We launch the 2027 Pilgrimages in early October 2026
We have two pilgrimages this year:
June - Saturday 19th - Sat 26th
August Monday 2nd - Monday 9th August
A sneek peek from the pilgrimage page
A Blessing by Antlers
This is our beginning ritual, in reclaiming keening we also leave room for what else has been suppressed of ourselves by living in a patriarchal culture. This is a blessing and remembering of our wild self, the part who has been told to be quiet, to not speak out. This is the part of us who knows a holy rage, and is deeply in tune with older rthymns.
This is a ritual performed in devotional costume, at the edge of the shore.
Taking the Veil
Taking the veil is a ritual of acknowledging of wearing veils as a gesture of honouring the keening woman, acknowledging that grief is holy, and that community is necessary for grief work, as we were never meant to grieve alone.
It is also a ritual of a community contrainer, not just with everyone gathered, but a circle which welcomes ancestors, connects to the Ancestral Mothers, nature, spirits of place and acts as a catalyst for you to remember that you too are nature, and that in reclaiming keening, we are rooting ourselves in the ancient spiritual bedrock of both the land, and tradition.
Your Guide
Jude has been visiting the Isle of Eigg for over 25 years, forming deep connections with both the land and the island community. As an artist and writer with a background in Human Ecology her work explores the intersection of story, art and how ritual can nurture a strong relationship with place, and also provide a map to our grieving process.
Reclaiming keening is inspired an age-old old indigenous grief ritual. Jude’s approach is rooted in the ancient spiritual bedrock of the keening tradition, explored through creative ritual and keening circles. Together, these rituals and keening circles make space to explore and to hopefully beginning the transformation of grief.
The practice of reclaiming keening is in rooting grief, using creativity such as doll making or weaving, which provide easy to explore grief symbolically. Art holds the shape, colour and symbols of our grief story and so can be used as a tool, a starting point to talk about our grief.
Reclaiming Keening is also an act of resistance. Patriarchy thrives on control, which includes the control of grief through limiting how emotions are expressed, the medicalisation of death, and the loss of communal mourning. When grief is silenced, it becomes a tool of social control. To reclaim grief is a form of activism, allowing us to reconnect with indigenous grief traditions, to normalise grief as part of life, and to challenge the stigma around emotional expression.
Jude Lally gained her MSc Master’s Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and lives on the West Coast of Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, near Loch Lomond. She is currently writing her first book, Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers.