were aligned to their spiritual principles. The Druids remained on Iona after the priestess-hood had departed.
There were many different sects of Druids, some of which were quite bloodthirsty in nature, and others, like the Ionian Druids, who refused the tenets of sacrifice, wishing only to worship nature in her purest and undefiled form. These ‘purists' were descended from the original Atlantean Dorrids, who were known in Atlantis as ‘Priests and Priestesses of the Earth'. After the usurpation of the Melchizedekean Temples in Atlantis, some of the undefiled priests and priestesses fled to the sanctuaries of the Dorrids and were thus absorbed into their fold.
In ‘Magical and Mystical Sites' we read:
"....the Anglo-American mystic Col. James Churchward, in The Lost Continent of Mu, speculated that the original Druids were descended from Egyptian priests who landed in Ireland and the west of England, bringing with them all their ancient beliefs in sun worship."
Certainly Egyptian beliefs were to be found within the Druid practice, but Egypt was originally a colony of Atlantis, the true source of the Druids. Iona's ancient body called the Atlanteans to its shore as if it sang a siren song to those who had suffered the loss of their sacred space. Iona's jeweled beaches bespoke the same olden rhyme of the Ancient Ones in the soft drumming of its surf and the circling cries of the gulls.
From the book ‘Iona', by John L. Patterson, we read:
"The rocks of Iona are little older than the ocean from which they rise. The Reverend Edward Craig Trenholme in The Story of Iona (1909) has written: ‘When our planet from a glowing mass of combustion like the sun, shriveled into a globe with a solid crust and the first oceans condensed in the hollows of its hot surface - then it was that the Archaean rocks, of which Iona and the Outer Hebrides consist, were formed on the sea bottom. They contain no fossils, for, as far as is known, no living creatures as yet existed in the desolate waste of waters or on the primeval land. They are hard, rugged and twisted, and in Iona as elsewhere marble had been developed by the vast heat and pressure they have undergone.'
"On Iona the rocks are always with you for they are only partly hidden by a thin veneer of turf and heather and you can sense their antiquity when your path is impeded by the presence of their implacable solidity. To fully appreciate the age of this part of the Earth's surface you must climb to the summit of Dun I and survey the surrounding terrain. That early settlers were prepared to live in this remote and primeval part of the world appears perverse but there is some evidence that ancient rocks possessed magical qualities for the old religions; and Iona, for this reason, may have been chosen as a centre by the Druids for their rituals. It is thought that Dun I may possibly have been used for their primitive rites and it is not difficult to imagine, when standing on such a commanding site, that it would have appeared to them to have been the centre of the world."
On Iona, the Priestesses of Ank welcomed individuals into their sanctuary for periods of instruction and often healing. Those brought to the island were selected through a process which included scrying. Scrying is the magical art of viewing events at a distance in time and space through a reflective element such as water, crystal or a polished surface. An astral initiation is giving spiritual initiation into inner-plane learning while in out-of-body experience. Many who came to Iona came not in the physical body. The Ank Priestess-hood opened several layers of the etheric over this isle, some of which remains loosely formed to this day. Thus, there are many astral presences still moving upon the surface of the Island of the Druids.
Iona shares her sacred space of ocean with several other islands, one of which is the tiny Staffa. Uninhabited today, it harbors two enormous caves, whose current names are Mackinnon's and Fingal's. In the time of the Ank priestesses of Iona, these caves were magical enclaves for their oracle use.
In this age, Iona calls to many new seekers of Light who wander about her wind tossed hills, alert to any sign of communion with the past. Yet deep in the mother's bosom a child is sleeping, a king-child who will one day take up the gleaming sword of truth.