All Our Ancestors - A folklore raffle inspired by Scottish/Welsh and Irish folklore to support Diné (also called Navajo) Elders with some folklore of Changing Woman.
Read MoreAll Our Ancestors Fundraiser
7 Stories for the Cailleach Circle
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.”
-- The Secret Life of Bees. Sue Monk Kidd
Stories. I can’t imagine life without stories, I don’t even know how that would be possible. We are wired for stories, ears to take in the words and an imagination to set the scene and bring the characters to life.
The Cailleach Circle is a journey through the dark of the year with stories to engage with. You’ll fully engage with these stories -not just in their retelling but by exploring what questions emerge. You’ll explore these themes through the rich language of art and ritual.
The Cailleach’s Shrine
We begin with an introductory story by visiting the Shrine of the Cailleach.
2. The Whirlpool of Corryvrecken, The Cailleach’s Cauldron.
We begin the Circle by telling the story of the Cailleach washing her great plaid in the Whirlpool of Corryvrecken, the Cailleach’s Cauldron - an ancient ritual that brings the land deep into the dark of the year. What will emerge when you take the journey into the swirling waters of her cauldron?
3. November. The Old Woman of the Land.
The Cailleach holds the only creation story of the lands of Scotland and Ireland - through dropping rocks from her apron. She is a product of the land, she is the land. You will explroe how you can connect to her through the Old Woman of the land where you live as well as diving deep into your own ancestral connection.
4. Her Fairy Cattle
In Decembers Circle you’ll hear the story of the Cailleach’s relationship with deer, who are called her ‘Fairy cattle’. How she protects them from hunters, through a guided journey you’ll visit the Old Crone hanging out with her deer in a mountain by the shores of Loch Lomond.
5. The Bean Feasa
In January we explore the Cailleach’s relationship to the oral tradition of the Bean Feasa, the Wise Woman and all that she represents.
6. The Cailleach and Brighid
As we draw towards Imbolc we explore the relationship between Cailleach and Brighid. Are they the same figure, two sides of the same being and consider why is the Cailleach often portrayed as keeping Brighid prisoner.
7. The Storm Hags
In our final circle as we approach Spring Equinox and the time of emerging out of the deep we explore the Cailleach’s ability to renew herself, we celebrate Cailleach’s Day and explore the story of the Storm Hags.
Registration closes on the 13th October
7 Reasons to Join the Cailleach Circle
1. An Ancient Old Woman
Who isn’t drawn to an ancient primordial old woman whose roots are entwined with the very bedrock of the land she was born from? A figure so old that she has seen great ice sheets come and go and remembers back to a time when the very ocean was a forest!
2. Storytelling
Come sit by the fire, wrap yourself in a shawl with a cup of tea. Relax and listen to a guided journey - a story that takes you into the realm of the Cailleach and where you meet the old crone on her terms. But beware - it might be a bumpy ride!
3. Doll Making
We all need a way to make sense of the world, and for me it is dolls. You’ll create your very own doll which will speak of your relationship to the Cailleach as well as exploring your path to becoming an old woman yourself.
4. Ritual
Ritual doesn’t need to be this great grand gathering with lots of people involved. You’ll be invited to create small gestures of ritual which speak to the essence of the stories you are working with.
5. Art
For years I’ve heard women say they can’t make art. We are all artists and sometimes all we need is some time, some space, encouragement and some inspiration!
6. Altar Making
You’ll create your own altar, or altars wither your using an inside self or outside in the garden.
7. Community
There are several ways to engage with our Circle Community - from on the course where you can chat and upload images to a dedicated Facebook Page as well as a monthly Zoom gathering - choose what suits you.
Hopi Community Fundraiser - Passage Tomb Raffle
Many thanks to all who donated - we raised $800
You can still donated here directly with the Hopi Nation, click on the banner below
Many Native communities have been especially hit from Covid 19. I’m offering a brand new OOAK art peices with this needle felted ‘Passage Tomb’ art up for offer, valued at $125.
