The Screech of the Banshee

How might you life have been different, if, as a young woman, there had been a place for you, a place where you could go to be with women? A place where you could be received as you strove to order your moments and your days.

A place where you could learn a quite centeredness…to help you ground yourself in daily patterns that would nurture you through their gentle rhythms…a place where, in the stillness at the end of a task, you could feel an ancient presence flowing out to sustain you…and you learned how to receive and to sustain it in return.

How might your life be different?

- Judith Duerk - Circle of Stones)

Since I first read this book I have returned to this question, ‘How might your life be different?’, many, many times. My attempts to answer it are the ways in which I work in the world - by connecting women, weaving community, telling the stories of the Ancestral Mothers and the ways they have shaped my life.

A Path Without a Map

I have been on this path towards menopause for maybe 5 years or so, I don’t really know as I don’t remember as I didn’t see any path signs, don’t remember anyone greeting me, welcoming me on this journey that would change my life.

Beware the Banshee

I am even further down this path now and I have stopped, sometimes for days to rage and screech like a banshee. I’ve roared from hilltops my voice echoing off cliffs and being carried by the north wind. At the back of my mind I worry if the Banshee’s warning is fortelling my own death. Perhaps I’m loosing the parts that I’ve come to recognize as self. What if it is these integral parts I am loosing? What then will I become?

This path has also skirted ancient dead volcanoes which after climbing and endlessly slipping down scree slopes I peered over the edge into the great rim of the void, the black depth of despair. I am the wailing woman whose tears are eroding her sense of self.

She Who Holds the Rituals. A Bean Feasa doll by Jude Lally

I have searched high and low and upturned many stones and still I wonder - Where is my guide? Where are my maps? Where are my ceremonies and rituals carried down from generation to generation, from woman to women? Where is my circle of women?

Next post in this series: The Need for Meaning



Click above to join the ‘Reclaiming Menopause’ group

Tending to Our Grief

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence

― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom”

Yesterday was a Leap Day and here in the foothills of the Applachians we awoke to an unexpected blanket of snow.

We are in the time after Imbolc and approaching Spring Equinox and a day we only get to experience every four years. In Celtic culture although inheritances were passed through the motherline it was still a warring and patriachal culture and it was on a leap day (and sometimes the entire leap year) that women could ask men to marry them.

I have come to look upon leap days as a day of celebrating and practicing ways of resistance as it was a Goddess of social justice, Brighid, who originally gave this tradition and it was a leap year when i proposed to my husband and we had our handfasting on the banks of Loch Lomond.

This leap year leap day I was asked to hold a Keening Circle for some friends who have lost their Anam Cara, their soul friends. This was to be a circle in which we gently honored out grief and didn’t step into that void which grief can somehow shape-shift into.

Mama

We began by standing at the grave of a beloved knowing he was wrapped in layers of love, curled up as he was given back to the earth in curled up position in a ritual that honored his life. My Anam Cara, my little soul-friend with the big ears joined us in the circle.

We began with a gesture or ritual, as all meaningful things do in which the women brought a stone and they were invited to wrap the stone in layers of black silk ribbon or blood-red yarn.

As I wrapped my heart-shaped stone, bedrock from these lands in a heart shape peppered with garnet crystals I thought of how our individual grief was similar in that our grief built up steadily over the years as a love lived. Each strand of love in life is like a contour building upon the next, much like a landscape is created through all manner of geological processes. The life together creates a unique landscape and creates the map of your love and life with this beloved.

This love only turns to grief when you find yourself in this place you made together but this time alone. Here you're wrapped in a cloak of memories, perhaps the scent might be fading but the longing to reach out and touch, to comfort to just be together never leaves.

The women carried their stones as they tended to their grief, breathing into it, releasing it and breathing it in again in the same pattern that love is built, over and over. This wasn’t a circle to wail our grief but one to tend to it, to acknowledge how we live with it, how it changes and morphs for really grief is love.

After the songs and the singing, the women gathered together in circle again. They were invited to take their heart stones and to slowly unwrap them. The strands of wool and silk were complicated things, not in their technical wrappings but in the weave of their relationship. This unwrapping and unfurling wasn’t an easy gesture. It wasn’t a gesture of removing grief, it wasn’t stripping grief away as no one wanted to shed it or discard it, we were here to honor it. We were here together to honor the fact that it exists at all.

Our beloveds stayed for a while in those three sacred days after death perhaps making sure each woman was ok before the had to leave for whatever awaits them in their new life. But as is the way with ancestors be they blood or bone ancestors there will always be a part of them peering over our shoulders, for your ancestors aren’t somewhere far and distant they are wrapped around you as tightly as a winters cloak.

