Destiny
The Celtic Creatives is about Destiny.
Our logo symbolises this.
It is inspired by the mystical mayfly.
A mayfly will spend up to two years as an underwater nymph, apprenticing itself to birth. When it hatches, it lives for a fleeting moment in the chasm of time. A few hours to a day. Its sole and soul purpose when alive is to pass on its genes and fulfil its destiny.
This is reflected in Irish mythology.
One such story is of Étaín who in a fit of jealousy, is transformed by the druidess Fúamnach into a purple fly. Étaín is blown in wretchedness around Ireland until she lands depleted on the roof beam of a king’s banquet in the royal house of Ulster. Shattered, she falls off the beam and into a goblet in the hand of the Queen who swallows the fly along with the liquid. Nine months later, the Queen gives birth to a daughter whom she calls “Étaín”. 1,112 years have passed since Étaín’s initial incarnation.
And so, a whole new life of remembering ensues for Étaín.
A remembering of who she truly is.
And who she is called to be.
This is her destiny. What will yours BE?
Creative Ancestor
The inspiration for The Celtic Creatives comes from my grandmother, who is now a Creative Ancestor, Frances O’Sullivan. Frances grew up in Pimlico in inner-city Dublin. Her father was a cooper in the Guinness Brewery, as Dublin as can be. And like ‘The Rare Auld Times’, a ballad she loved, Frances was “raised on songs and stories”, coming from a line of storytellers on her mother’s side.
Frances’s own life story was one with dark chapters no one would wish to open. She lost her soulmate, Christy, in 1960 on Christmas week, the same week her sister Noelle died in childbirth and her beloved baby with her. Left with seven small children to rear, Frances used stories as a disrupter to infuse magic into the mundane. My mother has fond memories of children coming in off the street and sitting round the fire as Frances would relish in regaling terrifying tales of banshees, púca spirits and changeling fairies. She would go on to do the same for me and my friends.
As a child, Frances filled my ears with this béaloideas the word for Irish ‘folklore’, from béal meaning ‘mouth’ and oideas, ‘to educate’. Frances’s ‘mouth education’ urged me on to a degree in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies 20 years ago, so the Celtic Otherworld has been part of my life’s education in both informal and formal ways.
My destiny is to support others to reconnect with the creative lifeforce of Ireland.
I am also devoted to supporting you to bring our mythology to life through your own creative expression.
My approach is anchored in five elements:
Enchantment - Wind
To unlock my heart to the wonder-awe of the seen and unseen.
To be spellbound by the mystery within nature and the cosmos that spirals within all life.
To wander through the everlasting of myth, folk and fairytale and weave back threads of lumination. Not to reinvent the past but to reenchant the present.
To heed my soul’s whispers through the fantastical within me. To honour the creative spirit, imagination, and dream as the highest realm of [soul] reality. To recognise, respect and tenderly nurture this in others.
Beauty - Earth
Emboldened by my senses, to trace the texture of beauty in the life that surrounds me so that I can become more wholly (and holy) alive.
To relish in the creation of beauty even the simplest of spendours. To collapse into the beauty of a moment, into the luxury of being.
To witness the beauty that lives behind a facial expression, a word, a bodily gesture, a creation; that gifts it its spirit.
To see beauty in the creation and death faces of the Great Mother, like the Sheela-na-Gig, gloriously ripe and gloriously decaying.
To take joy in the beauty of imperfections; my own that make me, me; and others that make them, them.
Craft - Fire
To devote to quality, depth, richness of broth over consumptive speed. To be wise to the dance and stillness of seasons and great cycles.
To engage the dream that comes prior to thinking and make with it through images, my words, my hands, my body. To do so in a co-creative spirit with the Otherworld intuiting that in this way creativity is infinite as the Well of Segais never runs dry.
To sow my craft with heart and humanity trusting it will grow under the light of those who need it. And to cultivate the space for making in others.
To have the courage to change my mind, make mistakes, adapt, reinvent, evolve. To be an apprentice to life.
LEGACY - WATER
To contribute to the evolution of the Irish culture.
To embody the discernment of the king to apply a critical lens to the overculture, and the timelessness of the Goddess to enter the cultural dreamtime.
I am a cultural dreamer. I dream for our culture.
To breathe life into old ghosts whose origins are debated by scholars. And yet, their archetypal patterns live on within us, speaking to our soul’s code.
To be a Creative Ancestor, listening, really listening, to the voices of the past and the voices of the future.
CO-CREATION- SOUL
To dance with all of the above by co-creating with the Creative Ancestors of the Otherworld, and through collaboration and community with others, nurturing our creative clans.
