Activating Ancestral Embodiment in Business

For this blog, I share a golden nugget of a podcast that I was a guest speaker on recently - the Feminine Business School podcast with the phenomenal Ainslie Young, an award-winning Feminine Embodiment Coach and Business Mentor.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you may sense that feminist business is a huge driver for me as a woman business owner. I am always in search of inspiring leaders in this field to support and motivate me in doing business from a feminine perspective. Ainslie is one of these leaders.

The Feminine Business School podcast is a rare show, where I can say I’ve listened to every episode. In a previous life, I spent 14 years heading up the education and innovation programmes in a large Irish human rights organisation. The work was incredible but the way of operating was hyperproductive. I did the whole ‘Lean In’ thing and I burned out.

Over and over again.

When I launched the Celtic School of Embodiment, I could not risk this same behavioural pattern and so, I’ve been incredibly intentional in how I work. Ainslie has been an immense source of wisdom here demonstrating how we can create wildly successful and pleasurable businesses without burning out our bodies and selling out our values.

So when Ainslie asked me to be a guest speaker on the Feminine Business School podcast to take a deep dive into Activating Ancestral Embodiment in Business, my response was a full-bodied hell YES!

Ainslie is also a member of our Celtic Woman’s Voyage programme so we have the delight of journeying through the Celtic Calendar together in sacred sisterhood.

In this interview you’ll hear Ainslie and myself explore:

++  How connecting to your Mythical Ancestors can deeply support you and your business (or indeed your work ethic if you are not a business owner)

++ The beautiful and poignant myth about the selkie, the shapeshifting seal woman, which is extremely relevant to women in business today, and showcases distinct parallels with the hypermasculine/hyperproductive world we live and work in

++ The fascinating connection between the ‘Witch Wound’ and the vilification of women’s wealth in the context of Ireland’s first witch trial

++ How I partner with a Guiding Goddess/’Patroness’ of my business and the three things I do each day to weave pleasure into my work and all that I create

Trust me, there is something for everyone in this episode!

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Bealtaine (Beltane) Magic

We are fast approaching Bealtaine (or Beltane) in the northern hemisphere, and Samhain in the south. On Celtic lands, this is a thin time when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is almost translucent. And so, for this fortnight’s Musing from the Otherworld, I share five Bealtaine customs or rites.

1.Bealtaine is a Fire Festival

Bealtaine ("Bee-yowl-tan-eh") is the Irish word for the month of May. It is thought to derive from the god Bel or Belenus, a pan-Celtic deity meaning 'bright' or 'shining', and the Gaeilge word tine ("tin-eh"), meaning 'fire'. So 'Bright Fire'. Another possibility is that it comes from béal ("bale") meaning 'mouth' in Gaeilge and again tine, 'fire', so 'Mouth of Fire'.

The Celtic year was divided between dark and light. It likely began at Samhain (the Irish word for the month of November) in the darkness, as all life begins. Six months unfold in the dark half of the year, until at Bealtaine, at May, the Celtic Wheel turned towards the light half of the year.

The fire festival at Samhain, now celebrated as Halloween marks our entry into the darkness. The fire festival at Bealtaine marks our entry into the light.

Darkness and light are held in equal value. Both are a necessary part of human life.

Bealtaine at Uisneach by Anthony Murphy

2.Bealtaine is Celebrated at Uisneach

The ancient Dindshenchas, the ‘Lore of Places’, tells us that on Bealtaine an immense fire was lit by the druid of Míde (Meath) on the Hill of Uisneach in modern-day County Westmeath. Uisneach is known as the naval point of Éire, the island’s sacred centre.

All regional household fires were first extinguished and a small number of pre-ceremony fires were lit. These fires would be kindled from the wood of the sacred druidic trees; Oak, Hazel, Holly, Apple, Pine, Ash and Yew, and the flames from the seven trees used to light the great Bealtaine fire on Uisneach. Once this fire was lit, it was a visible signal to ignite fires on surrounding hills, creating a blazing spiral across the land.

This symbolised nature's full awakening from the dark half of the year into the light.

Riders of the Sidhe, by John Duncan, 1911

3.Our Ancestors Arrived at Bealtaine

The 11th century Lebor Gabála Érenn, 'The Book of the Taking of Ireland', also known as the 'Book of Invasions', tells us that Ireland was inhabited by six races. Most notably, the Tuatha Dé Danann, 'Tribe of the Goddess Danu', who are essentially our supernatural pantheon.

So for example, well known Celtic goddesses like Brigid (or Bríg), the Morrígan, Ériu - are all Tuatha Dé Danann goddesses.

After an unknown amount of time, our human ancestors arrive, the Sons of Míl or Milesians from whom descend the Gaels of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. They were led by the file, the poet, Amairgin Glúnmar ("Aver-gin" Big-kneed).

They come at Bealtaine.

When the Tuatha Dé Danann see the Milesians off the coast, they set a challenge for them: their sixty-five vessels must remain nine waves from Irish shores with the promise that they will retreat if the Tuatha Dé can muster the power to prevent them landing. And so, the goddesses and gods cast a terrible storm upon the fleet but Amairgin invokes the spirit of the land and calms the waves.

Ériu Shi-Spoirad by Jim Fitzpatrick

4.Ireland is Named at Bealtaine

Ireland is an anglicisation of Éire, which is the official name for Ireland. We were gifted it from the Goddess Ériu of the Tuatha Dé Danann. It means 'earth' or 'soil', 'fat land', 'land of abundance'.

When the Milesians arrive, Ériu ("Eyhr-roo") as a triple goddess with her sisters Banba ("Banva") and Fódhla ("Fodh-la") each take a location on the land to negotiate with Amairgin and his host of druids as they disembark from their ships.

Ériu is the last meet to Amairgin. She hosts him at the Hill of Uisneach. She demands that the land be named after her and if so, the Tuatha Dé Danann will retreat underground, essentially to the Otherworld, and the Milesians can have the mortal plain. Amairgin agrees and Ireland becomes Ériu or Éire.

It's essential to acknowledge that it is goddesses who represent the Tuatha Dé Danann in their political negotiations with the Milesians. Because is the role of the Sovereignty Goddess to determine which tribe is worthy of the land.

5.Bealtaine is a time for Spellcasting

A piseóg can be considered a superstitious belief, charm or spell. Piseógs are the most common form of spellcasting in Ireland. They were often used to protect against bad luck and to appease the fairies. But also, to cast spells with malevolent intent. A critical time of year for piseógs is May Eve. Some examples of Bealtaine piseógs are:

“It is said that the fairies are out on Lá Bealtaine [May Day] and sometimes they steal the children from the cradles and leave a little changeling [fairy child] in their place.”

“It is said that by getting up before sunrise on May morning and skimming the top off a spring well situated under an old oak tree with a saucer and mentioning anyone you wish, you will have their cream for the coming year. Their milk will have no cream. It is a curse on your neighbours and was used by the jealous and malignant.”

We’ll end here with a more loving piseóg as Bealtaine is traditionally a time for love divination. One example is that if you peer at your reflection in water on May Eve, you may see the image of your future lover over your shoulder.

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Witches and Women’s Wealth

*You can access the audio version of this blog here. Or on Spotify if you’d prefer to listen.

My work in the school at the moment has taken a dive into the witch wound. This is often described as the inherent fear we hold as women in our bodies about being seen and speaking our truth. For fear of persecution.

What’s fascinating to me is that when you bring money into this frame, the witch wound becomes an economic one. 

For many women, money is triggering. Money is not simply an exchange of goods and services, but a shame-inducer. We have been conditioned to believe a myriad of nonsense about money, like that money is a zero-sum game, and that if you have it, someone else doesn’t—therefore you should not desire it. 

This is stomach-churning when the world’s richest 1% who are mostly white men, own twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people altogether. And to quote Oxfam, “much of this wealth is built on the backs of women working billions of hours every day doing unpaid or underpaid care work.” 

