Active Hope. An Australian Fundraiser

Each morning I make a commitment to turning up. Some days I just sit, others I write and some I sit with prayer beads in hand. The practice is simply in the turning up.

This morning I looked down at my hands which hold a set of prayer beads. The stones are the color of Australia’s bedrock - hues of reds and burgundy with mustard and grey tones. Mookiate is a stone only found in Australia whose indigenous name means running water.

Mookiate is a stone which amplifies connection to ancestors. I’ve long thrown out and stone guide books and simply turned to listen to the stone instead. Whatever I’m working with I feel mookiate energizes that connection, helping make the introduction to ancestors, or perhaps moving your ear a little more in the right direction to hear those whisperings.

The devastation of Australia has been cataclysmic and overwhelming and those are the feelings from someone watching through a screen on the other side of the planet. It is not an isolated event or something that’s just an Australian problem. Climate devastation plays out in different ways around the globe. I am terrified to think what summer here in the Appalachians will bring with future hurricanes hitting ground further north and coming further inland.

A Deep Seated Grief

Many of you will have experienced the sensation of waking up and for a few seconds thinking there is something familiar, something missing. Then before you know it a whirlwind of emotions arrive and then you realize your going through the grieving process of losing a loved one. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this grief, this death through all that’s unfolding on the planet and the grief at millions upon millions of deaths.

I feel the panic rising, trying to get my head around the fact that I am living in times which have been depicted in sci-fi films and been projected onto screens for generations - and it is real. As I look out the window at favorite trees and familiar birds, forage for the new greens that are popping up and delight when the deer herd arrive. I think what if this was the land that was scorched and my home has been wiped out. By home i don’t just mean a human dwelling I mean birds gone, insects gone, snakes gone, mice gone, farm animals gone.

“The rainforests along the spine of the Great Dividing Range, between the Hunter River and southern Queensland, are remnants of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent that broke up about 180 million years ago. Listening to the dawn chorus in these forests is literally an acoustic window back in time”

— Mark Graham, Ecologist

Long-nosed potoroo, Potorous tridactylus

I’ve never visited Australia but my dad moved there when he was young, it took him six weeks to cross the oceans by boat - I remember hearing his story of the celebration evoking Posidon as they crossed the equator. There is a glass frame in my parent’s house with a display of dried flowers my dad brought back from New South Wales on the wall. It always caught my eyes as the plants were very different from the fauna of Scotland and I often wondered who fed on such flowers and grasses and what did they look like.

So I finally decided to look up those creatures and one is the long-nosed potoroo who feeds on truffles found in the roots of the eucalyptus tree. The little potoroo, at just 80cm long, is a keystones species. It distributes the fungi spores through its poop and carries out an essential role which keeps the whole landscape together and healthy. How many died in the fires? Ay that did will be easy prey to any predators that survived. Might it survive at all?

The first run of Brighid Altoid Altars are now sold out please click here to get in touch if you’d like to be on the list if I create a second collection

Active Hope

As we move over at the threshold between Winter Solstice and towards Imbolc traditions welcomes Brighid back into the world. To my ancestors this gave them hope at a dire time when food resources were running out. Today we find ourselves in dark times as climate devastation unleashes horrors on the planet. The hope Brighid offers isn’t one which is lost in daydreams of wishful thinking it is a hope whose qualities are rooted in justice and activism an active hope, one which exists in the here and now.

As we approach Imbolc I can think of no better figure to turn to than Brighid. This triple Goddess (made up of a triad of three sisters all called Brighid) is welcomed back to the world at this time of year. These three sisters are represented by many qualities including healing, creativity, and justice.

Brighid is a fire Goddess although her flame is one which never burns. She is said to have brought keening to Ireland when her mourning the death of her son. In all of the prayers said for Australia what if we each carried out an action - something seeded where we are in our own homes, in our community. Brighid is most definitely a Goddess of Justice and she can inspire us in our taking action and in helping us as we face our grief for all that is unfolding around the planet.

The proceeds of the first five sign ups to the ‘Folklore of Brighid’ course will be donated to Australian wildlife charities.

