Registration for the 2023 retreat has now closed
2024 Retreat Launch Event - Sunday 10th September
Registration for this retreat has now closed. It will be happening next year on Saturday 25th may - Sat 1st June 2024. You can sign up below for our 2024 retreat launch happening on Sunday 10th September.
The launch event will offer:
A virtual tour of the island
The retreat itinerary
An introduction to the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland
An early bird registration discount of 10% (offered this night only)
An opportunity to ask questions
Details of the 2023 Retreat:
Midwifing the soul is a pilgrimage to Eilean Nam Ban Mora (the Isle of Eigg), also known as the Isle of the Big Women. It is an island nestled in the Inner Hebrides which are known as the Isles of Brighid, a Goddess who is very much a midwife of the soul, associated with midwives bringing new life into the world as we leave this world at death and transformations which take place on the thresholds of life.
While we live in a time of great loss our culture is one which is both grief phobic and death denying. In this week retreat we will honor grief as an integral part of life. We’ll consider the many small deaths and rebirths in our lives and this retreat offers an opportunity to embrace our Big Woman selves through ritual and art.
Perhaps, like me, you’ve often felt an ancient longing, whose roots are found in the great forgetting of our age. This retreat is tailored to feed that longing through art, story and ritual.
‘Brighid in Front of Me’. Digital art by Jude Lally
“We must restore the healing ground of grief. We must find the courage once again, to walk it’s wild edge’. ”
This retreat allows space for grief and a keening circle is an opportunity to honor the losses in our life, to weave together the individual threads of grief that we carry. This space welcomes the entire range of emotions from anger and rage, to despair and apathy.
There is an invitation to keen for the state of the planet, for both human and land injustices as well as honoring bird, animals and plants, those which are both nearing extinction and those which are gone forever on Scottish land.
We gather in the Western Isles at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, on the threshold of what was once the known world, at the most northern edge of Europe. A lot of our week takes place is in the liminal, a foot in this world and a foot in the otherworld. Brighid, the Goddess of these isles is a threshold Goddess - on the cusp of many things, from transformation and the hope and courage that takes through that change.
Twilight, is a time that isn’t quite day and not quite night, it’s a place where magic resides. With hours of light once the sun has gone down, twilight washes the land in a magical glow and it is in this threshold that the land becomes alive, that you clearly see the faces in the rock and the outline of the woman in the landscape. Twilight is a magical time, where stories are born - a perfect time to step into these thin places and speak to the spirits of place, and ask the old ones for their wisdom.
Becoming Stone. Sitting by the Well of the Holy Women
“The imagination awakens the wildness of the heart. It returns us to our native wildness, to the natural and seamless fluency of our own nature”
Our soul has never forgotten that we are nature, the very substance of our very bodies was formed in ancient stars. The split between ourselves and the world only exists in our mind. We will honor our wild nature as we walk around the island feeling rain showers, singing the magic of twilight, as our hearts soar with the sight of an eagle and the splash of a breaching dorsal fin.
Part of that wild nature is our greater selves, our soul selves in which we journey between the worlds. A trance dance is the invitation to set intentions and dance between the worlds - asking the ancestors, the spirits of place for their insight and wisdom.
The Uk being one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet and has led the world in destroying the natural environment 10% of retreat funds will be donated to Scottish charities working to support Scottish wildlife such as the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust.
Dolls by Jude Lally
Midwifing the soul is a tending to matters of the soul, perhaps a birthing or rebirthing. It is a practice which asks our attention to both the birth and death of things. You are invited to gather all these threads of thoughts and intentions and create a doll which speaks to your soul’s journey through life.
Your doll might speak to your experience on the island, and your conversation with place. It might hold details of the important births and deaths in your life, initiations and thresholds - from personal goals to natural rites, such as the rite of menopause and the path we begin in becoming crone.
Your doll making begins with a pre-made wire armature form which you will breathe life into with fabrics, wool and gifted objects from the land and is imbued with story.
RITUAL
We will mark our week with simple gestures of ritual
Welcoming blessing at the Well of the Holy Women
Creating art on the beach representing our sorrows and hopes
Ritual at the Loch of the Big Women
Cailleach doll with deer from the Isle of Rum
FOLKLORE & STORYTELLING
Throughout the week I’ll share stories of the island, as well as each person sharing parts of their story.
Big Women of Eigg
Queen of Moidart’s warriors and St Donnan
Scathatch, the warrior of the neighboring isle of Skye.