The money stories that are relayed to us by capitalism seriously harm us. They also stagnate new economic possibilities that we as women can create.

Last year, I studied at Feminist Business School with Jennifer Armbrust, where we explored what a feminine economy might look like.

Money and Power

Your relationship with money is about power and your right to economic power. I believe that because we’ve been conditioned not to hold economic power within our own bodies - that this is a form of disembodiment for women. In theories of power, the most fundamental form of power is ‘power within’. Without this, all other forms of power are not possible.

If we want to disrupt capitalism, or simply have a better relationship with money, we have to be able to hold economic power in our bodies.

But first, we need to go back to the time when our economic system—capitalism—was birthed at the expense of women's bodies. We have to understand that the 'witch wound' is an economic one.

‘Witches being burned at the stake’, 1555 (from Germany)

Witch Hunts and Capitalism

In her cult classic, Caliban and the Witch, Sylvia Federici argues that the medieval witch hunts of Europe and the Americas that resulted in the horrendous torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of women—and the vilification of the feminine as demonic and cannibalistic —were necessary for capitalism to evolve.

We see this in two ways: Firstly, for early capitalism to grow, it needed more bodies to do more work cheaply. To feed this demand, it had to control the source of human life - womens’ bodies. During the witch hunts, many healing women who supported reproductive health through contraception, termination, and midwifery were murdered or forced into hiding.

The female body became the source of the workforce.

Secondly, in simple terms, we have two forms of labour. Labour for the marketplace, and reproductive labour, i.e., the caregiving work of home. We see this division of labour get coded as binary, as ‘male’ and ‘female’. Men work for a wage in the marketplace, women work for free at home.

This stripped away women’s agency and placed us firmly in the domestic sphere. 

Alice Kyteler by Paddy Shaw

It also devalued reproductive labour as ‘free work’. Federici tells how in many cases women were forbidden to earn a wage. In fact, if a woman had money, it was seen as evidence of her making a pact with the devil. We see this in the case of Ireland’s first witch trial where Alice Kyteler who came from a Flemish merchant family and made her wealth through money-lending, was accused of getting this wealth from a sexual affair with a demon; an incubus.

Alice escapes prison but her maidservant Petronilla de Meath is flogged and burned at the stake in 1324. 

Finding Economic Power in the Body

Of course, the heteropatriarchal, capitalist world we live in won’t disappear overnight. But capitalism lives first in the body, and by cultivating an embodied relationship with money, we can begin to disrupt it. Healing our traumatic relationship with money will take time, but by investing in the feminine economy and practising feminist business methods, we can begin to mend the economic witch wound.

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Making Crosses on Brigid’s Eve

Tomorrow, 1st February, is known in Ireland as the beginning of Imbolc and St Brigid’s Day. This seasonal festival marks the first day of spring in the Celtic Calendar; when the days grow longer and the weather becomes milder. The word Imbolc or Imbolg in Old Irish is generally accepted to mean “in the belly”, most likely in reference to the pregnant ewes that give birth in the spring. Bolg is the Gaeilge word for ‘belly’.

In Ancient Ireland, Imbolc came to honour the Celtic Goddess, Brigid. Brigid is originally referenced in our mythology as a Goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Bríg (“BREEJ”); then as a triple Goddess - Brigit of the Filí (‘Poets’), Brigit of Leechcraft (the art of healing), and Brigit of Smithcraft. And later, an equally magical Saint Brigid.

Birthing Bridget by Dee Mulrooney

FEAST OF BRIGID

When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid was canonised and the festival became St Brigid’s Day. For hundreds of years, we have celebrated her feast day by making crosses from rushes and hanging them in our homes. Known as St Brigid’s crosses, these talismans are traditionally made on Oíche Fhéile Bhríde, ‘Night of the Feast of Brigid’ or St Brigid’s Eve - today, 31st January. They protect the household, the farm, and the land, and highlight the old tension - and reciprocity - between Ireland’s Christian and pagan pasts.

The primary school I went to as a child was called St Brigid’s National School, and so each year we made our Brigid’s Cross on the 31st  January and the school closed on 1st in her honour. So I developed a special love for this Goddess giving me a day off school each year! After much campaigning in Ireland, in 2023, the 1st of February will become a public holiday in honour of our Brigid. This is felt as immense progress for the feminine on this land.

Brigid by Courtney Davis projected on to the General Post Office, GPO, in Dublin city centre as part of the phenomenal Herstory campaign

CROIS BHRÍDE

A Brigid’s Cross or Crois Bhríde is made from wetland rushes like green field rushes. I tend to gather dune grasses from my local beach because that's what's available to me. The rushes are collected, sorted, and then washed. On St Brigid’s Eve, the previous year’s cross is usually burned before the new one is woven. This cleansing ritual symbolises the death of the past year and the beginning of the next. Weaving a Brigid’s cross is a healing and nourishing experience.

The most popular and recognisable design is the four-legged cross, which is fashioned by pinching and folding the rushes around one another as they are slowly rotated. The legs are then tied with string to keep the rushes together. This video gives a lovely tutorial on how to make the crosses. Of course, different versions exist across Ireland. In Sligo and Leitrim, crosses are made by interlacing rushes in a crisscrossing pattern. Another design is the three-legged cross, which some scholars believe has pagan origins.

St Brigid's Crosses from around Ireland. Photo from Scoil Bhríde, Portlaoise

ANCIENT FERTILITY SYMBOLS

Not a ‘true’ cross, the three-legged St Brigid’s cross may come from the lozenge. This shape—a form of rhombus—has been used by many cultures, including the Celts, Berbers, and Paleolithic Eastern Europeans, as a symbol of female fertility. All across Ireland, lozenges can be found on Neolithic stone monuments, where they were carved by prehistoric peoples. We cannot say for sure if the three-legged cross is directly connected to the lozenge, and we know the modern conception of a St Brigid’s cross is Christian—the crosses are traditionally blessed with holy water. However, the association of both the lozenge and Brigid with fertility is certainly compelling.

The Mound of Hostages (Duma na nGiall) at the Hill of Tara is a 5,000 year old passage tomb and ritual complex aligned to the rising sun at Imbolc

WELCOMING IN THE SPRING

Once you have finished making your Brigid’s Cross, you can hang it above your door, in your car, or anywhere else in your home. Wherever it hangs, the cross will watch over and protect your loved ones as the days grow longer and then shorter again. You will burn it next year, as you dispel the darkness of winter and embrace the promise of spring.

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Self-Love on St Dwynwen’s Day

Today, 25th January, is St. Dwynwen’s Day, colloquially referred to as “Welsh Valentine’s Day.” This day is celebrated primarily in Wales and is a time when lovers exchange cards and other tokens of their affection. St. Dwynwen, after whom the holiday is named, dedicated her life to protecting true love; and yet, she chose to live without it for most of her life. Hers is an evocative story of the joy and fulfilment that women can find in time spent just with ourselves.

Pages Past, by Nom Kinnear King

LOVE LOST

Dwynwen (dooIN-wen) lived in the fourth century, in what is now Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales. She was one of King Brychan Brycheiniog’s 24 daughters, and by far the loveliest and most spirited. When she met prince Maelon Dafodrill, they fell madly in love. But when Maelon asked King Brychan for Dwynwen’s hands, he was refused; the king had plans to marry Dwynwen to another. Maelon was furious, and he took out his anger on Dwynwen.

What exactly this means is now lost, but Dwynwen fled to the woods, distraught. Here, sources differ. Some say that an angel visited her and gave her a potion that would help her forget Maelon. Others give credit to a wood spirit that visited her in a dream. Either way, Maelon was turned into a block of ice.

But Dwynwen, with her gentle heart, begged God - or the spirit - for three wishes. The first was to release Maelon; the second was to protect all true lovers; the third was that she never marry. Dwynwen then became a nun, travelled Wales, and eventually lived out her days alone on the island of Llanddwyn.

