Thanks you for offering to be a reader for my book. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. On this page you’ll find:

  • A brief synopsis of the book

  • Your commitment as a reader

Being a reader works by me sending you a draft chapter, which you print, along with a copy of the review sheet. Your role is to read the chapter and fill out the review questions, and email your form either as a word doc or copy and paste the questions, and your answers into the body of the email.

Not all the chapters are finished and so I’m hoping that having engaged readers will be the final push I need to finish the chapters within a specific timeframe. I could continue on exploring these stories for the rest of my life, but ti’s time to finish off writing them down and sharing them.

Reader Commitment

To help me commit to this final year of writing the book, I ask as a reader that you are able to commit to reading the chapter and email me your review sheet within three weeks. This date will be on your review sheet. I understand life gets in the way, but if your able to try and stick to this timeframe, this also helps me to both collating your insights as well as keep to my own writing schedule. If you arena able to do this please let me know.

About the Book

Some stories are part of folklore, handed down from generation to generation, stories that still live with us today and are actively shared and retold - such as stories of the Cailleach or the Goddess Brighid. What I’m interested in is what happened to the stories that stopped being shared, perhaps some stories with the death of a certain person, they might well have been the only person to tell a certain story, or perhaps some of these stories have never been told. I believe that there are stories in the land, and it takes a relationship with place for those stories to begin to speak to us.

Since I was wee I’ve been walking the local hills around Loch Lomond, and this book is about living with and engaging with these stories. Loch Lomond is the epicentre of the book, with some stretching out to west to encompass some Hebridean Islands, and one story takes place at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which I have still to visit.

Reclaiming these stories was a long process. They might start off with a feeling in a certain place on the land, in engaging with that feeling it shifts over the years to reveal a presence, which builds as you continue to build a relationship. Much like a human friend, there are ways to keep in touch with the land, and the spirits of that land, for we can stay connected through prayer, meditation or journeying through the worlds.

 
 

The Wheel of the Year

I am reluctant to use the phrasing of the Wheel of the Year, it being a neopagan invention, but it it is understood beyond this modern naming to include not just the Gaelic festivals but also the equinoxes and solstices, and it easily understood. The stories of the Ancestral Mothers are related to the energies of the land and so the wheel speaks to this, although I’ve also used the moon at those particular time of year.

The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland isn’t some ancient long-lost linage, they are figures in the land I have gotten to know. If you were to step out onto the same land, you might well meet other figures and have different stories.

Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland is journeying the wheel of the year and honoring those stories which have continued to our time as well as retelling stories that got lost.

Doll Making

Doll making helped me really explore the figures of the Ancestral Mothers. I found doll making around 2005, when I learned 3d needle felting from a teacher in Hot Springs, North Carolina. I only learned so I could lead a class she wasn’t able to give, little did I know what it was to become. My first doll was Breejah, a figure associate with the story of bear. My story of the wheel of the year begins at autumn, as we begin our decent into the dark of the year. Doll making allowed me to journey deep with each of these figures, to step between the worlds and learn from them.

“Jude’s depth and breadth of experience and knowledge as a woman, artist and scholar indigenous to the lands of the Ancestral Mothers inspires trust in the authenticity and wisdom of her teaching and guidance around the Wheel. Discovering Jude and her work has greatly enhanced and expanded my search for the path to my personal Ancestral Mothers and traditions. ”

“The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland course has touched and inspired my relationship with the world within me and with the world around me. The course is rich with stories, music, and art that take my spirit on a wondrous journey.” — Ann Rebecca Pierce Harrison

“The Ancestral Mothers of Scotland course has touched and inspired my relationship with the world within me and with the world around me. The course is rich with stories, music, and art that take my spirit on a wondrous journey.” — Regan Chandler Nelson

Synopsis of the Chapters

1 The Descending Moon / Autumn Eqinox

The full moon of Autumn Equinox beckons preparations for the dark of the year. To Breejah and the women of the Bear this means tending to the Cave of the Grandmothers and the rituals which herald the return of the great She bear, whose winter journey provided the first descent and return story.