Passage Tombs are also referred as Womb Tombs, liminal places, places of transformation where the bones of the dead were placed in order to ensure rebirth for relatives and ancestors.
These are altar pieces to complement your ancestral work. This piece comes with a set of divination items all gathered while beach-combing on Scottish Hebridean islands :
Limpet shell which doubles as a small offering bowl
Pieces of sea glass
Cowrie shell
Limpet shell ring
Hagstone
The Hopi People
The Hopi are a matrilineal people who’ve been living in the mesas for at least 2,500 years. They are some of the only indigenous people who were not forcibly relocated by the US Government.
Traditionally, they are farmers who grow blue corn in a very dry & challenging environment, using prayer, ceremony, and relationship to the plants. Their corn is grown without irrigation, except for the rain (which comes from the ancestors). They have a sophisticated culture which is still practiced and largely kept private. But some dances are open to the public. Many of the people in the villages do not have electricity or running water. They live in a food desert, where supplies are very limited, and becoming even more limited during the pandemic. Some people still retrieve their water from local springs, but many of the springs have dried up due to climate change and Peabody Coal, which has been exploiting the people and the environment for a long time.
Peace and happiness is central to their cosmology, Hopi culture encourages a prayerful existence as part of their responsibility to maintain equilibrium for the entire planet. Yet another reason that it is an honor to support them through this difficult time.
All money raised will be sent to a friend, Hilary who lives in Flagstaff, AZ who is co-ordinating this with a Hopi friend who’s been organizing relief work for the folks in her community for the last few months. The money will be used to source food from local growers, so people receive some fresh food, as well as dried/non perishable. Every penny of your raffle ticket money (less any fee’s from Paypal) will go towards purchasing the following requested items:
PPE
Hand sanitizer
Batteries (AAA, AA, C, D)
Body soap
Toothbrushes/toothpaste
Shelf stable lemon & lime juice
TP
Paper towels
Pine Sol
Bleach
Empty spray bottles
Hand sanitizer
Other cleaning supplies
Matches
Feminine products
Adult diapers
Water siphons
Dog & cat food
Vinegar
Home first aid supplies
Tylenol
Ibuprofen
Non perishable food
Bottled water
Powdered milk
Raffle Tickets
Raffle tickets are priced at $20 although you can pay more if you wish. The raffle runs until tomorrow Saturday 25th July and the winner will be picked at random at 8pm eastern - I’ll email out via social media and my newsletter to let you know how much we raised and who the winner is and to get their details.
Scottish Cowrie Shell and Limpet Shell
Animation - Hopi Creation Story
Brighid in Front of Me, Mary Behind Me
Just after Lunastal I headed west to Eilean Nam Ban Mora, The Isle of the Big Women. This is the sea kenning name for the island, one fishermen would use. It’s the islands secret name, for they didn’t wish to tell others the exact name of the island they came from. It’s offocial title is the Isle of Eigg in the inner Hebrides.
It was a fine day as I headed off on a pilgrimage to visit a sacred site. I always head off on pilgrimages alone, for as much as they are a sacred journey, they are a deep communication with the land.
I’ve made the journey once before and it is rare to meet another human soul on the route but you’ll be accompanied by other souls such as sheep, perhaps a seal beaking down on the shore, or a little mouse might scurry past your feet. You might be accompanied by the white slender shape of gannets dive bombing into the water and if you’re lucky you might be in the presence of an eagle.
The route takes you to the very end of the main road of Eigg and down through the townships of Cleadale and finally Howlin, let me be clear when I saw ‘township’ as this is an island with a population of around 100 and whose terrain is roughly 5 miles by 3.