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Community Keening Circle

If you're based around Asheville, NC I offer a free Community Keening Circle each month. The next circle will take place in February. Click here to sign up for my newsletter and be notified when the next circle is happening.

Coming Back to Life - An Imbolc Day Retreat

Saturday 1st Feb. 10am - 7.30pm. Herb Mountain Farm, Weaverville (Near Asheville)

The festival of Imbolc welcomes Brighid back into the world. To my ancestors, Imbolc was a harsh time as they faced the reality of food resources running out yet today right now is extremely uncertain times in the world and I know I'm not alone in feeling anxiety, grief and worry to how the catastrophic changes to our climate are going to play out.

• Joanna Macy's the Work that Reconnects 

• Tap into the traditions from Celtic culture

• Express our joy in living

• A keening circle helps us honor the grief and pain we feel for all that is going on the world

• Otherworld journey to ask your ancestors for their advice

• Evening fire ceremony helps pull all of this together as we make our commitment to 'action' for the world. 

Links

Bush fires devastate ancient forests and rare wildlife

Sale

Click on the image above to check out the Cailleach course - currently half price at $32. Use code ‘Newyear’

Click above to check out our Ancestral Mothers Wheel of the Year course - currently on sale for $99 (save $56) Use code ‘Newyear’

Click to visit our Etsy shop where everything is 10% off

A Ritual for Winter Solstice. The Third Antlered Tale for Advent

Portrait of me by author & artist Louise Hewett

Our antlered tales for advent are:

1. The Old Antlered One - click here to read

2. She Who Runs With the Herd - click here to read

3. She Who Wears Antlers

4. A Sisterhood of the Antlers

There are many rituals as we approach the Winter Solstice. Some bless the pathways, the great ancient migratory routes while others are inspired by the great basins in the chamber of of Newgrange that held the bones of the beloved dead and the ritual of the reborn sun and rebirth.

We are in literal dark days as the days shorten and the nights lengthen yet we live in dark times. Somedays I loose hope completely, I feel lost and feel myself descending into deep grief. Yet I make sure not to grieve alone and hold space for lament and keening which can offer a cathartic experience - yet this isn’t for some feel good factor, it’s wading through our thick mud like grief (personal and for the world) in a communal experience and the opportunity to recommit to the world and a reminder of our unique role.

Hope of course needs to be planted in a different soil from that which brought about the dark harvest of all that is unfolding in the world as patriarchy tightens its stranglehold. I am not an oracle, I cannot see the future but I can Run With the Herd and feel the strength of community, the sharing of a new world and what we each individually to to make that world happen. I can’t say whether it will happen but I will die trying, I will die resisting. I will hold hope and plant her everywhere. I shall sing her song, chant her incantations, I will carry out ritual, I will do everything that I can.

I can’t say whether it will happen but I will die trying, I will die resisting. I will hold hope and plant her everywhere. I shall sing her song, chant her incantations, I will carry out ritual, I will do everything that I can.

While this post was meant to be about the story of how I came to be given the name ‘She WHo Wears Antlers’ that can wait for another time. You may well have your own rituals for this time of year yet I wanted to share one of mine.

Rebirth of the Light. Winter Solstice sunlight - Newgrange, Ireland

I have doubted everything in the last few months - the relevance of what I do, how I do it, and slid down the slippery slop to land in a heap of what-is-the-point! Right now I refused to think about that anymore - I give up, I let go - or rather I give it over.

I drag the black cauldron into centre. Use what you have - a bowl, a matchbox, a tin - a hole in the ground. She is used for many rituals - especially at Autumn Equinox when the first stirrings start remind us that we are moving towards the dark of the year. I take a small green doll, who is the green vitality of the plants yet she also represents a green vitality of myself and I put her into the cauldron. Once as I did this ritual a tree on the land I live on reflected this curled up doll back to me. It’s leaves and branches took the form of a curled up green figure - the trees joined in with my ritual. Or rather, I reflected back to them their ritual of descent.

