A Threefold Loch on the Isle of Mull, Scotland

A thousand breaths fill the air above the threefold loch. The watery triptych aborts my drive, pulls on all the metal in my bones like a vast and irresistible magnet. I crouch in the moor scrub along the edge of the vacant road and watch those breaths pour into my throat with each inhalation. There is a faint ringing in my ears – a phenomenon I’ve experienced across Scotland at places like this – that only now strikes me as someone–or something–calling. Clouds scrape over the hills and ripple the water with their incorporeal bellies. There are unseen forces at play, but I can hear them, feel them.

My mind reaches. There are three roots on the Norse World Tree, Yggdrasil, where Odin endured a threefold death. There is the Celtic triple goddess, and the holy trinity of the Christians, the Buddha’s three bodies, the three fates, and the three pure ones. Imagine people looking at the same cloud: One sees a dragon, another sees a tree, another sees a trio. They all proclaim their righteousness. Our eyes are too laden with metaphor to parse whatever truth hides within that vaporous facade. They are meant to register beauty, to halt our movement, so that we might cast light upon our other senses and breathe.

Article Comments

  1. Ken April 26, 2013 at 6:52 am

    Wow. Beautiful. What a place, Scotland. What must it have been like to the inhabitants of 1,000 years ago? Even now these beautiful and moody views bring the hidden pantheist closer to the surface.

    1. Keith Savage April 26, 2013 at 8:19 am

      I imagine it was very similar a thousand years ago. Maybe a few trees, but maybe not.

  2. Hogga April 30, 2013 at 9:03 am

    great pic!

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