“I am the hound of Culann.”
The warp is still on him.
Setanta kills the smith Culann’s hound and offers to take its place: hence the name. He is bound by geasa, those Irish prohibitions that are also a fate. In the Táin he holds a ford alone. The ríastrad: warp-spasm: turns him into something his friends must dunk in water until he is human again. His death comes when he is forced to break his vows; he ties himself to a standing stone so he will die on his feet.
Heroism here is not health. It is a contract with excess.
Inspect
INTERPRETATION
Cú Chulainn is the gift of being able to go beyond a limit, and the cost of not knowing how to come back. Rage, work, erotic intensity, athletic will: the vat of cold water is as important as the ford. A geis is a boundary you cannot cross without becoming a different story.
The shadow
The ford no one else may hold. Excess without a vat of cold water.
Four lookings
Campbell
Which geis of yours is a sacred limit, and which is a superstition?
von Franz
Where do you need a vat of cold water more than another victory?
Hillman
What would it mean to stand down without being tied to the stone?
Coelho
What ford are you still holding as if no one else could be trained?