Holding Newgranges Spirals

For this Winter Solstice ritual (the actual Solstice falling on Sunday 22nd December this year) I take everything I no longer know about - I write them out on paper, or add an object that represents them - whatever feels right. It might be words you whisper into her womb-like shape, it might be sound or stillness anger or tears. The invitation is just to do it, to let it go, to give it up and surrender to the mystery.

A small tin represents the cauldron

You can start your ritual now, in the days leading up to the shortest day, the longest night. Perhaps you’d like to do this ritual every day up until the Solstice. Arising in the morning before dawn - before any bird has sung or daytime creature has awoken. The thresholds are powerful times - not quite days and not quite night - a place where the magic resides.

On the eve of the shortest day and the longest night let your cauldron be. Give it up, stop trying to fix things, let go, surrender - have faith.

On the shortest day and the longest night whenever feels right light some small tea-light candles, and place them in the cauldron on top of all that nestles inside. Bring in the light, this fragile and tender light which brings the promise of rebirth. You don’t need to do anything or say scripted words, in fact silence that chattering mind. A mind which might want to reflect the craziness of the season that this upside down world would like to wrap you up in. It wants so much to consume you, have the dark so lit up that you don’t notice this tender little flame or have you so blindsided that you can’t see in the dark, or see what is reflected back to you.

Antlered Prayer Beads

And that is my ritual. Breathe in the stillness, try not to let it shatter or dissolve. We all know that’s what family gatherings can do - so return to that stillness before dawn, or step out into the garden - connect with tree or robin, worm or decomposing leaves. Connect to grey sky or velvet moss, visiting stag or green leaf growing out of the sidewalk crack. And then slowly ever so slow tend to the growing light and let hope be reborn.

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If you would like to join me on the Path of the Ancestral Mothers - with ritual, art and guided meditations for each season - click on the image above for full details, a discount coupon and for sign up

She Who Runs With the Herd. The Second Antlered Tale for Advent

Our antlered tales for advent are:

1. The Old Antlered One - click here to read

2. She Who Runs With the Herd

3. She Who Wears Antlers

4. A Sisterhood of the Antlers

The women are tending to the shrine under the antlered moon. Each year they make the pilgrimage up to the crest of the hill to the stone and bone shrine that their foremothers created. 

They take time to reposition any antlers that have fallen. Some antlers belong to creatures that no longer exist and only walk the earth in spirit. There is a way to read the bones. Some are etched with maps that show the migratory routes while some hold symbols that perhaps tell the mystery and magic of shapeshifting itself. 

The women know these stories well, they know these bones well and in the retelling, they say the names of the women whose role it was in life to carry the stories - women who now walk this land in spirit.

Once the bones have been read the women honor the stories with their voices, deep songs that send their prayers up into the night sky and tumbling down the hillside like small streams.

As the women turn around, their backs facing the shrine they look out over the landscape below, their voices light up ancient pathways, making them luminous so they shrine like visible maps. Their words move like solar winds overhead, creating great waves of color in the northern lights.

Antlered prayer beads with the sheen of the northern lights

The women gather around you and lift their drum it is your turn to run with the herd. You feel the pull of the drums heartbeat, the adorned symbols glowing - personal talismans and symbols of magic and connection.

You might begin to feel a tingling above your head as great branching antlers grow like antennas reaching towards the sky. You begin to move, shifting your body - running on the spot. Your arms grow until they touch the ground, your curved over until you feel four hooves on the ground. The urge to run is powerful, you race down the hill and suddenly there are others by your side. You run through secret valleys, over streams up hills and down, You know they way as its etched into every cell of your body. Running the terrain is a dance between you and the landscape, it’s effortless and as you find your stride you enter the flow. The flow takes you between the worlds, between what has exited and what is still to unfold and it is here that the earth energy flows. That is the (..a flow that takes you between worlds). You feel that there are old, old stories set into these pathways, and these are the pathways that earth energy flows through. The others around you are kin. 

You know they way as its etched into every cell of your body. Running the terrain is a dance between you and the landscape

The herd is a map, the ones which know the way with every hood beat and heartbeat, communicating with those who honor these pathways before them and reaching out into the future to those who still seek the path. 