The next article on keening explores this ancient practice as Cultural Activism

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Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat 2020

- We currently have 2 places left on this retreat -

Keening Over the Bones. 18th - 25th July 2020. Isle of Eigg, Scotland

The theme of this years retreat is 'Keening Over the Bones'. Keening is an old Celtic way of lamenting death, a role carried out by the Keening woman. As a Cultural Activist, I dig into my Celtic heritage to bring practices like Keening into a modern setting to help us honor the deep grief many of us are experiencing for all that is going on in the world - from ecological destruction, climate devastation and the uncountable and overwhelming swell of social injustices. 

I merge the experience of keening with Joanna Macy’s spiral of the Work That Reconnects. Throughout our week we will explore each of these four phases - expressing our joy of living, honoring our pain, contacting future beings (for their advice) and then going forth and making our commitment to the world.

Expressing our joy might take the form of a dance on the beach at the edge of the ocean while honoring our pain will take the form of a Keening ceremony. A guided journey will be your invitation to to a Keening ceremony which honors our grief and an invitation for us to drop down into that grief. Keening can be a cathartic experience while our grief doesn't change the way we look at it changes.
A guided journey will be our invitation to ask your ancestors or the Ancestral Mothers for their advice and then we will conclude our time together on the island in a ceremony which weaves together all of our experiences over the week as well as your commitment to the world and a celebration of your role and the unique path you walk in the world. 

The Bones

The bones are the remnants of stories and lives long-lived. The retreat is an invitation to listen to the bones, to the wisdom of your ancestors knitted deep in your own bones. Your time on the island allows you to sink down into your relationship you will build with the land in a journey which can often be an externalization of your inner journey.

The early booking discount of $100 off is available until the end of the month 

Please get in touch here if you have any questions. Click on any of the photos to go to the main retreat page on my website. 

The Journey

There are many journeys on the Ancestral Mothers retreat - while the retreat itself can often be a life changing journey the physical journey is also an inspiring one.  
The first steps are often you answering an ancient calling and when our paths cross and you sign up for the retreat you get a free pass to all the Ancestral Mothers courses currently running. You'll most likely begin with the Ancestral Mothers Wheel of the Year course which introduces you to the figures of ancestral Wise Women, Amazons, Celtic Goddesses and pre-celtic ancient deities. 
On arriving in Glasgow the journey begins on the West Highland Railway a journey that takes you through  away from roads and towns as you cross across the wide and wild beauty of Rannoch moor. Watch the terrain change as we move into a mountainous realm and skirt the bottom of Ben Nevis, Scotlands highest mountain which even in July is likely to have a little snow on its peak. 
You'll travel over the Glennfinnian viaduct made famous by the harry Potter films. 
Once you arrive in Mallaig it's a one hour ferry ride over to the island and the chance to stand outside, feel the sea breeze and let it blow off any cobwebs or any other residue, watch the Isle of Skye pass as Eigg comes more into focus and also the chance to keep an eye out for dolphins, seabirds or even an orca.  
Once on Eigg your luggage will be taken to our accommodation, Glebe Barn as you have a chance to stretch your legs and take in your first impressions of the island.  

Sheela Na Gig

Our first visit to an Ancestral Mother will be your visit to a Sheela na Gig in the ruins of Kildonnan Chapel then we will wander down to Shell beach and perhaps find a cowrie shell as we keep a lookout for seals in the bay. 
 

Loch of the Big Women

You will hear the stories of the Big Women of the islands from the female warriors of the Queen of Moidart to Scatatch the female warrior from the neighboring isle of Skye. 
You will visit the Loch of the Big Women our biggest hike of the week where your have the invitation to submerge yourself under the water if your brave enough. 
This is a ritual which can help you focus on becoming a Carrier of the Stream, an initiation I use for women as we journey through menopause. 

You can read more abut this ritual here

Community

Our days together will begin by quite time in the mornings and one option will be to hang out in the sun room, which is a silent room which offers spectacular views over to the mainland. 
We will start each day after breakfast with a guided journey in which you'll meet one of the Ancestral Mother figures. 

Island Community
We will join the local singing group for an evening of song (if their schedule matches ours) and there will also be the option of touring a local  working croft (a unique form of farming found on the West coast of Scotland) We will get to meet their animals which includes a herd of Soay Sheep, a primitive Scottish breed of sheep. We will tour their kitchen garden - did you know you get palm trees in Scotland? As well as the ability to ask questions and really get an insiders view on a Scottish croft. There is also the option to visit the historic croft museum which is right next door. (Both activities depending on scheduling). 

