What does it mean to live an honorable life? Many modern pagan groups have outlined a list of basic virtues to nurture, and honor is usually included in each of them, but what is it to to live honorably? How can we know how to shape our actions to live honorably when honor is often a difficult and obscure concept to define? The best approach, I think is not to look at honor as a single concept but rather to view it as a series of inter-related actions - because honor is an active principle not a passive idea - and look at how those actions combine to form a larger concept of honor. For those following an Irish path or looking to Irish myth for inspiration and guidance there is an abundance of suggestions on living with honor to be found, but the Instructions of King Cormac Mac Airt is one of my favorites.
There are several Irish texts that offer
instructions on how a King should live in order to be a good King, and these
texts serve as good instructions for anyone to study on how to live a good
honorable life. One of the best of these is the Instruction of King Cormaic Mac
Airt, a dialogue that occurs between Cairbre and Cormac, where Cairbre is
quizzing Cormac about the proper qualities of a King. The answers given
describe the characteristics a King should embody, but these characteristics
are equally applicable to any person seeking to live a good life.
These characteristics can be divided into two categories: ways that the person should act towards others, and ways that the person should uphold themselves.
The dialogue response begins with Cormac
describing ways that the King should act in order to uphold his own honor. The
first of these is by having good geasa, or ritual taboos that are positive.
This could apply to anyone who has a geis on them, if only in the way we choose
to look at the ritual taboos that bind us; we can choose to see our taboos as
positive or negative and how we react to them shapes their nature on some level
making them either a gift or a burden. The next line advises the King to be
sober, good advice since drunkenness is often a source of trouble. The King is
advised to be an invader as well, which is a slightly more obscure line;
however I believe that this advice pertains to ambition and the need for any
person to have a healthy sense of what they can achieve. Only by pushing
outward and seeking to expand can we truly achieve our own potential. The
following lines suggest a good King should have good desires and be affable,
telling us that people should seek to want what is best for themselves and have
a friendly nature. A good King should be both humble and proud, meaning that we
should be humble in knowing our own limits and admitting to our own mistakes
but also proud of what we do achieve and owning our own success; only through a
balance of these two can true success be found. In the same way we should be
quick and steadfast, meaning we should act quickly when speed is needed but
also have the stamina to stick with anything and see it through. A good King, or a good Druid, should be a
poet, versed in legal lore, and wise, as well as temperate. All of these
qualities should be embodied in the King for them to find the inner
strength to live honorably in all these ways, because these external
expressions reflect the character within, but they are equally applicable to anyone else seeking the same thing.
Cormac also touches on ways that a good
King should interact with others, beginning with being generous, decorous, and
sociable. These three features all intertwine to support each other, and to support
the proper social order where the King sets the tone for the Kingdom, but it is
possible for anyone else to also live by these maxims and seek to
express these things as well. Along with this go other suggested actions
according to Cormac, such as feeding orphans, giving good judgments, raising up
the weak, quelling wrongs, and loving truth while hating falsehood, all of
which can be embraced by anyone seeking to live in honor. To seek to live these
qualities is to seek to live Truth and support the right order of the world.
The truth of this statement is seen in the final passage where Cormac describes
what will occur in the kingdom of a good King, should he follow all this
advice. We see the description of a good King ruling over a fertile land, with
oak trees full of acorns, fruitful earth and rivers full of fish. In the same
way if we as individuals seek to embody these characteristics and live
these actions then we can also bring blessings upon the world we live in and make the quality of our own lives better.