It has been the tradition for countless generations for these women to tend to the high shrines and read the bones. To step between the worlds and run with the herd. For they know the old ways which says the pathways must be run. They must be run so new stories can be laid down and the old ones retold. Tending to the pathways is tending to the magic and they mystery. So run the pathways, or dance them from wherever you are. Dance, rattle, drum the pathways. Sing the pathways, do magic on the pathways, chant, do ritual. Do all this and feed the pathways - for the earth is the great holder of these visions and insights, dreams and plans. Whisper these things to her and she will feed you in return

Come join these shapeshifting women, tend the high shrines with your own bones, etch your sacred maps onto them. Tune into the heartbeat of the drum, become the dancer between worlds, the shapeshifter. Attune your antlers to the answers you seek and run out over the magical pathways, come run with the herd.

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Our third Antlered tale will be ‘She Wo Wears Antlers. If you’d like to journey with She Who Runs With the Herds and honor the Old Antlered One through ritual and art check out the link below to my year long online course and use the code ‘antlers’ for $10 off . Click on the image below or full details of the course and sign up

The Old Antlered One. The First Story For An Antlered Advent

The Old Antlered One

I am a product of the land I am from. If you were to cut me open you’d find that my bones are made from her compacted soil, my lungs carry her air and her rain and thunder still flow in my blood.

For as long as I can remember the land and I have engaged in deep conversation. Not a conversation of words, a conversation of sensation, the brush of a crow’s wing, the power of a threshold, the invitation to rest by a familiar tree trunk. All these things developed over the years deepening through visions alongside burying relatives into the same sacred soil.

One conversation is the body’s familiarity with the beat and tempo of walking the undulating landscape. The squish of bog and star moss islands, a high step through bracken, stepping stones over the stream. Wading through the swimming dance of high grass, following the sheep trails through bouncy clumps of heather and the heart-beating scramble up mountainside scree - these are all sensations that my body remembers, a inherited pattern past down through the generations that speaks of home. Even though my father’s family (and my mother’s two generations back) are Irish they too are intimate with the land, a similar landscape.

I have listened intently to this landscape all my life, sat by the boulders at the edge of the loch (Lomond) marked by the striations of long gone ice ages and drew my fingers across the rock scars like they were an ancient language.

“If myth really was the power of place speaking, then I had to bend my head daily to its murmurs’”

— Martin Shaw. Scatterlings. Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia

A Disappearing Act

When I was young my dad used to take us walking up around the local hills up above Loch Lomond, Scotland. Among the stones at the top of Carman Hill I would sit ever so quietly, scrunching up my eyes and in my imagination, I ripped up the roads, made all the cars disappear and with a final blink  I removed the houses and the streets. I always wanted to see what this place looked like a long, long time ago. Then I would hold my breath to see if I could see the old ones that I knew used to live here, the ones from the times before the roads and the cars and the houses.

Even though I never saw those ancient people, I felt them. I felt the presence of the energies of the land, sensing that these lands were sacred and up by the stones at the top of the hill was a place where this world flowed into the other worlds. 

Years later I began to see those original people on the move and it took a while to realize that they were following great herds. Probably more years before I realized these herds were reindeer. While studying the Geology of the area at University I came across an article which described the finding of a reindeer antler not too far (as the crow flies) found in glacial moraine unearthed in the building of a railway line. Proof that reindeer really were in the area. 

This is a story about my experience of 'The Old Antlered One' as I call her.  She is the spiritual bedrock of this place. I encountered her before I knew anything of antlered goddesses or antlered women and at that time my main source of an antlered creature was Herne the Hunter from UK kids programs such as Robin of Sherwood and the Box of Delights. 

