The Path of the Ancestral Mothers is a journey I began many years ago. Walks around the hills of Loch Lomond introduced me to the Old Crone the Cailleach. Over the years, I have developed a relationship with figures I’ve met on the land, locally and sometimes heading off to Islands I felt urged to visit.

While the year long subversive is currently closed, you can join me on this journey via my Substack newsletter.

The Descending Moon

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.

Hag Eye Moon

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.

The Old Antlered One - Doll by Jude Lally

Antler Moon

Winter Solstice holds the story of the the Old Antlered One, and 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.

Digital Art by Jude Lally

Kindling Moon

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.

Bear Returns Moon

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.

Seal Skin Moon

The time of Beltane on the Ancestral Mothers calendar is honored on the 1st crescent of the waxing moon. This moon honors the Ancestral Mother 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.

Gathering Moon

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’ - of 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.

Talon Moon

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.