The intention for the retreat is to build some community before we gather and so you will be invited to take my Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year course for free as well as an online course on the Goddess Brighid and one on the Cailleach.

Carrier of the Stream

“Wise Woman’ By Jane Brideson. 
Used with Artist’s permission

She sits on the windowsill above my altar in a gold frame. The image is entitled ‘Wise Woman’ painted by Irish painter Jane Brideson. The Wise Woman is sitting by her kitchen table burning something in a small copper cauldron from which the smoke swirls and wafts up and around her.

There are images in the smoke, a hare under a waxing moon, a croft with a thatched roof with smoke trailing out of the chimney. The cottage has two windows in its whitewashed stone which I want to peer through. The paint of the front door is probably peeling in several places perhaps to reveal a rainbow of colors which span decades. I imagine what it might look like inside, maybe like the Irish croft my Great Aunt Mary lived in, a wise woman herself who never married and worked the farm alone and traded for most of what she needed. The third swirl of smoke holds the scene of a cauldron pot over a fire, next to a large kettle.

The woman of the hearth is probably in her 60’s, her grey hair sweeps up and over reminding me of wind whipped waves from which kelpies arch and leap.

I can see we might have things in common such as walking a beloved familiar (in the form of a dog) as we travelled a lane flanked by hedgerows picking berries and leaves as we watch the familiar life of the hedgerow – a startled blackbird, perhaps a wren jumping through the branches and if either one of us was lucky – the little snout of a hedgehog. 

Menopause

As I stare into the frame I see my own reflection in the glass, I am becoming her. My hair isn’t grey but I have just walked my own initiation of turning 50. I had no expectations of 50 but felt it was a definite marker like no other birthday has been. It came with a woo-shhhh-iiii-ng and a rippppp-liiiing. Waves of hot flushes and an unexpected cold that followed the heat, mirroring the Spring Equinox in which it was taking place and the weather of my birth – hot, cold, cold, hot, hot, cold, cold, cold. Undulating anxiety followed, consuming me, leaving me feel like I was drowning. 

“HAVE YOU NOTICED?” WHISPERS GRANDMOTHER GROWTH. “YOUR HOT FLASHES AND MENSTRUAL IRREGULARITIES DISRUPT YOUR NORMAL PATTERNS, MAKE OPENINGS FOR YOU BURIED FEARS TO EMERGE. WELCOME THESE FEARS; THEY BRING MEMORIES. MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, MEMORIES OF OTHER LIVES. OFTEN THESE MEMORIES FIND EASIEST ACCESS TO YOU CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH FEAR. IF YOU REJECT YOUR FEAR, IT WILL IMMOBILIZE YOU, SHORTEN YOUR BREATHE, LEAVE YOU SPEECHLESS, AND DIM YOUR FULL DELIGHT IN LIFE. APPROACH WITH CURIOSITY; LET YOUR FEAR BRING YOU GIFTS OF SELF-AWARENESS. (NOTE HOW DILATE THE PUPILS BECOME IN FEAR: ANXIOUS EYES TAKE IN EVERYTHING.) HOLD MY HAND. SAY ‘I’M AFRAID.’ AND TAKE A STEP FORWARD.” 

(SUSAN WEED, 81)

I love this face in the painting, she reminds me of several women I know and several others I project onto her – aunts and other relatives I have never known. I am grateful for the women in my life I am grateful for my women’s circle – we meet in the dark of the year, bringing our baskets with all manner of hopes and fears and dreams – all the things we wish to drawn into small and powerful gestures of ritual and bring into sacredness. We unpack beloved well-worn cloths, stones and bones – CDs of music and whispered songs, pots of tea or whatever prompts we need to outline our ritual. Spring Equinox is the great return as the ancient she-bear returns from the dead of winter and brings life back to the land. As our circle returns back into the world I walked the labyrinth. My walk to center was walking through my five decades, symbolically gathering the insights and the synchronicities that were woven. I stopped at the center and sat to acknowledge life and this most wondrous gift of living. Then I began my walk back out, symbolically receiving the gifts of what I plan to receive, the work I wish to complete, grateful for those i walk with. 