In her essay 'Elen - Goddess of the Ways' Caroline Wise recalls: 

'Thinking of Mascen's  dream journey, and my idea that this may connect to shamanic flight, I decided to try an experiment. Not having fly agaric to hand, I induced a method of astral projection and invoked Elen. I visualised myself  walking through snow, in a bleak landscape. Soon I was 'astral travelling'  now above the land and completely in the moment and no longer needing  to consciously invoke the images. Looking down I saw a pathway littered with bones and antler. It had the appearance of a simple rail track, laid out on the snow, and I realised that this represented the migratory  route of the deer. I was following this track that had seen millions of beasts over millennia. I knew it went back aeons, before the Ice age, a memory that was in our genes and in the land itself. The bones  and antlers represented the ancestors of the beasts who still, where  they could, walked these paths today. I was 'told' that these were the 'oldest pathways in the world'. I felt a huge rush of energy, and the path suddenly rose up, looped out and back on itself, and the bones  and antlers formed into a skeleton of a giant elk, rearing up in front  of me. It twisted around and started to move forward. This was so dramatic  that I snapped back form my astral journey, much to my frustration - if I had stayed with it, I am sure it would led me to discover more.  I have never been able retrace that track!

While meeting a great elk figure was the end of that story for Caroline, meeting a great skeletal figure is where my story begins.

Irish Elk

My first experience with the Old Antlered One was meeting a huge skeletal figure. I knew she wasn’t an elk as she was female and her tall branching antlers pointed towards a link to reindeer as they are the only cervids with antlers.

The Old Antlered One

One night, close to Imbolc to the rhythmic heartbeat of the drum I sank down, down past the peaty layers of Loch Lomond, past the bones of ancestors, both human and animal. There in the darkness of that place between the worlds, I emerged at the top of the mountain, Ben Lomond. In that magical place I wasn’t simply myself, I was part me yet part ancient being. Skeletal, tall with huge branching antlers – her skeletal frame hidden behind a tall ragged cloak shimmering with galaxies and nebula's, we were in a place time had no hold.

I watched as she held out a bony hand - my hand - and commanded the sun to rise, and as it did she traced its path across the sky, leading it over to the west. As day changed to night she summoned up the moon guiding its path, - over and over she danced this dance setting the play of the constellations. 

Landmasses danced across oceans the world reforming and reshaping, then ice ages: ebbing and flowing, She ushered a thaw and a great greening covers the land, she dances to bring in life - dancing to bring in great clouds from the west, who released their rain when they meet the great mountain, flowing in small tributaries, gathering in streams until they poured into the loch. This is the dance of creation. 

I watch as the greens intensified, then transform into a burst of orange and browns before dying down and returning to their roots before the white takes over again. Green, golds and white, the seasons play out over and over. One by one she brings the insects, fish and birds, wolves, bear, auroch, and elk and the reindeer. Then people came, the people who followed the reindeer. They walked from mainland Europe following the huge herds. As they walked and camped they wove their own stories to the land, following the luminous strands this great antlered one had embedded in the earth. The paths that the reindeer follow are trails to sacred lands.             

Once everything was in place, this great creatrix bounded off to the west coast to the small islands that keep part of her story alive. Then she lay down, old and weary, sinking into the earth. Great trees grew from her bones, including the great tree that joins the worlds.                                                                                          

Among these people that followed the women who wore antlers, around a fire they give thanks to both the reindeer and the old antlered one. They are the wise woman of the deer, the ones who know the presence of the old one. They are the ones who tend to her shrines in high places, shrines they tend to on dark and full moon nights. Times that they dance her dance.  Their steps following her steps, steps that take them between the worlds, and in that dance they dance their intention out into the star patterns, and down into the luminous strands which carry out in a great network out over the earth.         

In times of need, they adorn themselves in reindeer skins and to the with the beat of the drum shape-shift into reindeer and run with the herd.  

An altar for the Old Antlered One

In our second Antlered tale for advent, we will be exploring the story of ‘She Who Runs With the Herd’
If you’d like to journey with She Who Runs With the Herds and honor the Old Antlered One through ritual and art using the code ‘antlers’ and receive a $10 off when you sign up to our year-long journey the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year. Click on the image below or full details of the course and sign up

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An Antlered Advent. Series of Tales for the Winter Solstice

Come coorie in by the fire, make a cup of tea with this Antlered Advent series of stories for the Winter Solstice.

1. Hear the story of the Old Antlered One whose ancient dance brought the moon and sun into their eternal orbits and conducted the great ebb and flow of the ice.

