Four a.m., Saturday morning, three people came together beneath the crescent moon to watch a solstice sun rise high on the moors overlooking Wharfedale in Yorkshire. Three individuals who share a dedication to the Light were joined as one, as Its symbol brought a new day to birth and bathed the world in gilded mists. Higher still we walked, and as the mists came down, cocooning a place of ancient sanctity, a book was taken from a bag that held bread, wine and shell and opened at a random page. He read:

…Do not seek to penetrate the thoughts of the mysterious head

its intimations are hidden

but its creations shine forth

like a shock of white hair untangled from shadow…

And later, as the triad stood beside an altar older than memory:

“The Filid, the wandering poets and philosophers, who were responsible for telling their stories, would compose praise poems for the nobles; the administrators of society, extolling their virtues and generosity and comparing their exploits with those of the Gods. In this way the Gods survived and their histories continually grew…”

“Filid could simply mean ‘lovers’ then?”

“…It could indeed…and in all the years of studying their work it has never before occurred to me that their designation could be so simply, beautifully and accurately expressed…”

“…Lovers…of the Gods?”

“That is quite possibly the case but their real concern was with the Spirit… that which moves the Gods… and with its communication via the spoken and to some extent the written word, at any rate… they venerated and perpetuated the creative word.”

“Lovers… of Christ then…?”

“That is certainly a further quite valid interpretation even though strictly speaking they were around long before Christ.”

“Lover’s… of Trinity…!”

“That is possibly even better still. Triads were something of an obsession with the Filid. There’s even a whole Book of Laws based upon them… The notion of a Three-in-One…, if we could put it like that, is for them something of an ideal approach to wholeness…”

*Readings taken from The Initiate, by Sue Vincent and Stuart France