Why Women are Signing Up for The Cailleach Circle

Why Women are Signing Up For the Cailleach Course

“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 

                        
I've asked several women why they have signed up for the Cailleach Circle and almost all shared the same answer - stories! 

Life doesn't seem possible without stories, in fact, I don't even think that's possible. We are wired for stories, we have ears to take in the words and imagination to set the scene and bring the characters to life.

Here are 3 reasons why women are signing up for the Cailleach Circle: 

1. Stories of the Cailleach
- Women have shared that they want to hear the folklore of the Cailleach
- Hear the stories that have been told and passed down through the generations
- Each month we will explore a story through art and ritual

2. Stories of Self 
- Folks have also shared that they want to learn the wisdom of the Cailleach
- How they can use it and integrate it into their lives
- You’ll fully engage with these stories, by exploring what questions emerge 

3. Sharing Stories 
- To meet monthly with the same group of women
- Share your own stories and listen to other people's stories
- Create a web of listening and learning, inspiring one another, and exploring those threads through art and ritual. 

You still have time to join us as registration closes tomorrow
(Thursday 14th October) at midnight

Click below to read more about the Circles and for sign up

An Evening with the Cailleach

Cailleach, Luss Hills, Loch Lomond - Digital art by Jude Lally

If you missed our evening with the Cailleach, the replay is now available via the Sisterhood of the Antlers course, sign up link below

Cailleach Circle Introduction with: 

• A short introduction to the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland

• Cailleach film

• How to connect to the Cailleach

• An overview of Cailleach Stories featured in both Cailleach Circles

• Guided meditation & music

• Considering your intention for the deep

REGISTRATION FOR BOTH CAILLEACH CIRCLES CLOSES ON THURSDAY 14TH OCTOBER

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Cailleach Circle 2 opens up this week. All those signed up will receive an email to join the course

7 Reasons to Join the Cailleach Circle

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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 which is 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, one way is doll making. You’ll create your very own doll which will speak of your relationship to the Cailleach as well as exploring the path to becoming a Cailleach (old woman), wherever you may be on that path.

4. Ritual

You’ll be invited to create small gestures of ritual which speak to the essence of the stories you are working with, and what meaning they hold for you.

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 will be invited to make an altar, a focus for some aspect of the Cailleach’s story that resonated with you. We don’t need to analyze this, is something done with our senses, that part of us that hears whispers in the thresholds. This can be an inside altar but also in gathering some natural items outside.

7. Community

There are several ways to engage with our Circle Community - from the online course website where you can chat and upload images to a dedicated Facebook Page as well as a monthly Zoom gathering - choose what suits you or use all 3.

Five Reasons to Sign up for Creating a Meaningful Menopause

‘The Cave of the Grandmothers’

by Jude Lally

1. Community

Menopause can be tough. One day you’re sailing along thinking you have got a handle on it and then BOOM! Something unexpected and the ground yet again shifts beneath our feet.

This isn’t something we should have to go through alone. Women have told me that they want to hear other women’s stories, and tell our stories. Within the course, we meet via a Zoom gathering and when the course is completed there is the opportunity to meet Dark Moon Gatherings

2. Reinvent Yourself 

I look at menopause as an opportunity for change. Often much wanted but never got around to change. After all, menopause is ‘the change’ and we can work on who we want to become as we engage with this physical, emotional, and spiritual journey.

3. Ritual & Ceremony

Viewing menopause as a rite of passage gives us the opportunity to really engage - to go through the descent, the deep and emerging - just like the journey of the caterpillar into Butterfly. We can use ritual to speak to explore the things that come up and many women celebrate with a ceremony such as a Croning Ceremony. I’ll be sharing two women's stories of Croning Ceremonies and ideas if you wish to have your own.