2. Shape-shift with a Wise Woman as she takes reindeer form and runs with the herd.

3. Hear the tale of how one woman gained her antlers

4. Your invitation to join an ancient Sisterhood of Antlers that still survives to this day!

The Old Antlered One

First week of Advent - Sunday 1st December

She Who Runs With the Herd

Second Week of Advent - Sunday 8th December

She Who Wears Antlers

Third Week of Advent - Sunday 15th December

The Sisterhood of the Antlers

Last Week of Advent - Sunday 22nd December

Click on the image to take our year long journey with the Ancestral Mothers

She Who Wears Antlers

‘I am the Strength of the Herd, the Call of Ancient Pathways’

When I was a kid I always had dreams of a great movement coming from the south, over the River Clyde and heading northwest. It took years before I realized that the great movement took the form of a great herd. Fast forward yet more years to when dreams introduced me to the people who followed these great herds. Slowly I would gain another snippet, another insight. Those dreams spilled into daydreams and eventually dances into the Otherworld fed me more of the story.

It was only a few years ago when I made the pilgrimage to visit Tigh na Bodach (or the Shrine of the Cailleach) and on the return journey amongst a scattered herd of 200 deer, with my feet on the ground I felt the last piece of this story click into place. As the deer bolted I saw a ripple, saw between layers of time and knew as I stood on that spot I saw another herd, I saw the reindeer make their great migratory pathway through the glen.

One of my very first meetings with one of the people who followed the herds was a woman. In a journey to the Otherworld I was viewing her from behind and she turned around to look at me, acknowledging my presence. She didn’t seem to mind as she just went on with what she was doing. I watched her gather a necklace of what looked like inscribed bone and then she attached antlers to her head with leather straps to make a headdress. She picked up a drum and started swaying as she sang in a guttural, primal tone. Her chanting got lower and resembled the snorting of a great animal. Then she threw the drum down (and yet somehow the drumming continued) and her breathing got heavier, the grunts louder and then before my eyes, this blood and bone woman shapeshifted into a creature with great branching antlers!

Then she began to run, she ran up hills and down through the forest. She jumped over great fallen tree trunks and over streams. I am unsure what form I was in but I was following her. We ran for many, many miles. I knew that with each placement of her hoof she could feel the path of the herd. In this animal form she grunted in the same way she had when she had picked up the drum.

We ran for many miles until her hooves led her to the herd, where she was welcomed as one of their own.

Then suddenly she was back to that lone woman drumming with antlers attached to her head and I watching her. That night she relayed the dance to the others who came and circled around her fire. They also know the land and the ancient pathways and she told the others the knowledge that the antlered ones had given her. And then these great circles of women picked up their drums and danced between the worlds.

I do not know this woman’s name - some call her Elen, I know her as ‘She Who Runs with the Herds’. She is an ancestral foremother who honors the Old Antlered One, the great creatrix who brought the moon and sun into position and brought the great migrations of creatures to this land as she orchestrated the great ebb and flow of the great walls of ice.

The Old Antlered One

Come Join Our Antlered Foremothers

My Ancestral Mothers Wheel of the Year course at Winter Solstice explores this ancient foremother who honors the old Antlered One. She is a priestess of drum and antler, who speaks with the ancient language of ritual. Our winter solstice offering explores:

Take an otherworld journey with ‘She Who Runs With the Herds’

In ritual create your own ‘Stone and Bone’ shrine offering

Explore the story of the Old Antlered One

Create art to honor the story of the winter solstice

Also, click below to check out our Facebook Group Sisterhood of the Antlers

Descending Into the Dark

Go carefully over the next few days. Listen to the wind, watch how the crows fly. Watch the patterns in the clouds, listen to the whispers swirling around you. The worlds merge and the otherworld isn't some far off place, it is wrapped around you, tighter than a winter cloak.

We have past Samhain's eve and have now descended into the dark of the year. Samhain isn't over, it is a season, not a day. Our ancestors walk with us and soon we'll reach that threshold of where Samhain leads us over to the Winter Solstice. 