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
John O’Donohue – For the Traveler
It was a beautiful day with blue skies and a strong breeze. I hiked up the steep hill that would take me to the other side of the island, and it was at the crest that an entirely new world opens up. The view sweeps down to the Sea of the Hebrides, a vast expanse of water with a flat and glassy surface. A far cry from the rolling waves we sailed in on.
Off to the horizon, the faraway peaks of Skye appeared like jagged teeth set in the jawbone of some ancient monster. Suddenly I noticed some movement to the right side and turned to see the large wingspan of an eagle soaring. How wonderful to be in their presence.
This story isn’t about the site I was going to visit, it’s about the journey. As this new vista opened up I felt my heart expand to meet it. Without even realizing I find tears streaming down my face and as the track is very narrow, made by little sheep hooves which require you to really dig in with the side of your boots. Tears require stopping and sitting down – time to sink into the emotion and the practicality of drying your eyes.
The emotion poured like cathartic waves, as the crescendo of the landscape swells, the waves breaking up feelings that drag out old thoughts – tumbling over and out, an emotional landscape, a figurative and actual path of healing.
The Return Path
Without realizing it, I took a different path on the way back. the path that takes the higher route, I hadn’t realized that this was the exact same scenario that played out last time.
About a half hour along I realize I’m far higher than the path I took in, I’m way too close to the cliffs above as I remember viewing them from a far lower viewpoint. This isn’t a big deal as the heather makes for springy padding if you slide down the hillside on your backside. This is normally quite a fun thing but on the journey back that’s when a whole new layer of things started bubbling to the surface.
I’m feeling overwhelmed, it’s a three-hour trek back and I keep losing the trail. Staying on a trail is preferable as wading through heather and bracken is hard going. I decide to keep going but the path is leading me even higher. This is normally an easy decision – to lose some elevation but somehow I can’t quite make the decision. Tears come, which means sitting for a while as I can’t walk without clearly seeing where I’m placing my feet.
I look out to sea and see two tall white sailboats sailing together. From this vantage point, I can clearly see the path of currents and the fan of the breeze marked across the surface of the water. I wonder how many dolphins, porpoises and whales are out there beneath the surface. I look back to the boats and think If I could just make it back to the shore and caught their attention they could come out on a dingy and pick me up.
I decided to scoot down through the heather, using my heel as a brake as you can pick up speed very quickly. I’m not quite sure if I’ve found the path and so wade through the heather looking below me for any signs of breaks in the vegetation. I’m aware that everything that is happening feels like a metaphor for life. When you are off the path and wading through the vegetation you never quite know if there’s a dip in the landscape and you could lose your footing and go over on an ankle. Yet what is life without some risk-taking and heading off on our own?
I think I see the path slightly above me and so scramble up a few rocks, but when I look down towards the shore there is a very clear pathway down below me but I’m unsure whether that is the path that I walked in on.
As I turn around an outcrop two sheep look utterly shocked to see me, so I sit still for a while and let them run off. Soon they will be herded up from this land and boarded onto the boat which will take them to slaughter. My mind thinks of the traditions and beliefs of these islands were purposely erased as the people themselves were ripped from the land to make way for sheep. The grief must have been surmountable to have lived in these lands, rooted through countless generations only to be put on a boat and taken over an ocean to foreign lands. That feels almost too much for my heart to bear, and I cry as I look towards far away townships on Skye.
Everything seems so overwhelming right now and I’m at the same place where on my last trip I saw a lamb with a broken leg down on the shore, and the cries of its mother looking for it. I had gone down and carried the lamb up past the shore as she may well have drowned when the tide came in.
Then suddenly I was aware of a feeling of comfort, that felt very different from my uncertainty, and I knew it was outside of my own body. It felt like a beacon, a guide, someone to show me the path, to walk ahead of me so I could just follow. It was the most comforting feeling, it was as if the land itself was shapeshifting, morphing into an invisible but tangible figure.
The isles of the Hebrides are referred to as Brighid’s isles for she is a goddess woven into the fabric and the bedrock of these Islands.
