Invoking Ireland, Ailiu Iath n-hErend, was published in 2005, two years before John Moriarty’s death. A challenging, yet accessible and utterly enjoyable compendium of John’s familiar themes, beautifully interwoven through a re-telling and interpreting of myths, folk stories, poetry, Eastern and Western philosophy and spirituality, indigenous wisdom and Christian mysticism, it confronts the reader not so much in the complexity of its language — I found it, on the contrary, flowing with John’s wonderful musicality and story-telling gift — but in the breadth of its re-calling of Ireland’s past relationship with its people and the universal path of transformation it lays down for us all.

A very current and urgent read for the profound ecological and societal crises of our times, Invoking Ireland invites us on a journey in two books that harness Ireland’s distant mythical past to reclaim a ‘sovereignty’ that is not about dominance of the land to “subdue subjects and the natural world but as one whole person at peace and in harmony with the music of what is”.

John recalls and reinterprets to dismantle our clutching, destructive ways – but also to inspire. The “paradisal perception” celebrated in what he calls “Silver Branch Perception” alone should be cause to rejoice at the possibilities of infinite broadening of our perceptive field to welcome back, transform and rekindle what has been petrified, rejected and annihilated by the dominant modern reductionist paradigm.

What does the word ‘Invoking’ mean if not ‘calling on’ but also ‘imploring’ (invocare in Latin) and Ireland is this multidimensional Goddess, the land, personified by the great Goddesses and Gods of the Tuatha Dé Danann (The people of the Goddess Danu) as re-presented (brought back to present day time) by John Moriarty for us to mirror with, to be at one with?

Which presumes at least two questions to lay the foundation for what indigenous people call ‘being in right relationship’: who are we really and what reality can we perceive?

Like a Mananánn of the sea and the land, John brings us on a journey, a voyage or imram to explore these questions and break the spells that have blinded us to who we really are and what we can perceive. Like Bran who sails to the land he “had always lived in” after dying “to all habits of eye and mind”.

Interestingly Book I is entitled ‘Ireland, a Prophecy’, a word which could be defined as a message from the divine or from beyond our humanness channelled through a prophet or a poet. In this case the prophecies called upon have already been written and come to pass but John, through his ‘invoking’, poetically manifests the possibility of a reemergence of what was lost to heal humanity of its “wasting sickness”. Like the Tuatha Dê Danann hero Ogma who walked west “thru all inner and outer defences” to retrieve the music that was stolen from the land by the Fomorians. 

Invoking Ireland is all about music and song. Amhairghin’s Song stands out as John reclaims this “Song of Ascent into Ireland” not as a conquering chant but as an ode that embraces and attunes to the music of the land just like Orpheus with his harp, just like the Tuatha Dé and their “Harp that harmonizes all things”.

Each chapter feels like a breath of a mystical ascension towards higher ground, “the divine ground or ungrund" ( “a German mystical term denoting the divine no-ground that grounds”), where “invoking Ireland” becomes an evocation of “Buddh Gaia” wholeness.

John opens his book with the famous battle of Magh Tuireadh or Tuired in old Irish, when two legendary tribes the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Dannann lay claim to Ireland. A bloodless battle where perception (what we see and don’t see) and music play crucial roles in restoring harmony to the land.