The path I walk takes me in search of the stories that lie behind the stories, for that is where the magic resides. behind the dooking and the guising at Samhain, it's the great pre-Celtic crone the Cailleach who brings us into the dark of the year. She makes her way to the great whirlpool of Corryvrecken and washes her plaid in it's churning waters. As she swirls the ancient cloth in the waters she utters a primordial incantation, in a language as old as the mountains whose inflections mirror the web and flow of the tides and the cycle of the seasons. As she shakes the plaid dry a few water droplets instantly freeze and turn the tops of the surrounding hills white in the first dusting of snow. 

Gathering Kindling for the Deep

With each frost, we move deeper into the dark, trees and plants returning their energies back down to their roots ready for their deep rest over the winter months. What do you want to work on this deep?

The root of the word focus is hearth, a place we gather around in the winter, to keep warm, to cook, to daydream into the flames and read the shapes and symbols that appear. It's a place we gather with friends, to share stories and celebrations. 

Hearth

So what are you gathering for your 'hearth' time, what is your focus this deep? The Cailleach teaches us an ancient lesson that death needs to happen in order for rebirth to take place- there can be no new growth of spring without the great dying back of winter. 

Your Invited to Walk An Ancient Path

This deep your invited to walk the path of the Ancestral Mothers, we gather around the holy days of the year and at each festival, we meet an Ancestral Mother learning about her wisdom and mysteries. You work with your own intentions at your own pace with Wise Woman tools to enrich your journey:

Otherworld Journey

Ritual

Art

Community

Daughters of the Cailleach

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Mary Oliver - The Wild Geese

Last night I awoke in between those layers of sleep to hear wild geese fly overhead. They were talking loudly to each other, those things that travelling geese talk about. From within my cocoon of sleep I imagined them flying between stars, their route illuminated by star dust as they flew across the cosmos. Their chattering echoed in my head as I fell back to sleep again and in dream joined them on their journey.

That morning a light frost lay upon the ground, as if the tail ends of the cailleach’s cloak stretched across the Atlantic and skirted the ancient old mountains of the Appalachians.

I can hear the song of the Cailleach, that crone born of Scotland and Ireland. I hear her as she is part of the land that I was born of, I too am part of that land and I carry it with me wherever I am in the world. Some say she travels with her great Schalachan (staff) and beats down life so all will die. Yet if you, like me, have an ear to the ground and a foot in the otherworld you’ll know that she sings to the land. A song that infused the soil with the great change that starts squirrels burying chestnuts, that the geese hear as the call of their winter homes. It’s the song that begins the change of trees drawing their energies back down to their roots.

Daughters of the Cailleach

If you listen hard enough you just might hear the song of the old crone an invitation to sink deeper into the season, a call to tend to yourself on a deep level. Your invited to take a journey with the Cailleach which offers you the opportunity to:

Create a Sustainable Connection That Supports You in Your Life

Take a Pilgrimage to Visit Her Sacred Sites

Get To Know Her Through the Tools of the Wise Woman’s Gathering Bag

Discover Her ‘Forgotten’ Story and It’s Importance for Us Today



A Pilgrimage to the Oracle Cave

Listening to the Bones

There is a tangible feeling in the islands off the West of Scotland. Here in some of the most westerly islands of Europe there is a feeling of this place overlapping with the Otherworld, it’s a place where worlds merge and ancestral voices whisper on the wind.

Looking Over to the Isle of Rum

I have spent a long time pouring over maps, exploring the contours and plotting out the path to the Oracle’s Cave. It’s a curious site which archeologists named which indicates how even they were affected by the air of mystery of this place. It was probably on Julian Cope’s site the Modern Antiquarian that I first read about this site. Then reading further archeological reports which uses descriptions such as ‘ritual enclosure’, ‘ermetic’ and ‘prehistoric’ engaged both my interest and imagination.