4. Call the Midwife 

All this change isn’t easy, it takes work. Yet this natural change gives us the opportunity for a rebirth, to quote Ursula Le Guinn, we need to give birth to ourselves and so we call on a midwife to help us through this. There’s lots of inspiration in the course to help pick this diety, ancestor of Goddess figure such as figures from Celtic folklore such as the Goddess Brighid or the Cailleach. Just think of going through the ‘change’ with the Cailleach as your midwife!

5. Becoming Crone 

Ultimately, if we are lucky enough, the path we begin in menopause will lead us to crone. She is not someone who is valued in our society, and so we submerge ourselves in exploring the wisdom of the crone, her liminal position with her otherworld connections, and explore birth, death, and rebirth as we go through this transformational process.

Creating a Meaningful Menopause - Your Questions Answered

Many thanks to the folks who got back to me, glad to hear this is a journey I'm not going to be doing alone. I thought I'd share five of the questions I received: 

1. A few folks who had said they were post-menopausal were wondering what they could get from the course. 

Let me let a previous student (of the pilot course) answer that question: 

When I signed up for the menopause course, I hadn’t bled in a decade. I had never talked to anyone about my experience. I had no idea if what I had experienced was “normal”, and wished I didn’t have such a negative attitude about being post-menopausal. Jude’s course had a community of women at all stages of menopause. It was great to hear them share where they were on the path, their wide variety of experiences, and to reframe my own recollections. I was able to change my view and embrace that I was holding a different kind of life-blood, wiser and nurturing with time. I came away with a sense of richness for being among women who are not made small by this transformation.

So yes, this course is relevant for wherever you are on this menopausal journey. 

2. Here's what community the course offers: 
- Online course website with the course material - plus a place to share your thoughts and feedback
- Zoom gathering for each lesson. 
- Dedicated Facebook page, a place where we can share more of our own thoughts as well as articles, etc 
- The community keeps going even after the course finishes. You'll be invited to join me each month for a 'Dark Moon' gathering 


3. What's your big picture on menopause?

I loved this question! 

• The very core of the course is viewing menopause as a rite of passage. The way I approach this is inspired by the Wheel of the Year and the stories of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland.

• This rite of passage is broken down into 3 parts, the descent(peri-menopause), the deep (menopause), and emerging (post-menopause). When we look at it this way we can easily relate it to the festivals of the Wheel of the Year in the dark of the year.

4. Do you get into the biology and treatments for menopause? 

The answer is partial as this is primarily a course whose aim is to give meaning to menopause through story. There is a section called Radical Self Care in which we look at hot flushes (as the most common experienced aspect) as a case study - exploring: 

• Experience - What does it feel like

• Biology - What's going on?

• Story - Giving it a story eg. Some women say a power surge, I relate it to a powerful prayer evoked with the Goddess Brighid

• Ally - What helps. Help with side effects and plant power

We also look at the reasons why we might get angry and look at theories that describe a literal rewiring of the brain is happening. 

5. When does the course launch? 

Registration opens on Tuesday and I'll be sharing the course page with all the details of the course including scholarships. 

So keep an eye out for Tuesday's email - and sign up below if you’re not already on the mailing list.

Thanks,

The Cure For Menopause

Ok, I lied, that was a bit misleading, there is no cure for menopause. Menopause isn't an illness but there really are two things I've found which really help, which I'll share later in this email.

I always thought of menopause as a far-off thing, not that I had ever really given it much thought. Then I experienced a ‘wake-up’ call, which resulted in a series of Dr’s appointments, lab tests - when weeks later I realized that all I really needed was some plant-based estrogen cream. 

After my rough awakening into menopause, I began to look around online, to give this rite of passage meaning and purpose. Disappearing, becoming invisible and irrelevant is something I’m prepared to do. 

I checked Facebook groups where folks just seemed to be complaining and debating HRT (not that I condone anyone's choice) but that just wasn’t what I was looking for. I found a few anthologies which shared stories of women’s experiences and realized that community was something I really needed. To share with other women who were going through similar experiences. 

Slowly it dawned on me that I had to create something that other women might be interested in as we journeyed together on this path to becoming crone. 

