The Celtic Otherworld and Near-Death Experiences

Our ancestors knew about this

Welcome to Adventures in the Otherworld! A place to explore the non-ordinary.
If you are interested in learning more about the science of Near-Death Experiences, mediumship and reincarnation, you might like to join me for a four-hour, online class: The Science of the Afterlife and Grief.

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The Near-Death Experience (NDE) emerged into our modern, Western, consciousness in 1975 with the publication of Raymond Moody’s Life After Life, but it is not a New Age phenomena. Humans have been unintentionally traveling to the Otherworld and returning to tell the tale for as long as we can remember - and likely much longer.

As I faced the impact of the sudden death of my partner-at-the-time, Tyler, in 2018, I began to educate myself on the science of the afterlife. Modern parapsychology has much to tell us about the afterlife but a lot of people don’t even find this research because of our cultural bias towards materialism - the scientific theory that only measurable matter and energy can exist.

As I learned more about the science of the afterlife, including NDEs, mediumship and reincarnation, I wanted to know more about how my pre-Christian Celtic ancestors might have understood these things. For this I turned to our folklore. I found a surprising overlap between the current science and these ancient stories.

Scientific Paradigms

For context, it is important to understand that for the last 400 years or so we, in the West, have been operating under the scientific paradigm called materialism. This theory holds that all that can possibly exist is matter and energy. Consciousness, including our hopes, dreams, fears and knowings cannot be explained by materialism, it tends to be classified as an epiphenomenon - a byproduct of matter and energy.

Despite much effort, and millions of research dollars, there is no scientific research that shows how matter (i.e. the brain) produces consciousness. To be clear, there are no scientific data showing that matter and energy is all that exists in the world - it’s a theory, one we have held on to dogmatically despite the lack of evidence.

Alternative theories exist, also with no conclusive evidence, which we can classify as post-materialist theories. These essentially consider that consciousness is the foundation of everything else, including matter and energy. In these theories it is consciousness, awareness itself, from which atoms, quarks and light waves emerge into the physical world we observe. Under this paradigm, the brain is seen as a receiver of consciousness, not a transmitter. There’s no scientific evidence for how that might work either. This is all theory.

What is not theory are the data collected over the past 140 years on the survival of human consciousness after physical death of the brain. If we show that consciousness survives death then it lends support to post-materialist theories and refutes materialism.

The Science of Near-Death Experiences

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) are defined as experiences had by people who were clinically dead (neither heart nor brain are operating) for a few minutes before regaining consciousness and reporting being out of their body, still experiencing, in another realm. The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS, founded in 1981) reports that 5-14% of the population have had an NDE. Thousands of case studies have been collected.

Characteristics of NDEs

Each person of course has a unique experience, nonetheless over the decades of these research various common characteristics have been identified. These include:

• An overwhelming sense of peace. A few report the NDE begins in fear and then turns into a peaceful experience.

• An out-of-body experience (OBE). The person reports being outside of their physical body and often looking down on their body from above.

• Rapid movement through darkness (often a tunnel) towards or into intense light.

• Fantastic, luminous landscapes that are often described as “more real” than ordinary reality. Some studies have found this is true of people born blind who have an NDE.

• Encounters with deceased loved ones and other spirit beings. This typically involves mind-to-mind communication.

• Time is different. People often report feeling like they were gone for days, sometimes years, and return to discover it was a few minutes of Earth time.

• A life review. This is where the person is shown scenes from their life and understands the impacts of their actions. This doesn’t always happen but is reported a lot.

• A flood of knowledge about the universe and the nature of life. Again this is not always reported but it common.

• An ongoing continuity of the sense of “me” throughout the entire experience.

• Some return with new psychic or healing abilities they didn’t previously have.

• There is always a point where the experiencer can go no further, they are told they must go back or are offered the choice. We only hear from those who choose to return!

Many people who experience an NDE find it to be life altering in various ways. It is common for people to no longer fear death and to feel part of a benevolent universe which often leads to deeper, more loving human relationships.

But is it real?

Most scientists steeped in the paradigm of materialism dismiss these reports as either fraudulent, mistaken or just impossible. Which makes sense from that worldview; materialism has no way to account for NDEs. Those that criticize these reports tend to hypothesize that these experiences are the result of chemicals released from a dying brain. No convincing evidence of what these chemicals might be or how they produce these types of experiences has been put forward.

Of the thousands of case reports collected there are a few, (around 200), that offer tantalizing evidence the experiencer was indeed aware of what was happening around them while they were dead. That is, their reports are verifiable in some way, they provide details that can later be confirmed by others in the room.

These cases tend to take place in a hospital because that’s where people are most likely to receive the medical attention required to bring them back from clinical death. Hospitals usually also have multiple people in the room who can act as witnesses. In these verifiable cases the experiencer reports seeing an object, observing an action or hearing something someone said in the room while they were dead and this is later verified by medical staff.

Additionally, a couple of retrospective studies have asked people who died in a medical facility, and were resuscitated, to describe what happened during their resuscitation. Theses studies found that those that had an NDE were significantly better at describing these medical procedures (as rated by medical professionals) than those who didn’t report an NDE.

If you are interested in digging into the science of NDEs this peer-reviewed article is a good place to start. Multiple times a year, I teach a live, online class on The Science of the Afterlife and Grief where we dig deep into this research and discuss how it impacts the experience of loosing a loved one.

