The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year
The Ancestral Mothers Wheel of the Year
We are approaching the threshold between Lughnasadgh and Autumn Equinox. Summer has felt endless, a groundhog day repeating itself over and over. For me, summer started with long lingering Scottish twilights and progressed to Appalachian nights full crickets and cicada lullabies draped in a clinging humidity with a constant thread of spiders webs.
Yet I can feel the threshold approach, whispering change. It’s ushered in by the wing tips of an age-old figure, Talieasker. She’s been with me most of my life, and no doubt made herself know to others before me. She was there when my teenage self raged with anger with a desperate longing for something modern life no longer holds, even although then I didn’t know what that was. She and I danced in my need for catharsis, an outlet to hold the screaming in reaction to what we are doing to the world.
My crow shadow
I am descended from a long line of wise women – for I too am a shapeshifter, a mythmaker, a woman who has always had one ear to the ground and a foot in the other world. Sometimes my shadow shows my other self, sometimes crow sometimes the shadow of a bear, I am She Who Wears Antlers.
This morning she appeared, the green woman curled up as if returning to the womb. It is the call of nature herself announcing the coming change, for change is the only constant. Galaxies swirl, new stars are born, birds hear the call to migrate, spotted fish at the bottom of dark lochs swim in certain patterns and the repetitive cycle of birth, life and death repeats.
So with the sign of this curled up woman it will be soon to mark this point of the wheel in an ancient ritual I was taught – a small green doll (I don’t know her name or her story), only that she must return to the earth, marking the beginning of the dark of the year, crossing that threshold from light into dark.
Pay attention to this approaching threshold, maybe the swish of a dark wing might brush against you, look to the greenery, the sky, the stars and know that change will come – whatever your situation. Maybe you’d like to join me in a journey around the year honoring of the Ancestral Mothers – warriors and women who honored the way of bear, of great whales of the ocean, seals, of reindeer, Goddesses, and age-old crones. Join me in a tradition of marking these festivals in ritual with art and story, community and journeying between the worlds.
Registration for our Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year course will open in September with the course launching in October