I dried yet more tears, took a drink of water, and started walking. I wasn’t tired but knew that the little bubbles of thoughts rising to the surface were the things I overlooked, the things I took for granted, and yet they were the sources of healing that needed to be cherished, and to be carefully rewoven back in.
And so I got back to the trail and as I did I chanted, Brighid in front of me, Mary behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
With each step I chanted, I even tried to create a tune to the chant which came out like a TV commercial, which made me laugh. Here I was with an ancient Goddess leading the way and my grandmother’s sister behind me, and Catherine, my grandmother beside me. A holy trinity.
Cee-al. Wise Woman of the Seal People
A Beltane Story. Cee-al, Wise Woman of the Seal People
Beltane morning. I am in the foothills of the Appalachians yet there is a cool breeze blowing which transports me to the Isle of Oronsay, sitting on top of a Mesolithic shell midden - made by people who perhaps moved around their landscape in a great ritualistic gesture.
Sitting on a Mesolithic Shell Midden on the Isle of Oronsay - looking over to Jura. Photo by Joanne Wright
My days of Beltane as a great fire festival and all the celebrations of dancing wild around fires with strangers have changed over the years and now I choose to go sit with Cee-al.
Dolphin Skull - An altar to the Wild.
This is a reminder to feed your wild self - walks in the rain, the sight of storms brewing, dance and song - whatever your wild self yearns for. Cee-al is the holder of your most sacred desires, your wildest yearnings. These desires should be rooted in the world, a yearning for a world to come into balance - what is your role in all of this? What can you do in your life, in your community that brings us back to balance with the Earth, the wild and all living beings? Beltane 2020 is a unique time to brings these yearnings into being - to make changes happen in the here and now.
Selkie Stone
My Selkie Skin hearth altar holds a divination of Scottish cowrie shells. The clouds are racing East this morning as crouch in the garden and wash my face in the dew.
Click on the image to hear Julie Fowlis and the Unthanks sing the Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
Check out our Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year course
Brighid in Front of Me, Mary Behind Me
Just after Lunastal I headed west to Eilean Nam Ban Mora, The Isle of the Big Women. This is the sea kenning name for the island, one fishermen would use. It’s the islands secret name, for they didn’t wish to tell others the exact name of the island they came from. It’s offocial title is the Isle of Eigg in the inner Hebrides.
It was a fine day as I headed off on a pilgrimage to visit a sacred site. I always head off on pilgrimages alone, for as much as they are a sacred journey, they are a deep communication with the land.
I’ve made the journey once before and it is rare to meet another human soul on the route but you’ll be accompanied by other souls such as sheep, perhaps a seal beaking down on the shore, or a little mouse might scurry past your feet. You might be accompanied by the white slender shape of gannets dive bombing into the water and if you’re lucky you might be in the presence of an eagle.
The route takes you to the very end of the main road of Eigg and down through the townships of Cleadale and finally Howlin, let me be clear when I saw ‘township’ as this is an island with a population of around 100 and whose terrain is roughly 5 miles by 3.
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
John O’Donohue – For the Traveler
It was a beautiful day with blue skies and a strong breeze. I hiked up the steep hill that would take me to the other side of the island, and it was at the crest that an entirely new world opens up. The view sweeps down to the Sea of the Hebrides, a vast expanse of water with a flat and glassy surface. A far cry from the rolling waves we sailed in on.
Off to the horizon, the faraway peaks of Skye appeared like jagged teeth set in the jawbone of some ancient monster. Suddenly I noticed some movement to the right side and turned to see the large wingspan of an eagle soaring. How wonderful to be in their presence.
This story isn’t about the site I was going to visit, it’s about the journey. As this new vista opened up I felt my heart expand to meet it. Without even realizing I find tears streaming down my face and as the track is very narrow, made by little sheep hooves which require you to really dig in with the side of your boots. Tears require stopping and sitting down – time to sink into the emotion and the practicality of drying your eyes.