The Celtic Otherworld in Folklore and Myth

There are reports from various cultures, including the Western tradition, of people dying, having an experience that includes many features we now classify as an NDE, and coming back to life. In fact, these reports may well have formed the basis for many cultural belief systems about the afterlife. Plato documented the Myth of Er, around 375 CBE, which is essentially a description of an NDE where the experiencer returns to describe the process of reincarnation souls go through before being born. Survival of human consciousness after death has been part of the Western tradition for a long time.

I focus here on the Celtic lore simply because that is what I am most familiar with, I am in no way suggesting that the Celts were significantly different to other global cultures in their belief in life after death. Similar myths can be found across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The Celtic stories have bared the weight of centuries of Christianization which has obscured their essence to various degrees. But if you blow the dust off the surface, they are still glimmering with mystery.

The Otherworld shows up in myth and folklore from across the Celtic world and survives to this day in tales from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France. There is no unified understanding of the Celtic Otherworld, the Irish conception is different from the Welsh, multiple versions and names are common. But as with NDEs there are some common threads we can trace.

One luminous thread is common ways in which people find themselves in the Otherworld including hunting, following a magical animal, becoming lost in mist or traveling across the sea. When these things show up in a story its an indication to the listeners that we are about to cross over into the Otherworld. Pwyll in the first branch of the Welsh Mabinogion is lured by a stag into a forest clearing where he meets Arawn, King of Annwfn (the Otherworld). The young heroine in The Dream Makers is lost in the fog and lead to a cave by a herd of deer, where she meets her teachers. One Welsh piece of folklore speaks of a hole in the ground through which people have been known to disappear into the Otherworld. People have returned describing being pulled through a vortex, spinning in a dark tunnel into the Otherworld. These everyday places and occurrences form the bridge to the non-ordinary illustrating the understanding that the Otherworld is always present; it surrounds and interpenetrates our world.

Very frequently, across Celtic traditions, the Otherworld is described as a luminous place, similar to earth landscapes but more beautiful than we can imagine. It is a place where food is abundant and no-one gets sick or dies. It is an ideal world where everything is easy and peaceful. Folklore abounds with fantastical descriptions of places built of, or people dressed in gold, silver and precious stones. In the Irish Wooing of Étain the king comes across a stunning women bathing next to a silver basin engraved with four golden birds. She is combing her hair with a gold and silver comb while wearing a purple cloak with silver borders fastened with a gold broach. Macsen, the hero in his own dream, encounters fantastic ships made of gold and silver that carry him across the sea to the Elen, the woman he falls in love with in the Welsh The Dream of Macsen Weldig.

In the Irish Cormac’s Adventures in the Land of Promise (yet another name for the Otherworld) the king becomes lost in mist before be sees a fortress surrounded by a glimmering bronze wall. Within the walls he sees a house made of white silver thatched with wings of white birds. Then he finds a shining fountain with five streams surrounded by nine hazel trees that drop nuts into the pool where they are eaten by five salmon. The sound of the falling streams is described as more beautiful than any music that can be made by humans.

These description of shining places and people accompanied by beautiful music sound very much like reports from NDEs. Eban Alexander, a neuroscientist who had a near-death experience which changed his entire understanding of the brain and consciousness, describes the entire experience as having the most beautiful music he can imagine.

Encounters with Otherworldly beings in Celtic stories often lead the protagonist into the Otherworld and provide some type of tuition or learning experience. A beautiful women dressed in green and blue silk shows up in King Bran’s castle on Beltain eve to invite him to voyage across the sea to an Otherworldly island. In the Scottish story, Thomas the Rhymer, the Queen of Elphame (Fairy) appears to Thomas dressed in green silks, on a magnificent stead decorated with hundreds of tiny, silver, tinkling bells. She takes him on an adventure to the Otherworld from which he returns with the gift of prophesy. Similarly in The Dream Makers from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, the young heroine returns with esoteric knowledge of dreams needed by the people who are forgetting how to dream.

Time is also different in the Otherworld. Many folktales feature people who get lost out in the hills or up on the moors and stumbled into fairyland where they spent the night. But upon returning home they find many years, or decades have passed and their families have died or assumed them dead. In Bran’s Voyage to the Otherworld, he eventually sails back the Ireland but when the first man steps off the ship he ages instantly and turns to dust. Similarly, when the great warrior-poet Ossian, son of Finn MacCoull is lured by a magical woman into the Otherworld he returns to Ireland to find many years have passed, no one remembers him and Ireland is full of Christians including St. Patrick.

In the first branch of the Welsh Mabinogion, Rhiannon appears dressed in golden silk, riding a white horse that cannot be caught. Pwyll and his men try galloping after her to no avail, although her horse appears to be gently trotting along. She defines the laws of space and time. In the second branch of the Mabinogion the seven survivors of the great war in Ireland, upon returning to the Britain, are taken to a feasting hall where plates, bowls and goblets are endlessly filled with whatever they wish for. The severed head of their former king, Bendigeidfran son of Llyr, regales them with stories for 80 years. None of them age or tire of the feasting during this time. In the Scottish folktale Tam Lin, he is rescued from Fairy Land by the heroine after being held captive for 200 years but he is still a young man.

All these stories, and there and many, many more, start with the protagonist in ordinary reality, usually going about their everyday business before encountering some threshold event which shifts them into the Otherworld. There they encounter amazing, shining, places and advanced beings before returning to ordinary reality changed in some way.

Are these old stories description of near-death experiences? They certainly seem to be descriptions of encounters with non-ordinary consciousness. They are woven deeply into the fabric of Celtic lore and survived centuries of religious and scientific dogma that has dismissed them as pure fantasy, entertainment for peasants with dull lives. In the light of parapsychology research documenting reports of NDEs I believe these old stories deserve a second look to learn more about the mysteries of the universe they may hold.