Living on the Threshold

I am deeply tied to the land I was born on and yet I was born on a threshold. I am Scottish and grew up in the area around Loch Lomond – there was only 6 of my family in Scotland with an uncountable number of my dad’s family in Galway, Ireland. I grew up half Irish, half Scottish. - seemingly my sister, brother and I all had Irish accents before we went to school. While I was rooted in place I didn’t know the aunt and uncles and cousins as my Scottish friends did. But I am a woman of place and familiar hills and trees, lochs, creatures and birds were family. Personal circumstances brought me wider still as I’m currently living in the foothills of the Appalachians. They say distance makes the heart stronger and yet distance also gives us perspective. I constantly project familiar scenes of Scotland onto this Appalachian landscape. The way the light caresses a tree or a raincloud about to envelop a hill transports me home so it feels like I have one foot on this land and another on home turf. I somehow exist in both places, in both worlds.  

All my life I naturally gravitated towards the thresholds, some call them ‘thin places’ the places where this world and the other world overlap. Out walking the hills of home above Loch Lomond you can step into one of these places, like a small bubble which exists in the here and now but somehow exists throughout all time. I know these places, I carry a map of them. Once I encountered such a place while out walking with friends. It was interesting – we all just stopped, not a word was said, we all just stood still in this place between places.  

And yet here on another continent, my life is moving over a threshold which menopause is ushering in. I live in a culture which doesn’t honor this threshold, in fact, it offers chemicals and surgeries to help us deal and manage that problem of being female. Yet many of us celebrate it, mark the passing of one stage of life transitioning to another. I welcome yet another initiation into another threshold.

Emerging from the Loch

‘WE’RE PASSING THE HIGHEST POINT IN THE MIDDLE OF EIGG. IT’S JUST BEFORE THE ROAD DROPS DOWN THROUGH THE HAZEL WOOD. I’M CROUCHED ON THE FLOOR, UNCOMFORTABLY, BOUNCING ALONG IN THE BACK, AND I START TO BECOME AWARE THAT A RIVER IS FLOWING INTO ME. A RIVER! IT FEELS LIKE ALL THE ANCIENT BLOCKED-UP WELLS AND SPRINGS HAVE BROKEN FREE. THEY’RE MERGING AND MELDING AND THE CONFLUENCE IS A TORRENTIAL, SILVERY STREAM OF LIGHT. I’M BATHED, SOOTHED, INWARDLY ILLUMINATED’.

MCINTOSH, PG 185

An Ancient Calling

It’s only now, I can look back and recognize that this journey into menopause began several years ago. Three years ago I was called in a vision gained from an otherworldly journey to visit the little island whose Gaelic name translates as ‘the Isle of the Big Women’. I had been there a few times before but this trip found me climbing the heights to visit the Loch of the Big Women as the sun began to set and the long lingering summer twilight began. Twilight is a time which paints the land in its true colors – faces appear in the hillside and on cliffs – which only makes sense as twilight draws us between the worlds – we are half in the everyday world and half in the otherworld. I laughed to myself as I walked alone thinking some people choose to go on holiday to sun themselves on European beaches and here’s me heading up to a small loch guided by an Old Antlered being I encountered in trance! On arriving at the loch it suddenly dawned on me as if I was instructed by the figures of women lined up on the loch banks – that I had to fully submerge myself under the water. So I did! It was truly an initiation as the seconds I was under the water I could hear the whispering of ancestral voices and had I kept my eyes open I know I would have seen faces smiling and looking into mine.

I walk the path of the Ancestral Mothers, picking up the threads that weave me back into the whole, weave me back into my own culture. My ancestors and these ancient wise women are my guides. I align myself with the Bean Feasa lineage I may not use the same tools as they did yet we have a familiar practice in walking between worlds. 

The quote above are the words of a teacher of mine yet these words and experience have become mine. My experience was handed down through a lineage of women. While I’ve had glimmers and dreams of this great flow of voices, for the last two years at Spring Equinox as we emerge with bear from the winter cave this stream has bubbled up from the deep. The initiation of menopause has submerged me fully into the stream. I took the photo above after my emergence from the loch – I felt different, I felt called, I felt fierce, I felt every bone and every cell committed. More than that I was infused with their voices for unknowingly the role was to become a carrier, a carrier of those ancient voices, a carrier of the stream. 

While I have spent most of my life on the edges, the thresholds it makes sense as it’s only the edges of the town and wild that are the places where you can ‘feel’ that older primordial world figures like the Cailleach. It’s only on islands off the west coast of Scotland, the very edge, the fringe of the Celtic world that the feeling between this world and the other is so very tangible. It’s only on home ground  that I hear this old hag’s voice so clearly as if she is shouting into my ear. 