The emotion poured like cathartic waves, as the crescendo of the landscape swells, the waves breaking up feelings that drag out old thoughts – tumbling over and out, an emotional landscape, a figurative and actual path of healing.
The Return Path
Without realizing it, I took a different path on the way back. the path that takes the higher route, I hadn’t realized that this was the exact same scenario that played out last time.
About a half hour along I realize I’m far higher than the path I took in, I’m way too close to the cliffs above as I remember viewing them from a far lower viewpoint. This isn’t a big deal as the heather makes for springy padding if you slide down the hillside on your backside. This is normally quite a fun thing but on the journey back that’s when a whole new layer of things started bubbling to the surface.
I’m feeling overwhelmed, it’s a three-hour trek back and I keep losing the trail. Staying on a trail is preferable as wading through heather and bracken is hard going. I decide to keep going but the path is leading me even higher. This is normally an easy decision – to lose some elevation but somehow I can’t quite make the decision. Tears come, which means sitting for a while as I can’t walk without clearly seeing where I’m placing my feet.
I look out to sea and see two tall white sailboats sailing together. From this vantage point, I can clearly see the path of currents and the fan of the breeze marked across the surface of the water. I wonder how many dolphins, porpoises and whales are out there beneath the surface. I look back to the boats and think If I could just make it back to the shore and caught their attention they could come out on a dingy and pick me up.
I decided to scoot down through the heather, using my heel as a brake as you can pick up speed very quickly. I’m not quite sure if I’ve found the path and so wade through the heather looking below me for any signs of breaks in the vegetation. I’m aware that everything that is happening feels like a metaphor for life. When you are off the path and wading through the vegetation you never quite know if there’s a dip in the landscape and you could lose your footing and go over on an ankle. Yet what is life without some risk-taking and heading off on our own?
I think I see the path slightly above me and so scramble up a few rocks, but when I look down towards the shore there is a very clear pathway down below me but I’m unsure whether that is the path that I walked in on.
As I turn around an outcrop two sheep look utterly shocked to see me, so I sit still for a while and let them run off. Soon they will be herded up from this land and boarded onto the boat which will take them to slaughter. My mind thinks of the traditions and beliefs of these islands were purposely erased as the people themselves were ripped from the land to make way for sheep. The grief must have been surmountable to have lived in these lands, rooted through countless generations only to be put on a boat and taken over an ocean to foreign lands. That feels almost too much for my heart to bear, and I cry as I look towards far away townships on Skye.
Everything seems so overwhelming right now and I’m at the same place where on my last trip I saw a lamb with a broken leg down on the shore, and the cries of its mother looking for it. I had gone down and carried the lamb up past the shore as she may well have drowned when the tide came in.
Then suddenly I was aware of a feeling of comfort, that felt very different from my uncertainty, and I knew it was outside of my own body. It felt like a beacon, a guide, someone to show me the path, to walk ahead of me so I could just follow. It was the most comforting feeling, it was as if the land itself was shapeshifting, morphing into an invisible but tangible figure.
The isles of the Hebrides are referred to as Brighid’s isles for she is a goddess woven into the fabric and the bedrock of these Islands.
I dried yet more tears, took a drink of water, and started walking. I wasn’t tired but knew that the little bubbles of thoughts rising to the surface were the things I overlooked, the things I took for granted, and yet they were the sources of healing that needed to be cherished, and to be carefully rewoven back in.
And so I got back to the trail and as I did I chanted, Brighid in front of me, Mary behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
Brighid in front of me, Mary Behind me.
With each step I chanted, I even tried to create a tune to the chant which came out like a TV commercial, which made me laugh. Here I was with an ancient Goddess leading the way and my grandmother’s sister behind me, and Catherine, my grandmother beside me. A holy trinity.
Banshee Art by Bart Willard - Click on image to hear her screech
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.