TWO ESSENTIAL THINGS FOR MENOPAUSE 

I see two essential things for menopause - story and community. 

Community to listen, learn, share and recognize we aren’t alone and, stories which connect us to a powerful rite of passage and the power of the crone, a figure who holds the transformational energy of birth, death, and rebirth. Plus the opportunity for us to write our own individual menopause stories. 

How do you view menopause, is this something that you are interested in as next week I am launching my ‘Creating a Meaningful Menopause’ course in which we’ll: 

* Choose a midwife fire to work with
*Explore ritual and ceremony in honoring this rite of passage and also speaking to and addressing parts of this physical, emotional, and spiritual journey
*Consider real self-care, what are you good at, what could you improve on, and what are the things you just completely ignore

PLUS

Art projects
Guided meditations
Doll making
And working with symbols that reflect our personal experience and invite us into that liminal realm, the place where the magic happens.  

I hope you might be interested in joining me on this journey...

Change, A Banshee and Menopause

CHANGE, A BANSHEE, AND MENOPAUSE

It's humid, it's hot and humid, so hot and humid that last night there was condensation on the outside of the windows.
Last night as I packed up a Banshee doll ready for her journey around the world to Australia I took a minute to say goodbye.

It is said that banshees were connected to great Irish families. It's also said that the names of those families (beginning with Ó) vary with the teller of the tale, so I'll go ahead and include mine - Ó Maolalaidh). Does making your own Banshee count? Perhaps not but my family has been in the West Coast of Ireland for hundreds and hundreds of generations (DNA analysis by Brian Sykes).

As I laid her out to wrap in tissue paper I heard a blood-curdling cry, coyotes with their hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising yips and yelps. Then another alarm raised with the blazing sirens of several fire trucks and ambulances racing into the night. This started off the neighborhood dogs whose calls were added to by the mournful call of a faraway freight train.

These cries were all laments, a keening that spread into the night like wildfire, jumping from tree to tree, spreading out through underground root systems - but just like the Banshee’s Cry, this call intended for human ears, for she is announcing death, a million innocent deaths, and each a needless death.

I imagine her raising the cry as she travels through each country - and the world replying with a grieving, wailing, raging, rebelling, and committing heart and soul to the planet.

THE REPORT  
Among all the stark findings within the just-released IPPC Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was the unequivocal fact that the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900.

When this figure is averaged out over the next 20 years the global temperature is then expected to reach, or possibly exceed a warming of 1.5°C.

While carbons sinks have played a huge role in absorbing excess C02 they are reaching saturation. Because of uncertainty over ice sheets, scientists cannot rule out a total rise of two meters by 2100 in a worst-case emissions scenario. With so much excess water entering the oceans this is in danger of affecting the Gulf Stream, which is responsible for keeping Scotland wet and not too hot and not too cold, a shift in this stream could have huge effects on Scotland.

But one thing the report did say is that it isn’t too late to stop the worst of the warming.

As I read the summarized report findings I could feel a hot flush race through me. I am beginning ’the change’, women going through this metamorphism become invisible and irrelevant in our society, yet society has forgotten the power of the Crone.

CREATING A MEANINGFUL MENOPAUSE

As I read the summarized report findings I could feel a hot flush race through me. I am beginning ’the change’, women going through this metamorphism become invisible and irrelevant in our society, yet society has forgotten the power of the Crone.

I am walking the path, towards crone as I go through this natural rite of passage. I want to gather women so we can tell each other powerful stories, learn of helpful allies and celebrate this crone journey. We have trained all our life to be the crones that the world needs, the wise women that gather to tend to a world in crisis.

To create a meaningful menopause is to throw out that story of the irrelevant crone, send our roots down deep into an ancient spiritual bedrock and sustain ourselves with stories of hags and folklore, give ourselves a new empowering story and do this together in community.

All these materials are wrapped up in a new online course which will be launching in early September, in which we will:

• Exploring menopause as a transformational journey - a rite of passage and a mythic journey

• Calling on a midwife - Choosing a midwife figure, creating a midwife doll & tales of cultures who honored this rite

• Create your own rite of passage -w with examples of women’s ceremonies, and ritual

• Engage in this sacred journey as one of descent, the deep, and the return

• Consider what it really means to ‘Becoming Crone’ and how we can embody these qualities
  
  

Plus exploring all of this through:

 ART PROJECTS

DOLL MAKING

DOWNLOADABLE COURSE WORKBOOK

SUGGESTIONS OF RITUAL

GUIDED MEDITATIONS

COMMUNITY

How is your experience of engaging with menopause? 

Summer Solstice on the Path of the Ancestral Mothers

How do you celebrate Summer Solstice?

I’m often in the western isles of Scotland, Islands on which hold stories of warrior women.

Twilight

Scottish summer draws you into the half light of twilight, it’s no longer day but not quite night, a place where magic resides. It’s time where you can clearly see the woman’s face in the cliff, her profile in the outline of the hill.

A Time Out of Patriarchy

It’s a time to gather, to be in community, to celebrate and to work together. It’s a time to step outside of patriarchy and dream big and turn those dreams into tangible actions and plans.

Relationship With the Land

It’s a time to honor the land under your feet. To explore whose land is it, if it stolen land how do you personally engage with those who were forcibly removed from the land?

How do you honor place, tell the stories born of the land and just as portent how do you listen? How do you create relationship with this place and in a world which is so nature deficient help rewild both place and aspects of yourself?

Stories to Inspire

It’s also a time to tell the story of female warriors,

Our Summer Solstice free online Gathering will take place on Friday 25th June, 7pm - just sign up for the mailing list and you’ll receive the Zoom invitation in next week’s newsletter,

• You’ll also get to hear about new online courses and have the option to be first to sign up

• Always get a preview of what’s heading into the monthly shop update and an invitation to browse before the shop update goes live for everyone else

• First opportunity to sign up for workshops and the Ancestral Mothers Retreat which we hope to be offering again in 2022

Warrior’s shield with symbols of the Ancestral Mothers

Art & Ritual

It’s also a time to take all of this inspiration, to listen to each other’s stories and to weave it into form - to create art that speaks to all of this, painting, shaping clay, doll making or collage. Adorning our warrior’s shield!

Beltane Gathering. Sisterhood of the Antlers

Beltane Gathering of the Sisterhood of the Antlers

Come join me tomorrow evening, Friday 23rd April, 7pm Eastern (12 am Saturday 24th if you’re in Ireland or the UK) for some stories around the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland.

I'll be sharing:

• A trip to the Hebridean isle of Oronsay to visit the Mesolithic shell middens

• Guided meditation with Cee-al, women of the Seal people

• A small gesture of ritual

How to Attend the Gathering

Sign up for the mailing list (link below), I'll send out the Zoom invitation on Friday Morning

If you're already on the mailing list (or joined the Sisterhood of the Antlers course - then your all set and will get the invitation.

The Story of the Cailleach Stone

The Cailleach stone stands on the side of a hill under a granny Scots Pine Tree. Who is guardian to whom I'm not quite sure?

The story goes that there was once a woman who lived at the edge of the village and it's said that in order to find the answers to the questions people sought her out for - that she could shapeshift and take the form of any creature she wished - black cat, raven, and screeching owl.

Her house is long gone and so has the village but her tale remains in the curious standing stone. Seemingly this old crone still walks the hills and shapeshift out of her stone form on the very last crescent of the waning moon.

It is said that if you hide at the bottom of the hill, and the sky is clear with shining stars you might just see her emerging out of the stone.

It is a tradition that there is always a wooden staff by the stone for when she shapeshifts back into her human form she is so old and bent that she needs the staff. And if you are brave enough to be there on the last crescent moon, and the staff is in the right place, she might, just might answer the question you ask of her.

Click on the Etsy logo to visit her in my shop