CULTURAL ACTIVISM

Cultural practices have developed to help us navigate and function in the world. I grew up with thin threads of Celtic traditions, threads that were once held in the weave of a rich tapestry which offered rituals and practices for all manner of events and daily interactions with this world and the Otherworld. What happens to a culture when those traditions are eroded, are chipped away by church and state until society itself looks at them as being backwards and irrelevant.

My Cultural Activism is fostered by my relationship to the land, through a a digging down into the spiritual bedrock, inspired by ancient traditions and adding new stories to them so we can adapt them for our needs today.

TAPROOT APPROACH

My approach in doing this is in working with the Taproot. Digging down to the spiritual bedrock of the land which holds the inspiration, where the stories are rooted and engaging with them through ritual and creativity. Renewing and inspiring ourselves through this process in which we are fed and nourished by ancestral wisdom giving us tools and the creativity to work and live in ways rooted in the earth rather than the patriarchal and capitalist view of the world and her resources.

An example of using such a tradition is keening, a tradition in which the Bean Chaointe (Keening Woman) led a community through their grief and guided the departed soul, back home to the Otherworld. I use keening today to help express grief, anxiety and panic for all that is happening to the world and the state of the planet. These worries can overwhelm us and so I use keening as a cathartic release, to step out of fears stronghold through voicing those fears and coming back to ourselves through small gestures of ritual that help us engage and commit to world again.

Ancestral Connection

Ancestral Connection

The threads of Celtic traditions I was brought up with definitely inspired me, and my greatest love will always be the land itself. Being in the hills is always a great foraging adventure, looking for stories with an ear to the ground and a foot int he Otherworld. What little tradition I was brought up with did inspire me. I call my culture the culture of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland, figures I have met while out walking the land, relationships forged over decades.

The Cailleach was the first figure that came into my life, she was the voice I heard when I would head up the hills when I was wee. From the Isle of Eigg come stories of the Big Women and from the Oracle’s Chamber, and the great eagle rock outcropping I got to know a figure more eagle than human. From the Isle of Colonsay are stories of folks from the Mesolithic, and Cee-al a woman tuned to the wisdom of the seals. The Old Antlered One is an ancient figure honored by the people who followed herds of reindeer and Breejah, a woman of the Bear people.

These relationships are my spiritual bedrock and when engaging with creativity and ritual can empower us on our paths.