You carry the mountain within you, by Lucy Campbell

A BLESSED LIFE

Despite Dwynwen’s disappointment in love, hers is not a tragic tale. In fact, by all accounts, she lived very happily. Her name even means “she who leads a blessed life.”

Dwynwen’s story resonates across the centuries because of its powerful message about defining oneself outside of love and marriage. Dwynwen easily could have wished for her and Maelon’s happily ever after. Instead, she chooses to travel, build a legacy, and live for herself. She does not disparage love - in fact she protects it - but she decides to live without its restrictions.

In a way, she is the forerunner of other great women who knew the importance of taking space and time away from the family in order to follow their own passions. Virginia Woolf wrote of the necessity of “a room of one’s own” in which women could write. Maya Angelou famously rented herself a hotel room - taking with her only with a legal pad and pen, a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards, Roget’s Thesaurus, and the bible - in order to write in peace.

The Blue Studio, by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

St. Dwynwen’s Day might be a celebration of romantic love, but through Dwynwen’s story, it is also a reminder of the blessed life women lead when we take space for ourselves and our own pursuits.

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Becoming An Ancestor

By Amelia Furlong

Samhain as an event has come and gone, but the effects of this year’s Celtic new year are still lingering in my mind.

Samhain is often viewed as a time for releasing what desires to die. I interpret this as a time when I release the old me; a rebirth from ambitions and patterns that no longer serve me to new, purpose-driven ones.

In fact, I even decided to move to Ireland after a DIY Samhain ritual that I performed in Orange County, California, in 2018. I was searching, then, for who I was meant to be, ready for the old me to die. I hoped that by coming to the land of my ancestors, I would find answers. After two years in Ireland, all of those questions have been satisfactorily answered, and this Samhain I found my thoughts drifting, instead, to my own role as an ancestor.

Releasing what desires to die

I work as a content writer for a wedding corporation and am in a long-term, happy relationship. So inevitably, questions have been swirling recently about marriage and children. This is compounded by the fact that I’m turning 30 next month and many of my friends are getting married and starting families. But I’m a wanderlusting Sagittarius with Venus in Scorpio. I don’t know if I’m ready to release the wild, untameable side of myself and “settle down”. And yet, it pulls on me.

Considering all this, I was determined to use Samhain 2021 as a chance to ask what direction my life should be going. I had plans to attend a bonfire lighting at Tlachtga, now known as the Hill of Ward. Tlachtga was a druidess who travelled with her father, the infamous druid Mug Ruith, to Italy, to study with the sorcerer Simon Magus. There, however, she was raped by his three sons. She escaped back to Ireland and gave birth to triplets before dying of grief. The hill is named after her and is one way in which her tragedy is etched into the landscape. On Samhain, all the fires in Ireland would be extinguished, and druids would gather on Tlachtga to light one great bonfire.

Art by Robin Eisenberg

31 October, however, didn’t go as planned, and I only got as far as Athenry, where I contracted food poisoning at a McDonald’s. My disappointment was palpable; I had been eager to celebrate a real Samhain in Ireland, as the previous two had been stymied by graduate school and the pandemic. It was my first Samhain, after all, that had spurred me to move to Ireland.

The first Samhain

This occurred in 2018, when I was working on a political campaign in Irvine, California. The reproductive rights nonprofit where I worked had sent me to Southern California for two weeks to help unseat an anti-choice Republican and elect a pro-choice Democrat. This wasn’t the first campaign I’d worked on, but it was to be my last.

At this point, I knew that I could not go on much longer as an activist. The confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh the month before had completely broken me. The hopelessness with which my work had infected me had led to an all-consuming rage. I was extremely unhappy and desperately wanted to quit my job to become a writer. 

But this felt impossible. Not only did I have no idea how to make money from writing, but I didn’t feel confident in myself as an artist. I’d visited Ireland the summer before, and while there I had become obsessed with moving to Galway to write a novel, but this seemed like a pipe dream.

While in Ireland I had also learned about Samhain, and the magic of it captivated me at once. I was drawn to the idea of a time when the veil between the worlds grows thin, when one can commune with spirits. I didn’t quite know if I believed in spirits, but I knew I wanted to.

So while in Orange County, I decided to try my hand at celebrating Samhain. I wanted to ask my ancient Irish ancestors if I should quit my job, move to Ireland, and do a graduate program in writing. I wanted them to give me strength to make the leap. On Halloween I drove down to Laguna Beach, bought a black pillar candle at a roadside mysticism shop, and, near midnight, hiked down to the beach. It was deserted. All alone under a bright moon, I drew a circle in the sand. Then I sat inside of it and lit my candle. Feeling foolish, I cleared my throat and spoke aloud to the night. I asked my ancestors - if they were there - for permission to leave my “important” work in reproductive rights, to leave behind my anger and sadness, in order to pursue my real passion in the land where they were born and died.

I’m still not sure if anyone answered me. I felt something, but it might just have been the breeze off the Pacific. Whatever it was, I suddenly knew what I had to do. The activist was ready to be released. The writer was ready to be born.

Old Answers and New Questions

On September 4, 2019, I flew to Ireland to begin an MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland-Galway. In the next two years I would fall in love, write two and a half novels, start writing full-time, and let my anger and hopelessness die.

But of course, my wanderlust has its drawbacks. I feel isolated from my family, who all live in America, and cut off from my community. I’ve never lived in a place long enough to put down roots. Even now, my boyfriend and I are making plans to move to London or Berlin, where we’ll live for a year or two before moving onto the next place.

So as my thirties approach, it’s hard not to turn my attention to the big decisions that I will have to make this decade.

Will I return to America to care for my aging parents, or stay over here and continue my European adventure? Will I get married? Will we settle down and raise a family? Or will I galavant across the globe, perpetually single and wild, writing novels that become like children?

After my failure to reach the Hill of Ward, I assumed I’d have to wait another year to get to ask my ancestors these questions. But tragedy has its own agenda.

The Funeral

Shortly after Samhain, my friend A.’s mother passed away. She’d been sick for a while, and while the news wasn’t shocking, it was devastating. My boyfriend and I journeyed to Trim on Monday, 8 November for the funeral. The date of this funeral was disquieting. While Samhain is traditionally celebrated on 31 October and 1 November, the actual calendar date in 2021, based on astronomical calculations, is 7 November. Attending a funeral just two days later, when the veil between the worlds would still be sheer, felt eerie.

The funeral was very sad and very moving. A.’s mother was an astonishing woman. Although I never met her, her warmth and wisdom were evident in the stories her large, adoring family told about her. She was a gardener, a nurturer of life. She had deep roots in the community. My friend - a storyteller, a lover of Irish myth, and one of the most thoughtful people I know - is a testament to her legacy. Her spirit lives on in him, and he will tell her story for the rest of his life. The importance of ancestors - not the long-dead, ancient ones, but our most immediate - had never been more clear to me.

After the funeral, we walked in a procession through the streets of Trim. Cars pulled over to let us by. Not one seemed annoyed or angry by the inconvenience. Instead, they sat in reverent silence, witnessing her passing.

I’d never been to an Irish funeral before. I’d never walked through the streets with a coffin and watched as the entire community came to a standstill to pay their respects to the deceased. It was a profound example of how meaningful a life is that is lived in one place, spent raising children, passing down knowledge, and caring for the community.

My boyfriend and I walked hand-in-hand, but we weren’t alone. All throughout the funeral, I’d felt a presence sitting next to me on the pews, watchful and wide-eyed. As we walked towards the graveyard, I felt her soft, warm hand in mine. I sensed that she had questions about death, but I also knew she wasn’t afraid. She was brave, just like me. She was gentle, just like my boyfriend.

She doesn’t exist yet, but we have a name for her. We don’t know if we’ll ever meet her, but we hope we will.

Becoming an ancestor

Art by Robin Eisenberg

Was this spirit a figment of my imagination, conjured up to help me process the death of A.’s mother, which, inevitably, forced me to think about my own parents’ mortality? Was she a way of reassuring myself that life goes on, that the next generation will continue to tell our stories? Or was the veil between our worlds flickering, allowing her to escape into mine in the hour of my need?

I think I know. The part of me that followed the whispers on the wind to this side of the world knows.

It’s okay if I’m not ready to settle down. The wanderlusting, wild woman in me is not quite ready to die and be reborn as an ancestor; a wife; a mother. The spirit I met knows this, and she doesn’t want to rush me. But when I’m ready, she’ll be waiting.

What about you?

As you process your Samhain experience, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

What were the Samhain rituals that resonated with you this year? What would you like to incorporate into your celebration next year?

Is there a part of you that is ready to be released, old ambitions and patterns that no longer serve you? What new, purpose-driven paths are you ready to embrace?

What parts of yourself are not ready to be released? Are there certain ambitions you need to see through to the end before you can turn to new paths?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amelia Furlong is a content writer, ghostwriter, and novelist living in Galway, Ireland. She graduated from the MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2019 and has published articles and poetry in Ireland and abroad. She is currently working on a pirate romance novel and an anti-romantic comedy screenplay.

Níl Aon Tinteán Mar Do Thinteán Féin

‘There is no hearth, like your own hearth.’

Sometime ago, I kept having this Aisling (“ASH-ling”), this vision, this dream of being on the land.  It was pitch black. The night cold and lonely but for the comfort of the cosmos twinkling overhead. I knew I was near home but I couldn’t find my way. I felt like I was blind-folded, hands feeling into the dark hoping to grasp at something to make meaning with. I wrote in my journal, "I'm on the land. I know I'm close. I can sense it. I can almost smell the turf but I don't know where my home is." 

As is with these elusive flashes of illumination that tantalise us in our dreamscape, this continued for a time with no clarity.

Then one night back in this familiar place; on the land, in the void. A light switched on. I squinted my eyes and made out a small stonewashed cottage in the distance resting into the hills. A candle flickered in the window. A flame, a beacon to guide me home.

Cottages in a Landscape by Lawson Birch

Where is home?

It took me a good while to comprehend that the land I was searching blindly on, was in fact my body. And the light in the cottage was me attuning to the intuitive guidance - that home is in this body. In this one vessel that I have been bestowed for this lifetime. I had been searching for my elusive ‘home’ my whole life. And yet, here I am. Living in it.

Táim sa bhaile cheana féin. Tá an baile i mo chorp.

I am already home. Home is in my body.

Building a loving, nourishing and safe home takes time. We are always tinkering in our homes. Doing spring cleans to clear it of what we no longer need. Renovating to make ‘improvements’. Leaving the door open for our loved ones. Locking it and building fences to keep out those who make us feel unsafe. Creating boundaries to determine who can cross its threshold and enter, and into which specific rooms. Hiding our treasures in the attic. Burying our undesirables in the basement.

We experience the full spectrum of life in our homes. The roar of laughter, the spirit of intense joy and celebration, the company of feasting, the pleasure of desire fulfilled, the nourishment of meals, or indeed the tension of these times. Resting, dreaming, tormenting ourselves roaming around our homes on sleepless nights. Birthing creations, birthing life. Bathing, cleansing, tending. Bleeding, allowing parts of ourselves to die as we hit the bathroom floor on our knees in grief. Our homes witness it all. Our homes feel it all.

Níl Aon Tinteán Mar Do Thinteán Féin

“NEEL AIN TEENTAWN MAR DUH HEENTAWN FEY-N”. ‘There is no hearth, like your own hearth.’ This proverb is one of Ireland's most well known. I myself have known it my entire life. And yet, it is only now as I approach the end of my fourth decade on this plain, do I perceive it through an embodied lens.

The closest English language equivalent is, ‘There is no place like home’, infamously invoked by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz as she taps her ruby red slippers and Glinda the Good Witch tells her, “If we know ourselves, we’re always home. Anywhere.”

Dorothy is right. There is no place like YOUR home. No body like yours. That desire you feel to come home; the one we all innately feel as part of the human experience. It is the journey home to our bodies. Because home is in your body. Home is YOU.

And yet, at times, it’s so hard to live in our beloved homes as we have to share them with our demons, our menacing lodgers. We can’t risk accidentally leaving the door open and letting one out for fear of being shamed by our respective societies.

Societies that tell us not to spend anytime at home. To always be out hustling for the future version of ourselves, the person we’re supposed to become, the home we’re supposed to build. You know that flawless has-her-shit-together future you, who lives in her exquisite stately manor.

There are many capitalist structures that are designed to ensure we don’t accept ourselves, our bodies, our homes as is. And make a ton of money out of it. In this vein, acceptance of you as you are is not complacency, it is a form of resistance and an immense source of personal power.

You see, we’re always in the process of becoming. We become until our dying breath. So if we don’t accept ourselves now, when will we? It is honourable to desire personal evolution but it is equally honourable to love your home now, demons and all. To rest by her fire and allow the warmth of her hearth to nourish your bones.

By the Fireside by Guy Orlando Rose, 1910

An invocation for home

As I unfold into my journey of acceptance of my own home, I am giving myself permission to enjoy the process of reconnection with Gaeilge, the Irish language which lived dormant in my body for so long. I wish I possessed the linguistic fluency of my teenage years but I don’t. Someday I will. As I am, I have been creating these affirmations in Gaeilge (with guidance) and English for the women in my programmes to use as a source of embodied power. I invite you now to invoke these words as homage to your earthly home, or to simply click play and allow the sound to wash over you and the language to fill your cells as a sacred sound vibration.

Baile - Home

Táim sa bhaile cheana féin. Tá an baile i mo chorp.

I am already home. Home is in my body.

Soláthraíonn an baile díol mo fhreastail.

Home provides me with everything I need.

Bíonn an draíocht allta ag coipeadh ar a theallach.

Wild magic brews in its hearth.

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Letting Your Wild Woman Rest

By Amelia Furlong

This year, as the days darken and the winds grow chillier, I find myself preparing my heart and my home for Samhain. The candles are lit, my intentions for the Celtic New Year are written, and my cauldron is filled with resin for burning. My plans to visit The Hill of Ward for the bonfire-lighting are underway.

In the Celtic Calendar, Samhain is a time for letting go.

For me, it is also a time to let my body rest. I find the darkening of the seasons very difficult on my mental health, so during it I allow myself to indulge in pleasure and sensuality. I also allow myself to be cared for by my partner. This hasn’t always been easy for me. As a wild and wounded woman, I spent many years rejecting vulnerability with men and spurning their intimacy.

This changed last summer, when I enrolled in the Celtic School of Embodiment’s Banríon Celtic Circle. In this life-changing course, we journeyed deep into Irish myth. To the ancients, stories were a way of understanding the world, making meaning, and teaching lessons to the community. Our modern experience of myth is no different. And in the Banríon Celtic Circle, I met a woman who showed me a different way of living. Her name is Mis.

THE MAD WOMAN IN THE MOUNTAINS

The story of Mis runs deep in both the Irish imagination and landscape. Sliabh Mis in Co. Kerry is named for her, and she is thought to be the first Irish vampire. And yet, her story was not re-discovered until 1954, when it was found tucked away in a manuscript in the old ecclesiastic library at Maynooth University.

Mis was the daughter of Dáire Dóidgheal, who came from Europe to conquer Ireland and landed in Ventry, Co. Kerry. After Dáire was slain in battle by the hero Fionn mac Cumaill, Mis found his bleeding, broken body on the beach. Consumed by grief, she threw herself upon her father’s corpse and began to lick and drink his blood. She then escaped to the surrounding hills, where her hair grew long, she sprouted feathers and fur, and her hands and feet curled into claws. For 300 years, Mis terrorised Kerry, ripping apart anyone or anything that came close to her.

Despite this, the local monarch, King Feidhlimidh, forbade her to be killed. Instead, he offered a handsome reward to anyone who could capture her alive. Many tried, and all of them failed. That is, until a gentle harpist named Dubh Ruis offered to bring back the mad woman.

THE ROMANCE OF MIS AND DUBH RUIS

Dubh Ruis was not a warrior. Unlike the men who had tried to hunt and subdue Mis before, Dubh Ruis had a different plan. He thought that if he could serenade her with his harp, he might be able to woo her. This, he hoped, would heal her wounded soul and cure her madness.

Mis was, indeed, transfixed by the sound of Dubh Ruis’s harp. She was also transfixed by his naked body as he played the sweet songs. They made love, and afterward, Dubh Ruis cleansed Mis’s body of its dirt and massaged her joints with deer fat. For two months, he remained with her, making love to her and cleaning her, until the whiskers and fur fell off, and her hands and feet returned to normal. Eventually they married and had four children. Dubh Ruis was later killed by warriors, and she cried a great keen over his body.

EMBODIED DESIRE

When I first heard the story of Mis, I felt an immediate and instinctual connection. Here she was, an ancient character from a long-dead civilization; and yet, she was me.

Much like Mis, my emotions have always been a powerful force that can take control of me and turn me into someone I don’t recognise. The passionate intensity with which I feel everything is a blessing and a curse. On my best days, it is an intoxicating quality that has allowed me to form deep, life-long connections with people who are drawn to my openness and thirst for adventure. On my worst days, it has gotten me dangerously close to tearing apart everyone and everything that comes close to me. But as much as my nature is volatile, it is also the best part about me, and I would never want someone to take that away.

I think for this reason, I am sometimes unsure how to interpret the story of Mis and Dubh Ruis. On the one hand, it seems to me that Dubh Ruis is taking away Mis’s power. Yes, she is wracked with grief and insanity. But she is also strong. When Dubh Ruis says he is hungry, she goes into the woods and chases down a deer, which she kills with her bare hands. She has an inhuman speed and strength. She is wild. After she falls in love with Dubh Ruis, she becomes domesticated. Her fur and claws fall off. I worry this story says that a grotesque, feral, and dangerously strong woman must be tamed, masculine order brought to the feminine chaos.

On the other hand, debilitating grief is a terrible thing. Dubh Ruis doesn’t so much as tame Mis as he does help her remember gentleness and love. Moreover, he embraces her sexuality. He may serenade her, but she seduces him. She makes the first move and unabashedly embodies her desires. Furthermore, Dubh Ruis doesn’t just make love to Mis, he washes her and massages her tired body. He builds a home for her in the woods and promises never to leave her. He takes care of her. She is a strong woman who nevertheless allows herself to rest, to have pleasure, to be sexual, and to be cared for. This is a powerful story of a person reclaiming themselves through their embodied desires.

Beyond Here by Andrea Kowch

This is why I was drawn to Mis. Much like her, it was the love of a gentle storyteller that brought me back from my own rage.

TEARING THE WORLD APART

I moved to Ireland in 2019 to heal myself. I was hurting at the time, deeply traumatised from my time working in abortion advocacy in San Francisco. This work, and its seeming futility, had filled me with an anger that was constant and consuming. It coloured all my interactions with men and led me into several dangerous situations. I was always worried it would explode into violence, which it sometimes did. But as terrible as this fury was, it also gave me purpose. It called me to better the world.

After a trip to Ireland, I became fascinated with the stories of strong, resilient Celtic women, and I decided to move here. I also hoped that learning about these women, and my own ancestors, would heal me.

Once in Ireland, however, I fell in love with a sweet, gentle writer, and everything changed. My anger left me. My boiling rage cooled to a simmering cynicism. I no longer worried that I would explode over the slightest injustice.

I was happy romantically for maybe the first time ever, but I still felt lost. A part of me was afraid I had been tamed; saved by a man, instead of by myself. This made me feel weak, not like the strong, wild woman I had been. I had also stopped pursuing activism, but I was excelling in my professional goals as a writer and had found a rare and beautiful love. All this was good; all this was what I had worked for. So why didn’t I feel like myself? As these feelings swirled, my relationship suffered, and there were a few terrible months when I thought I would leave Ireland and return home, with or without him.

Then I joined the Banríon Celtic Circle. When I read how Mis was saved by Dubh Ruis, I began to wonder if I was interpreting my own story all wrong.

Radical Vulnerability

Blackbirds are Gathering by Andrea Kowch

Dubh Ruis doesn’t just save Mis. Mis chooses to let herself be saved. Despite knowing the depths of her despair at losing those she loves, she opens herself up to love again. This is an act of bravery. And when she lets herself be cared for, this is an act of radical vulnerability.

Much like Mis, I allowed myself to be vulnerable with another person. I trusted him, despite my deep mistrust. I let his kindness heal my wounds. And with those wounds healed, I think I will be a better advocate and activist in the future.

The story of Mis and Dubh Ruis also reminds me of another Irish woman who drank the blood of her dead lover. I’ve recently been reading The Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. This book tells the story of Eileen Dubh Ní Chonaill, the 18th-century noblewoman who, when she found her husband dead, drank fistfuls of his blood and composed the epic poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire. A keen, for a beloved who is gone.

Irish myth and Irish history are filled with passionate women whose emotions, and griefs, are too big for their bodies to hold in. They suck the blood of their beloved with a ravenousness that seems to say: give me your pain. They do not shrink from their feelings. Their stories are reminders that deep emotion is not something that makes us weak, but powerful. However, in these stories, their emotions can only exist outside the beloved - in the case of Eileen, when he has died; for Mis, before she meets him - outside the ordered, civilised, masculine world. What this says about my own, I am not entirely sure yet.

Every reader of  Mis and Dubh Ruis’s romance will have their own interpretation. For me, the tension between my two readings isn’t easily reconcilable. Perhaps for love - to build healthy, strong relationships with your partner and your community - you do have to give up some of your rage. Is this worth it? Is the sacrifice too great? Only you can decide.

What about you?

As we celebrate Samhain this Sunday, these are some questions and intentions that you can ask yourself as you let go and surrender to the darkness.

How can you invite radical vulnerability into your life? What about pleasure and rest?

Do you need to be cared for? If so, who can you lean on to care for you right now? How can you connect deeper with them and nurture a reciprocal healing relationship?

Which interpretation of Mis’s story resonates with you? Why? Is there another interpretation that feels more authentic in your body?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amelia Furlong is a content writer, ghostwriter, and novelist living in Galway, Ireland. She graduated from the MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2019 and has published articles and poetry in Ireland and abroad. She is currently working on a pirate romance novel and an anti-romantic comedy screenplay.

Sources:

Greene, David [tr.], “The romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis”, in: Mercier, Vivian [ed.], Great Irish short stories, New York: Dell, 1964. 32–36

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales by by John T. Koch & John Carey

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The Cailleach’s Return

This week, I felt the promise of the Cailleach’s energy. She is coming. As I stood in Loughcrew on the Autumn Equinox and watched the blood-orange sun rise up to greet me on Sliabh na Caillí, ‘The Cailleach’s Hill’, while the waning moon hung behind, it felt like she was coordinating this cosmic dance preparing for her return. Her light filled Cairn T, a 5,000 year old passage tomb and ritual complex, illuminating its central chamber, the Cailleach’s womb.

One of the decorated entrance stones to Cairn T illuminated by Wednesday morning’s sunrise.

THE VEILED ONE

Cailleach (“KAL-yach”) means ‘Veiled One’ in Old Irish. It is also the modern Irish word for a ‘witch’ but the English translation does not serve fully, as even in its modern form, Cailleach is imbued with the essence of ‘divine hag’. 

We have no creation myth in the Irish tradition, lost to the realms of time or perhaps to the censorship of Christian monks who first captured our oral tradition in written word. But it is said that the Cailleach created the cairns, the mountains, their infant hills; this land by dropping rocks out of her apron. 

She is as old as time. She is our creator deity, our ancestor deity, our weather deity. She is our Bean Feasa; our wise, curing woman. She is a Sovereignty Goddess, a fierce protectress of this land that she shaped. Arriving through the portal of Samhain and reigning over winter until Brigid comes at Imbolc. She is a shapeshifter. Often appearing in the form of a hare, a magical animal that possesses the gift of superconception - the ability to get pregnant while pregnant. 

‘The Cailleach of Loughcrew’ by Shelly Mooney, Tales from the Wood

THE OLD WOMAN OF BEARE

One of the oldest known expressions of the Cailleach comes from the Beara peninsula in the southwest of Ireland, in the form of the 8th century poem, ‘The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare’. Its composer is thought to be the historical woman poet, Digde. The prose introduction to the poem reads:

‘The Old Woman of Beare, whose name was Digde, was of the Corcu Duibne [a tribe of Western Co. Kerry]... This is why she was called the Old Woman, the Nun of Beare: she had fifty foster-children in Beare. She passed into seven periods of youth, so that every husband used to pass from her to death and old age, so that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were peoples and races. And for a hundred years she wore the veil…’

So we can see here the allusion to the Cailleach as a Creator Goddess, as mother of peoples and races. The reference to fosterage is notable as it is a key theme in Celtic mythology and is reflective of the practice in early Irish society. Children were fostered by Goddesses and Gods and mythical mentors who would teach them skills to amplify their human gifts and their supernatural capacities.

Photos I took on Dursey Island (Oileán Baoi) in 2019

A LAMENT FOR THE GODDESS

What is even more fascinating is the poem itself, where the dance of polarities at this time of year is reflected in the Old Woman of Beare’s own body. It is the 8th century, Christiany is now in Ireland three centuries and growing. The ancient ways of the Goddess are dissolving, relegated to a ‘pagan’ past. And so, the old woman laments:

1. Ebbtide to me as to the sea; old age causes me to sallow; although I may grieve thereat, it comes to its food joyfully.

2. I am the Old Woman of Beare, from Dursey; I used to wear a smock that was always new. Today I am become so thin that I would not wear out even a cast-off smock.

3. Bitterly does my body seek to go to a dwelling where it is known; when the Son of God deems it time, let Him carry off his deposit.

4. When my arms are seen, all bony and thin! - in fondest fashion they acted, once; they used to be around glorious kings.

5. When my arms are seen, all bony and thin, they are not, I declare, worth raising up over handsome boys.

6. They girls are joyful when they approach Maytime; grief is more fitting for me: I am not only miserable, I am an old woman.

7. Woe is me indeed - every acorn is doomed to decay - to be in the darkness of an oratory after feasting by bright candles.

8. I have had my time with kings, drinking mead and wine; today I drink whey and water among shrivelled old women.

9. My flood has guarded well that which was deposited with me; Jesus, Son of Mary, has redeemed it so I am not sad up to ebb.

10.  Happy the island of the great sea; flood comes to it after ebb; as for me, I expect no flood after ebb to come to me.

11. Today, there is scarcely an abode I would recognise; what was in flood is all ebbing. 

Through her poignant expression, we learn that the Old Woman of Beare desires to die, to be carried off when the Son of God deems it time. And yet, she was once a God, a Goddess herself, not a shrivelled old woman. She sits in an oratory of darkness but she used to drink mead and wine with glorious kings, wrapping her arms around them.

Here, she laments the Banais Ríghí (“BAN-ash REE-ghee”), meaning, ‘Wedding-feast of Kingship’. This was the highest form of ceremony in Ancient Ireland. A marriage between the king who represented people and culture, and the Sovereignty Goddess who represented nature and the land. In this ritual, the Goddess would offer the king a wedding libation (liquid or grains poured from the cup of a deity) to indicate her approval of the marriage and the king’s legitimacy to rule. This was the perfect union of the masculine with the divine feminine.

‘Cailleach an Mhuilinn’, The Hag of the Mill by Jane Brideson

THE CAILLEACH’S RETURN

The old woman’s mortal body may have been carried off in the 8th century. Yet, her essence as the Cailleach, as our creator deity and landshaper continues to reverberate deep in the sovereign soul of this island. Each Samhain, she has returned to us to rule over winter. We never lost her. Her imprint lives on through us. It is growing. Her power is growing. Can you feel her?

She is here in this time to reclaim her role as Sovereignty Goddess, as we reclaim our own sovereign power as women.

She is here to guide us home. 

Sources:

The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman healer by Gearóid Ó Crualaoich

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Sensing My Way out of Darkness

Last week, out of the blue, I experienced a spell of internal struggle. The darkness crept up from behind, I didn’t hear its footsteps until it walloped me over the head. I woke-up in a cave. A dark, damp cave.

I had been roaming the wilds of beloved Donegal with my husband and two small sons. Life felt so good. Everyone I love is well. I am living my purpose through the Celtic School of Embodiment. I’m surrounded by a tribe of the most wondrous folk. So where did the menace of this encroaching grief come from?

I had just started my bleed, my inner-Samhain. A time of rupture. A time to ask:

• What can I let go of?

• What is ready to die in my life?

I asked these questions of myself. Still, I felt little relief. I instinctively knew this was different.

MIND OVER MATTER

My mind was telling me that I felt this way because:

• There are a lot of unknowns in your life right now - true, there are

• You moved Barra (my almost 2 year old) from his cot into his toddler bed - mmmm possibly true

• Your bleed is making it worse - likely, but it’s not the source

• You know this will pass. It always does - true but right now, it doesn’t feel this way

I cognitively understood that these rationalisations from my mind held truths. Yet, the cave only darkened because often rationality comes with self-judgement. “Up you get now.” “C’mon, back in the game.” “Mind over matter.”

If there is one lesson embodiment has taught me, it’s that “mind over matter” can do more harm than good. I get that this can mean mind over material matter i.e. the task at hand. Yet, our bodies are matter. How curious that we have coined a term to ignore our bodies and trust only our minds. This is reflected in our conditioning where our bodies are coded as nature, in the realm of the feminine (inferior); and the mind as society in the domain of the masculine (superior).

MATTER OVER MIND

So, I started with the reverse - matter. I turned to my greatest ally, my oldest friend, my Bean Feasa (‘Wise Woman’). I knew she held the relief I so desperately needed. I knew she held the illumination I sought.

I turned to my body.

I began to track my felt senses. To have a somatic conversation with my body.

The term “felt sense” was coined by American Philosopher, Eugene Gendlin who discovered that a critical catalyst to effective healing in psychotherapy was a patient’s ability to describe their bodily sensations in a non-conceptual way. To speak somatically (from the Greek, soma meaning ‘body’).

The body speaks a different language to the mind. When I work with clients (and receive Feminine Embodiment Coaching myself), what is said often comes through as an abstract image, a metaphor, a location in the body, a movement impulse. So for example, when I sense worry in my own body, it feels like “a translucent blob-like jelly shivering in the back corner of my stomach.”

Our body speaks the same language as mythology. Asking us to take the Heroine’s Journey. To venture beneath our rational minds and into the nebulous Otherworld of our bodies. And there, uncover the truth of our own story, of who we are. We return forever transformed.

TRACKING SENSATIONS

For a number of days, I tracked my sensations. Carrying a journal with me everywhere. When a sensation bubbled-up, I would pause, drop into my body, sense into it. Then record it. Asking myself:

• What am I sensing here?

• Where do I feel it in my body?

• What does it look like - size, texture, colour, element etc.

• How strong is this sensation?

• What is my impulse in response?

So for example. This is an excerpt from my journal last week:

• I’m sensing a tightness, a closing-in, a heaviness

• I feel it in my chest, in my heart

• It’s like a humongous grey stone on top of me, blocking out the light

• It feels strong, like a 6 out of 10

• I want to get away from everyone and everything

I never pushed for more. I only went as far as felt safe in that moment. The very act of acknowledging my felt senses brought immediate relief. Although I did not know what was ‘wrong’ with me, I felt empowered.

After a few days of tracking sensations in my body, I struck somatic gold. My body revealed the image of my head literally decapitating itself and running off into the distance while my body was screaming and sobbing, “I can’t keep up!”

My body was literally engulfed with rage, frustration and grief towards my mind, which had been racing non-stop and in a way, I hadn’t noticed. I had equated a change of scenery from Dublin to Donegal to a change of pace but that never happened. In fact, I got less personal space than I would at home. This along with a number of other contributing factors that I hadn’t yet metabolised in my body, were flooding my nervous system and I was overwhelmed.

Me and my hyper hound, Juno

CREATING BETTER

There was such a tenderness in this revelation, which is how I knew I was releasing frozen tension in my body, back to flow. I sobbed along with my body. I apologised and told her I would take care of her and I did. I slowed down. I allowed time for recalibration.

This week, despite moving at a much slower pace, having a sick child (desperate teething) so no childcare, I feel in these intermittent moments I have access to, I am doing deep work. There is a congruence between my body and mind. And so, there is a depth to whatever I apply myself to. I am creating better. It feels rich and dare I say, juicy.

You don’t have to be in a dark place to develop your sensation literacy. You can begin right now by getting curious with your body and making a sensations vocabulary list - recording words that describe your felt senses, no matter how odd they appear. Sensation tracking is part of my longer-term work with women in the Banríon Mystery School and Celtic Woman Coaching. It can be an immense source of empowerment.

MOTHER IRELAND

Serendipitously, after the revelation came on Friday, I pulled out Eavan Boland’s New Selected Poems and opened the book on ‘Mother Ireland.’ As I read it, tears rolled like crests down my cheeks. There are many interpretations of this beautiful poem, most commonly as the journey of Irish women. For me in that moment, it felt like my embodiment journey. Trust me my body whispers. There is no coming back.

MOTHER IRELAND

At first

I was land

I lay on my back to be fields

and when I turned

on my side

I was a hill

under freezing stars.

I did not see.

I was seen.

Night and day

words fell on me.

Seeds. Raindrops.

Chips of frost.

From one of them

I learned my name.

I rose up. I remembered it.

Now I could tell my story.

It was different

from the story told about me.

And now also

it was spring.

I could see the wound I had left

in the land by leaving it.

I travelled west.

Once there

I looked with so much love

at every field

as it unfolded

its rusted wheel and its pram chassis

and at the gorse-

bright distances

I had been

that they misunderstood me.

Come back to us

they said.

Trust me I whispered.

Sources:

Call of the Wild by Kimberly Ann Johnson

The Somatic Therapy Workbook: Stress-Relieving Exercises for Strengthening the Mind-Body Connection and Sparking Emotional and Physical Healing by Livia Shapiro

New Selected Poems by Eavan Boland

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Rescuing Our Sealskins

The Mythical Selkie in the Secret of Roan Inish

The Celtic School of Embodiment was birthed from my journey of rescuing my selkie sealskin, which I had lost to our hyperproductive world. I was too busy leaning in and burning out to wear my pelt and to embrace the depths of my wild feminine place.

I now wear my sealskin as I work in partnership with women to reskill in our feminine essence and in doing so, reclaim our skins. With my selkie on my back, it comes as no surprise that her story resonates with the women I work with in profound ways. Let me tell you a little more about our mythical sealwoman…

The Dublin coast where I grew up is peppered with seal colonies so they’ve always been a feature of my life, of my place. The name for a seal in Gaeilge is rón pronounced “RO-UN”. My parents planned to call me Ronán if I was a boy, which means ‘Little Seal’. I live in a seaside town, Skerries, which as a community we share with both harbour seals and grey seals. Here, the essence of the selkie permeates the landscape.

Selkie ("SEHL-kee") means ‘seal folk’; magical creatures that shapeshift from seal to human and more often than not, to women. Stories of selkies feature in the Irish, Scottish and Nordic traditions, like that of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. These coastlines are wild and unpredictable and one which humans and seals share. Seals are intelligent, curious animals. Their dark eyes are at once affectionately docile and pools of mystery.

In Celtic mythology, the Otherworld exists in liminal spaces. Pools, wells, rivers, lakes, the sea are sites where the boundaries between our ‘reality’ and the terrain of our mythical ancestors are fluid. You can easily slip through water into the Otherworld, as otherworldly beings can easily slip into this world.

Shapeshifting is integral to Irish myth, most commonly with women who transform into creatures like swans, ravens, cranes, flies, eels, hares, horses, cows and deer. This is a cosmological expression of our interconnectedness with the natural world, and the affinity of the feminine with nature.

The Selkie Emerging from her Sealskin

AN MHAIGHDEAN MHARA

There are many varieties of the selkie tale. In Ireland, the tradition includes stories of An Mhaighdean Mhara, the ‘The Sea Maiden’ in Gaeilge, (pronounced “ON WAW-GIN WARA” or “ON VAW-GIN VARA” depending on the dialect). This refers to a type of mermaid (half-woman, half-fish) or a selkie. A popular motif centres on a lonely man stumbling across a selkie on the beach. He becomes so enraptured by her otherworldly charm that he snatches her sealskin, magical cloak, or fishtail and holds her captive on land.

The Maighdean Mara eventually returns the man’s love, and they birth a family together. But, as she cannot express her true nature, her essence, or live as her authentic self while in this man’s world, her health begins to drastically deteriorate, her lifeforce leaks. Her only chance of survival is to reclaim what was taken from her by this man.

When she finally secures her lost sealskin, magical cloak, or fishtail, with the help of her child, she begins to plumpen, ripen, her eyes shine with sea life once more. Yet, to live her true essence she has no choice but to return to the sea. A decision that is at once, exhilarating and life-giving and equally, heartbreaking. She continues to visit her child (or children) under the full moon.

I have been spending time in Donegal in the north west of Ireland on the wild Atlantic coast. This region is steeped in folkloric tales of the Maighdean Mara. To feel into the landscape of the Sea Maiden, I invite you to close down your eyes and allow this traditional Donegal song to wash over you. It is a poignant conversation between the Maighdean Mara, Mary Chinidh (Kinney) and her daughter Máire Bán (‘fair haired Mary’). Mary must leave her family and return to the sea now she has reclaimed her skin.

This version is sung by Moya Brennan (from Clannad), Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh (from Altan), and Máiréad Ní Domhnaill. It’s old and grainy but well worth a listen for its haunting beauty. I’ve provided the English translation below the video.

It seems that you have faded away and abandoned the love of life

The snow is spread about at the mouth of the sea

Your yellow flowing hair and little gentle mouth

We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

My dear mother, said blonde Mary

By the edge of the shore and the mouth of the sea

A Sea Maiden is my noble mother

We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

I am tired and will be forever

My fair Mary and my blonde Patrick

On top of the waves and by the mouth of the sea

We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

The night is dark and the wind is high

The Plough can be seen high in the sky

But on top of the waves and by the mouth of the sea

We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

ANSWERING THE SELKIE’S CALL

The selkie story is one of my favourite to explore with women. In both my Celtic Woman Coaching and in Week 3 of the Banríon Mystery School, we take a deep dive into Irish seas and hear the echo of her call. For me, the selkie comes ashore to implore us to rescue our sealskins from our hyperproductive world by reskilling - an act of remembering - in our feminine expressions.

Masculine and feminine expressions exist within each individual of every binary, and non-binary. Yet, we have lived for thousands of years in a patriarchal world where ‘man’ became culturally coded as superior; with the mind and intellect. ‘Woman’ then was (and still is), inferior and confined to the domestic sphere and nature; with the body, the wild, the unpredictable.

We have come to value masculine expressions over feminine expressions, even within our own bodies. And so as young women, as soon as we enter the working world, already coded as predominantly male, we feel we must prove our masculine to succeed. We have to take off our sealskin and leave her on the rocks, as we suit-up and head for the city.

Yet the paradigm is beginning to shift. If you are reading this, I know you can feel it. The time has come for us to go back to the rocks and rescue our sealskins because sewn into them is our feminine essence. This takes courage. It takes discipline. And it takes devotion. But Celtic Sister, it is so worth it. To plumpen, to ripen, to shine wild once more with life.

To be at home in your own skin. In the truest sense.

I share this quote from Deirdre, a gorgeous client and dear friend on her experience of the selkie:

“It really felt like we bypassed the conscious mind so that my BODY could SPEAK to me. I was amazed at the intuitive movements my body made under Jen’s guidance – past traumas coming to the surface to be acknowledged and healed… The weaving of Celtic mythology into the session was so powerful. I instantly identified with the story of the selkie woman. For me, the ‘sealskin’ represented my ‘personal power’ which I gave away – nobody ‘took’ it from me. These ancient stories have profound messages for women today.”

OVER TO YOU BELOVED…

• Does the mythical selkie/An Mhaighdean Mhara call to you?

• What do you feel when you hear her song?

• Where is your sealskin, magical cloak, or fishtail? Are you wearing it? Does it feel close by? Or perhaps, far away?

• Are you ready to come home to your own skin?

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Macha’s Curse

Macha (“MAWK-AH”)  is a formidable force in the Irish mythical tradition. Her name means ‘Plain of Land’ or ‘Field’. She is often interpreted as an aspect of the triple goddess the Morrígan ("MOR-REE-ghan"); essentially her sister. Some believe Macha herself is a triple goddess as there are multiple Macha’s in Early Irish Literature.

In the story I share below, ‘The Pangs of Ulster’, Macha is described as a fairywoman. The Pangs is a remscéla (fore-tale) to the great Irish epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge, 'The Cattleraid of Cooley'. It is also known as Ces Ulad, 'The Affliction [or Debility] of the Ulstermen.'

Art: Macha by Bard Mythologies

THE PANGS OF ULSTER

There was a very rich landlord in Ulster, Crunniuc mac Agnomain. He lived in a lonely place in the mountains with all his sons. His wife was dead.

Once, as he was alone in the house, he saw a woman coming toward him there, and she was a fine woman in his eyes. She settled down and began working at once, as though she were well used to the house. When night came, she put everything in order without being asked. Then she slept with Crunniuc. She stayed with him for a long while afterward, and there was never a lack of food or clothes or anything else under her care.

Soon, a fair was held in Ulster. Everyone in Ulster, men and women, boys and girls, went to the fair. Crunniuc set out for the fair with the rest, in his best clothes and in great vigour.

‘It would be as well not to grow boastful or careless in anything you say,’ the woman said to him.

‘That isn’t likely,’ he said.

The fair was held. At the end of the day the king’s chariot was brought onto the field. His chariot and horses won. The crowd said that nothing could beat those horses.

‘My wife is faster,’ Crunniuc said.

He was taken immediately before the king and the woman was sent for. She said to the messenger:

‘It would be a heavy burden for me to go and free him now. I am full with child.’

‘Burden?’ the messenger said. ‘He will die unless you come.’

She went to the fair, and her pangs gripped her. She called out to the crowd:

‘A mother bore each one of you! Help me! Wait till my child is born.’

But she couldn’t move them.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘A long-lasting evil will come out of this on the whole of Ulster.’

‘What is your name?’ the king said. ‘My name, and the name of my offspring,’ she said, ‘will be given to this place. I am Macha, daughter of Sainrith mac Imbaith’ [possibly means, ‘Strange son of Ocean’].

Then she raced the chariot and outran the horses. As the chariot reached the end of the field, she gave birth alongside it. She bore twins. a son and a daughter. The name Emain Macha, the Twins of Macha, comes from this.

As she gave birth she screamed out that all who heard that scream would suffer from the same pangs for five days and four nights in their times of greatest difficulty. This affliction, ever afterward, seized all the men of Ulster who were there that day, and nine generations after them. Five days and four nights, or five nights and four days, the pangs lasted. For nine generations any Ulsterman in those pangs had no more strength than a woman on the bed of labour.

Photo: Emain Macha known today as Navan Fort in Co. Armagh. It was the royal capital of the kingdom of Ulster in pre-Christian Ireland. Only last year, archaeologists discovered new evidence of monumental Iron Age temples and religious complexes at Emain Macha.

THE DARK FEMININE WITHIN

Macha’s curse is critical to the unfolding of the Táin as the Ulstermen in the throes of childbirth are unfit for combat. And so, akin to her sister the Morrígan, as a fierce protectress of the land, Macha’s story is an example of the power of feminine grief, fury and retaliation in influencing the outcome of warriors in battle. In fact, the heads of mortally wounded warriors in battle are known as, 'Macha's acorn crop'. She embodies the dark feminine.

When we experience the dark feminine within us, we often reject her because she is simply not welcome in our society and so, she is not welcome in our bodies (as systems of oppression play out within our own bodies). These ‘dark’ emotions get stored as frozen tension within our being. They become our shackles. We enter a freeze state to cope with the threat of their activation.

Yet these emotions so desire to be felt, to be expressed, to be metabolised within a container of safety. They are a source of fuel, of lifeforce energy, of power.

I’M RAGING

For me, Macha serves as a reminder of how transformational expressing our rage can be. Macha’s rage is so potent it holds a supernatural force. I’ve yet to meet a woman who has not experienced the internalised rage of living in a patriarchal world. Expressed in healthy ways, rage can be a catalyst for change.

My most recent experience of rage happened the past week. I’m up on the Inishowen peninsula spending time in the wilds of beloved Donegal. On a visit to Doagh Famine Village, there was an exhibit of a ‘sod house’ a tiny exposed shelter on the outskirts of a community that an unmarried mother was sent with her baby to live because of the ‘shame’ she brought upon her family. Literally an outcast barely surviving in the wild. And what about the father?! This filled me with a bloody rage!

It brought me back to present-day Ireland, of a society simmering with untold grief as more is released about the cruel and abhorrent treatment of mothers and babies under the ‘care’ of the Catholic Church. One of the many grieving processes we’ve had to endure as we disentangle ourselves from the stranglehold of the church. And yet, this collective pain pales in comparison to the experiences at the individual level of the courageous survivors. This has affected my immediate family as one of my own siblings was born in a mother and baby home.

I am raging.

Art: ‘The goddess Macha curses the Men of Ulster’ by Stephen Reid, 1909

SO WHAT TO DO WITH THIS RAGE?

In the past my first step was activism. Straight into my masculine mode, taking action first. This came at the expense of my body because I didn’t metabolise the rage within. I spent 14 years working in global justice and it was only towards the end of my career, that I began to pay attention to my body’s response to injustice. This resulted in despair, exhaustion and multiple burnouts.

The first step now for me is noticing where I feel rage in my body:

• I feel it build at the back of my throat

• The sound it makes comes from that place, it’s almost feline like a hissing growl

• This sensation in my throat connects to a hallow swell in my stomach

• My heart contracts and my chest pushes up and out

• My eyes squint, brow furrows

• My pulse races

I then move through these feeling states whenever I can find a safe space. My two go-to methods to do this are conscious shaking or by using a ‘move as you are feeling’ practice like my own, Celtic Woman’s Call, or Primal Feminine Flow taught to me by my teacher, Jenna Ward.

Awareness of what is happening in our bodies and responding in real time is an immense source of personal power. It influences the impact of our stress response. It helps us move energy that could otherwise get stored as frozen trauma through out bodies, and use it to influence the actions we take. In my body, this moves me from a chaotic reactive space - to a rooted embodied response. It helps me feel sovereign.  

As an activist my process now is to 1. Metabolise the feeling 2. Take empowered action from this place.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Grab yourself a cuppa, and cosy up with your journal as you reflect on Macha’s story and what it means to you. Here are some self-inquiry prompts to help:

• What speaks to you about Macha’s story?

• What thoughts, feelings or sensations bubbled in your body as you explored this myth? Where did they bubble?

• Can you locate where you feel rage in your body?

• What could help you metabolise your rage in healthy ways?

SOURCES:

The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattleraid of Cooley) by Anonymous translated by Thomas Kinsella