And yet I know my ancestor’s connection to their world, their everyday connection is something I crave more than anything. For theirs was a far different world from ours. It’s a world the birds and four-leggeds and the trees and insects still live in only that humans created a psychological disconnection. Sadly I was born into this disconnected world, a warmongering dis-eased world. That’s why I seek out those thresholds places, the places you can still hear and feel the heart beat of a far older world. The highest peaks in my life have been the ones, the brief moments where i’ve stepped into that old world.

For that old world is the true nature of this planet, it’s our birthright – our original relationship. So I pick up my tools of art, ritual and imagination guided by the voices of the stream – I am a Cultural Activist – rooted in the Bean Feasa tradition as I create acts of resistance against this power-hungry monster of patriarchy and clear the path back to the Ancestral Mothers rebirthing Her way in this world, weaving us back into the whole, weaving us back to Her, telling stories through actions that take us home.

Join Us This Summer

Click here to join us on the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Retreat this July on the Isle of Eigg. We will be exploring the concept of the Carrier of the Stream and what that means to you. There will be the invitation to submerge yourself under the waters of the Loch of the Bg Women!

____

References:

McIntosh, Alastair. 2001. Soil and Soul. People Versus Corporate Power. Aurum Press Ltd, UK. 

Weed, Susan. 1992.Menopausal Years. The Wise Woman Way. Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90. Ash Tree Publishing, USA.

Links:

You can view the art of Jane Brideson here: http://theeverlivingones.blogspot.com/

Reclaiming Menopause

Blood ties

There have been a few moments in the last few days, weeks when I think about it and yes I have to admit months where I felt I was at breaking point. I just couldn’t take anymore. I draw little symbols in my journal to explain what was going on - flames, birds and mighty lightning bolts.

I admit that sometimes I can overlook what is staring me in the face - even if it’s part of myself trying to tell myself something. Reading over my journal I notice the symbols which regularly appear over the months as flick back over the weeks the penny drops as I make the connection and the the menopausal lightbulb goes off.

The little sketched symbols - flames, birds and lightning are like an ancient language. Symbols which portray feelings, emotions - an attempt to make sense of them, to communicate them. If another woman stumbled into my cave would she feel at home there and be able to read my story on the walls? Might she make sense of the small ritual items might she feel a connection?

Those little symbols are something half the population of the world might be able to relate to at some point. I am not alone in my menopausal journey, I know I’m not alone in feeling that I am somehow losing a sense of self I have understood as ‘me’. Where is my community who honors this change? Who is at my side to reassure, initiate and make sense of all of this. Where are the stories, the traditions, the rituals and the ceremonies?

No Blood Lost - a little ritual of red kelp, wool and stone

I have always aligned myself to the Bean Feasa tradition (the Irish Gaelic WIse Woman). In fact for a while I would claim it as my tradition (I am in fact far more Irish than Scottish). Yet this didn’t sit with me, I only know what I know of that tradition in books. And that’s ok. That linage still deeply inspires me in the symbolism of the gathering Bag. While those women had their own skills and ways of working I have mine.

My Gathering bag holds the magic and transformation of imagination and creativity and I draw on those old traditions and bring them into my world today as part of a Cultural Activism. My activism roots down into the tradition of the Bean Feasa and drawn upon ways of working which are much needed in our times - such as holding community keening circles to honor the grief we feel for the climate devastation and the unsurpassed injustices to women, animals and the land.

Carrier of the Stream

My first wave of initiation (long before I actually realized what was going on) was being called by old ancestral energies who called me to the top of a far flung Hebridean island and invited me to submerge myself under the waters of a loch. I did question what I was doing but i did it anyway.

Emerging from the Loch - An initiation unto myself

As parts of the word are devoured in fire flames of heat ripple through me. I am enraged at what is happening to the planet. I am not getting lost in who is to blame yet we do need to understand the roots of all the myriad of injustices of all the dominating power over structures - rather than the power with, the power shared.

I want to hear women’s stories of this initiation into themselves, this initiation with and for the planet. I want this change to matter, to mean something. I want to reclaim the stories and our menopausal experiences, I want to reclaim and embody this initiation and honor all that it offers. I want to explore all this creatively, to make art with sticks and stones, makes dolls that honor this sacred evolution.

I want to hold Menopause cafes where we drink herbal teas and discuss our relationship with those plants. I want to engage creatively with every feeling and insight. I want to breathe life and meaning into every experience I’m going through. I want to share the stories no longer told in our world - so lets share our passion - our grief, rage as we honor this ancient rite of menopause wherever you are on this journey

Links: Read the full article Carrier of a Stream

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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