 
 

2 Hag Eye Moon / Samhain

Samhain, the Gaelic festival of the dead, a time of honoring ancestors - our blood and bone ancestors and those lineages we have adopted or been adopted into. Samhain holds the story of the great Crone, the Cailleach who makes her way to the Cauldron of Corryvrecken to wash her great plaid. An age-old ritual in which she brings the land into winter. As she lifts her bleached shawl from the churning water, shaking it dry, lifting it up and around her shoulders the falling drops of water freeze instantly and turn the tops of the surrounding hills white with the first dusting of snow.

My relationship with the Cailleach is born through walking her land. In one story it is said that the Cailleach created Loch Lomond through spitting and so the hills that I have spent most of my life walking are her lands. When I was a kid my dad would take us walking up around the hills where we lived above Loch Lomond. When we got to the top of one of the hills - Carman Hill, I would sit ever so quietly, scrunching up my eyes and in my imagination, I would get rid of the roads and make all the cars disappear and then with a final blink the streets and the houses would go. I had always been fascinated with the idea of what this place looked like a long time ago, in a time before houses and roads. Then I would hold my breath, hoping I would see the old ones I knew used to live here, the ones from the time before the roads, cars and houses.

Even though I never saw those ancient people, I felt them. I felt the sense of the energies of the land, knew that this land was sacred and that on my favorite hill was a place where two worlds seemed to overlap - and that is only fitting for a place which is the lands of the oldest crone.

 
 

3 Antler Moon / Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice holds the story of the the Old Antlered One, an ancient towering, antlered skeletal figure. She brought life to these northern lands and was first honored by the people who followed herds of reindeer. Among those people were the women who wore antlers, the wise women of the clan and among them, she Who Runs With the Herd. Their rituals include gathering at a stone & bone shrine where they undertake their shapeshifting ritual, to take reindeer form and run with the herd.

My journey towards an antlered female began many years ago, and a vision of a great antlered being, who I believe might well be the deity that the people who traveled through these lands honored. Finding her story felt as if it was left behind, much like all the geological evidence around which tells us about when this land was covered by glaciers.

The festival of Imbolc welcomes Brighid back into the world. With her return Brighid brings hope and as an activist hers is an active hope rooted in action. Among all of Brighid’s traditions and rites I work with her gift of Keening, of lamenting - a tradition Brighid brought to the world. This chapter explores my relationship to Brighid as well as my journey with keening.

 
 

Spring Equinox marks the emerging from the dark of the year, the ritual of looking back at our time in the deep and deciding what stays there and what we move forward with. To our earliest ancestors seeing bears emergence from the cave would have been an auspicious sight. To comes across a bear in hibernation you might well think she was dead with her low heartbeat and slow breathing. And yet she comes back to life, and as she does the land magically starts to awake and bear often gives birth in hibernation and so she emerges not just coming back to life but with new life in the form of cubs by her side. In the story of myth - descent, deep and return - Spring Equinox symbolizes the great return.

 
 

6 Selkie Moon / Bealtain

The time of Bealtain on the Ancestral Mothers calendar is honored on the 1st crescent of the waxing moon. This moon explores Cee-al, who lived in Scotland in the Mesolithic, connected to the isle of Oronsay and the great shell middens. Hers is a story connected to the seal people, her mysteries around honoring our wild self, reading the landscape and the tale of the Selkie-Skin.

7 Gathering Moon / Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice offers us the longest day and the shortest night. In these northern lands it barely gets dark, and the land is bathed in the magical wash of long lingering twilights. It’s by the light of twilight that we can almost see the unseen, faces in the cliffs become visible. The Ancestral Mothers are celebrated int he stories of the ‘Big Women’, the female warriors and tales from the Western Isles. It’s about connection community, taking time to step outside of patriarchy and dream new ways of being and organizing how to put those plans into action.

 
 

8 Talon Moon / Lunastal

Late summer is a time of being under the wing of Talieasker. A bird woman who is far more eagle than human. Hers is a ritual of excarnation, of tearing the flesh from the bodies, a ritual where the dead were left out in sky burials for the raptors to clean. I met this figure on the Isle of Eigg, by a huge eagle shaped rock called the Eagle’s Primotory by a curious place called the Oracle’s Chamber. Taliesaker’s rite, for the who seek her in this out of the way place, is to lie you down, lull you into a place between the worlds before she performs her ritual, which often involves the metaphorical ripping away of accumulated, unwanted ayers. Not a ritual for the faint hearted.


So that’s it - let me know if you’re up for reviewing the book. I’ll be sharing the Summer Solstice chapter this week.

Jude x