Sron-na h-Iolaire – the Eagle’s Promontory

I try to visit this little island every year (grateful to take folks on the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland / Gather the Keeners retreat). A second name for the Islands is the sea kenning name of the Isle of the Big Women. There is always a day midweek, as by this time the woman has gotten to know the island a little that they are invited to undertake a pilgrimage. We begin the day in silence and then each woman makes her ritual journey off to a particular place to spend the day. They are encouraged to perform a small ritual as they enter into a deeper level of conversation with the land. This is often a rare opportunity for women plus there is the added layer of feeling relatively safe as opposed to being out in nature in other parts of the world (human predators being the main risk).

On this day I decided to make my own pilgrimage, one I had been looking forward to for a long time. on this day. The journey to the cave took 18 miles on an island that is around 5 miles long and 3 miles across.

It was a very windy day and so being high on the cliffs was a little daunting, at times and I had to crouch down to traverse small sheep paths that had been made through scree slopes of landslides of rocks, boulders, and soil that had come tumbling down from the cliffs above. Often vertigo got the better of me and I slid down 20 meters or so on my backside just to stay safe and not be blown away. The view over to the Isle of Skye was stunning and I could see no signs whatever of human activity as if I had indeed slipped between worlds, or perhaps gone back in time.

The site area is in an area called the ‘Struidh’ which translates as rocky place. I found myself scrambling over massive boulders, which often resulted in spaces between them suddenly dropping down 6 feet or so. I retreated for a while to find an archeologist photo which highlighted the entrance so I could work out its exact location.

As I rummaged and rummaged in my rucksack, my mind recalled it sitting by my bedside back at the hostel. It seemed an absolutely impossible task to find a small oval opening which was probably obscured by bracken.

The Oracle Cave Entrance

I need a sign – such as a small bird or a mystical gravitational pull. You need a signal seemed to be the reply. I need a sign, not a signal I thought – wondering if I was having this conversation with myself. I pulled out my phone to check the time and amazingly, on the remotest part of the island I had a phone signal. This was indeed my sign, so I quickly looked up the archeological record and saved the photo which highlighted the entrance. This way I could position the eagle rock with the cliffs and be able to work out where the entrance to the cave (on relatively flat land) was located.

The interior of the cave

‘This unusual site is situated in the midst of a boulder field on the broken ground between the cliffs of Sron na h-Iolaire and the coast below. It consists of a substantial grass-and bracken-grown platform that measures about 20m from E to W by at least 10m transversely, on top of which there are the remains of a circular enclosure, probably a roundhouse, measuring about 6m in internal diameter within drystone rubble walls 2m thick. The wall thickens to 4m at the entrance to the enclosure where a narrow passage provides access to the interior. On the far side is the entrance to a large boulder cave that runs W beneath the enclosure wall. The main chamber of the cave measures about 7m from NE to SW by up to 3.5m transversely and 2.5m high; but there are other smaller chambers opening off to either side and at the end. The cave entrance and the sides of the chamber have been modified by the insertion of rough walling, while a thick deposit of midden material covers the floor. This includes animal bones, shells and broken hammerstones, some of which have a concretion of crushed shell to their points. Other hammerstones occur in the many small caves and voids found between and beneath the boulders nearby.‘ – Archeological Report/Canmore Record.

What hands collected the shellfish from the beach below?

Hammerstone

I sat quietly in the space, examining the shells and the hammerstone used to smash them. I have heard of local folks who used this chamber to shelter from storms, but who was it that modified this place, and what was its purpose?

Looking Out to the Entrance

Although I had researched this site and looked forward to visiting for over two years somehow it was more about the journey to this place – the physical and psychological barriers rather than reaching the place itself. The previous year I was packed and ready to make the journey but on awakening, I hadn’t felt quite right, and knowing it’s a physical journey I had decided not to go – which was the best decision as days later my not-quite-right feeling had turned out to be Chicken Pox.

Slowly over the next few days, I kept returning to the place and the land released her story.

An offering to this place

It’s been a long journey through many decades of my life and an otherworldly figure who was as much bird as human, visiting this cave was an important part of her story.

It was here on this island at the edge of the world that she revealed herself as Eagle. It was as if I had to journey with her through all these stages before I could really get to know her.

There is much more to her story, a story that will be in my book The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland.

Click here to read some of the return journey as I walked back from the Oracles Cave - Brighid in Front, Mary Behind.