Goddess Brighid, as Mary of the Gael
Resident Orca from the Hebridean pod with with the Isle of Eigg in the background. Photo for source – Wilderness Scotland. White Tailed Sea Eagle © James West/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
WILDLIFE
We will be on the lookout for our more than human neighbours - perhaps we’ll see a glimpse of
An otter on the shore at twilight heading to fish
The impressive form of a Golden or Sea eagle
Maybe we’ll spot dolphins or a minke whale, or even orca on the ferry journey or from the shore
We will also be on the lookout for close lying islands for seals
Creating a Cailleach on the shore - awaiting the coming tide
ART
Dollmaking - speaking to your souls journey
Art on the beach
Weaving - representing the grief we carry
Loch of the Big Women
SACRED SITES
You will walk the land visiting sacred sites, offering gestures of ritual as you begin to weave a relationship with this place. You’ll visit several sacred sites such as the
Hill of the Cailleach
Loch of the Big Women
Well of the Holy Women
Sheela na Gig
CONTEMPLATIVE TIME
Most importantly you will have time for rest - enriching rest in gentle walking, reading and taking in the views. You will have time for yourself, time to read, draw or just be. Time to head off alone and sit in a new favorite place and have conversations with the island.
“A wonderful retreat blending wild Scottish landscape, good health and spiritual exploration of ancient female power. Powerful dreams and visions gained through this work & land enabled me to carry out a ritual which I feel in my bones healed a deep scarring in my female lineage. I am still connected to the stone I planted into the Island’s soil and on challenging days I see through its eyes and am reminded of who I really am. Lengthy walks, delicious conscious eating, and sincere mindful women made this a life-changing experience.”
“Jude Lally is an excellent facilitator leading us on a journey to meet the ancestral mothers and to find their strength within ourselves. Through journeying, hill walking, storytelling and doll making her style is gentle and the schedule is relaxed, which was exactly what I needed. The food was nutritious and fortifying to enable our important exploration of the island. The women were each amazing and a delight to be with from the first moment to the last. Through walking the hills I made such connections to the land and nature on Eigg. I knew this retreat would be life-changing, but I didn’t know how. I find that I have so much more confidence and determination with the ability to handle higher levels of stress in a calm way than I did before. This is a life-changing adventure that you don’t want to miss!”
“Jude’s depth of understanding and passion for the stories of the ancestral mothers inspired me to want to know more and connect more deeply with them. As the retreat progressed I felt myself connecting more and more with each passing day.
I particularly enjoyed connecting with the Big Women through making my doll, feeling her coming alive more and more to where I felt the spirit of the ancestral mothers both in her and in myself. The retreat offered me a richer and deeper understanding of where I’ve been and new inspiration and vision for where I want to go.”
“Jude is so much more than tour guide and retreat leader. Her connection to Eigg – the island and its residents – deepened and grounded my soul-expanding experience. All the while, Jude deftly handled the practical and complex tasks of leading a retreat, while providing a relaxed, trustworthy container throughout the week where personal transformation, and even magic, took place.
Our stay on Eigg was a satisfying balance of communal time and individual contemplative time. Through Jude’s weaving of academic and mythopoetic history – derived from her years of study and her creative re-imagining old stories and song into our contemporary world – the island became imbued with the feeling that the Ancestral Mothers on Eigg are alive and energetically powerful. And sometimes playfully mischievous. ”
Laig Bay - Photo by Brenda Sweeney
Your Guide
Jude has been visiting the Isle of Eigg for over 20 years and has formed deep ties with the land and friendships with the islanders. As an artist and writer with a background in Human Ecology her work explores connection to the land through art, story and ritual.
A Radical Doll Maker viewing her art as part of a practice that stretches back to the first dolls fashioned from bones and stones – such as the Woman of Willendorf. She uses dolls as a way of connecting to ancestral figures and exploring the wisdom they represent. As a painter her work is born between the worlds and she creates ancestral figures whose images incorporate local soils.
Through Cultural Activist she draws upon the rich tapestry of her heritage offering ancestral practices such as Keening, which when used in a modern setting can help to honor the grief we feel for all that is happening in the world. In using keening in this cathartic way she uses gestures of ritual which help inspire to work in creative ways in acts of resistance, working towards a restorative culture.
Her tradition is the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland which is born out of her deep rooted connection to the land. She lives on the West Coast of Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, near Loch Lomond.