Come take a journey with me through the dark of the year. We begin at Samhain and end before the Spring Equinox.

It’s a journey exploring the ancestral mothers, the ones who keened and lamented, the ones who led the souls of the dead home to the otherworld. Even i the lands which make up the UK there has been many cutures with widly varying views on death, ancestral veneration and views of the otherworld. We don’t know all the answers to these stories but we can lean in listen to stories, explore them in our mind and art.

The Bone Mothers

Who are the bone mothers

3 x logo figures

We have many ancestors - some our blood ancestors, those whose names we know and some we lived with - then there’s our bone ancestors the ones so distant we barely know where they came from and no nothing of their daily lives. Then there is our animal kin plants and nature and our adopted lines, for me that is doll making and keening.

Gather in community on Zoom for 6 sessions - weaving in threads of interest:

• The Ancestral Mothers - stories of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland from the Cailleach, She Who Runs with the Herd, to the Goddess Brighid.

• Rooting Grief - small practices to ground grief and ritual excercise prompt

• Create a grief poppet doll

• Keening Women inspiration - While a lot of our inspiration is from the Bone Mothers, the pre-Christian roots of keening, we will also listen to some of the very last keening songs to be sung and recorded

Rooting Grief - A grief tending practice.

Reclaiming grief isn’t just about keening circles, it’s a the active practice of rooting grief, a grief tending practice allowing us to normalise grief and grief conversations, an essential part of life, which our ancestors fully understood.

The dark of the year was a time where our ancestors spent time by the fire, telling stories, engaging in ritual, music and dance. By communing ogether (even over Zoom) we can relight the spark of these ancient ones, letting their inspiration into our lives, in our grief tending practices.

Conversations around Death and Dying

Doll Making

Inspired by the ancient figures from the Woman of Holle Fells, the Woman of Willendorf and all the fur and bone, stick and stone dolls which held prayers and intentions but by dispersed by the wind and rain - you are invited to make a clay or fimo clay small figurine.

Instructions provided with some rather special inspiration from the Woman of Mal’ta and a trance posture ritual (from the culture, now Russia, dated to 22,000 - 20,000 years old).

Journeying Through the Dark of the Year with the Bone Mothers