“The world is not simply given to us; it must be continually discovered, recovered, and remembered. To cross a threshold is to step into this remembering – into death and birth, into the old made new again.”

— John Moriarty, Dreamtime

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SAMHAIN AS THRESHOLD ​

The threshold Moriarty names is nowhere more present than at Samhain – when the year itself comes to its edge, the harvest finished, the seed of what is to come pressed into darkness. At the very place of ending, life begins again.

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Samhain marks our entry into winter – the season of earth, of darkness, of cold, of introspection and hibernation. Here it is the Cailleach who meets us, gathering in what has run its course and accompanying us into the long night. She is the elder who carries winter and keeps company with the ancestors. And when the dark has deepened and the ember begins to quicken, it is Brigid who walks us out at Imbolc, tending the flame that will kindle into spring. Together they hold the great arc of winter – its thresholds of death and birth, memory and promise.

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VESSELS OF MEANING AND DEVOTION

This gathering is an offering of sanctuary for that turning – time set apart from the clamour of the world, to rest in stillness, to honour loss, and to tend the quiet seed of renewal. Over two days we will shape mourning altars together, letting fibre, earth, vessel, and flame take their place in the work.

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Wild Clay – the marrow of the earth – will be pressed into altar form, rooting grief and devotion in raw substance. Wild clay and mineral slips – gathered earth made liquid – will colour our altars in a language older than words. Our offering bowls will be coiled and woven vessels, patient weaves of wild plant fibres, hedge and field brought into form. Altar cloths will be woven from natural sheep’s wool, gathered from brambles along West Cork’s lanes. For those drawn to colour or ritually communing with teacher plants, botanically dyed wool will also be offered – threads carrying the medicine of plants into the weave. Beeswax – light carried into shadow – will be crafted into candles, Brigid’s flame borne forward into winter’s dark along with the healing powers of bee and honey.

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Each material carries its own story. The beeswax comes from local hives; the wool holds the scent of field and weather; the clay remembers riverbeds and stone; the fibres of hedge and meadow have been gathered with care and patience. Nothing here is anonymous, all has been sustainably gathered by my own hands. Every element has been prepared so that you may work not just with material, but with matter alive with place, season, and spirit.

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What is made here will not be ornament but witness – not decoration, but devotion – sanctuaries shaped by hand, companions to stand beside you through the dark, to carry the weight of what has ended, and to steady your steps as the new year begins its first breath in shadow. To do this work together – with our hands, with story, with ritual – is potent work, drawn from lineage and carried forward beyond these days.

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This is sacred work to be carried in your marrow – companions shaped by hand to hold you through the silence, honouring what has ended and bearing the promise of what will rise again, as Samhain opens the threshold into the year ahead.

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ABOUT YOUR FACILITATOR 
Some lives grow from the inside out, shaped not by ambition but by listening – to land, to language, to the quiet pulse of memory. Niamh’s work has grown this way – slowly, generationally, and always in relationship with place. Born and raised in the Cailleach country of West Cork, her path was never a straight one. In her late teens she turned to psychology not to diagnose or treat, but to understand – to make sense of the unspoken undercurrents in those around her. That curiosity opened into decades of learning, tending, and making – drawn from many traditions, yet always brought back to the soil of her own.

 

Her studies have carried her through the halls of universities and the hearths of older traditions alike. She immersed herself in psychology in Dublin, deepened into Jungian shadow work and Hermetic philosophy abroad, and trained in the healing arts of body and breath. Over more than twenty-five years her inquiry has followed the subtle threads of psychosomatic illness, trauma imprinting, genetic inheritance, and cellular memory – always listening for the conversation between body and soul. Her life’s work now moves at the meeting place of the mythic and the clinical, the academic and the ancestral.

 

A naturalist and self-taught ethnobotanist, she is most at home out on the land – walking in the company of her pack, listening to the weather’s shift, the flight of birds, the quiet speech of plants and stone. What brings her ease is not crowds, but the steady companionship of the more-than-human world. Her work is shaped by the terrain in which it is made. At the heart of it all is story – not as entertainment, but as lifeblood. Every ritual, every gathering, every spirithouse of scent or word she offers is born from the old belief that land and imagination are one, and that healing happens not in isolation, but in kinship – with the earth, with each other, and with what has been forgotten.​ To read more, click here

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EXCHANGE

The exchange for this gathering is a non-refundable investment of €650 per person. Event times are 10am to 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Group size is kept intimate with just four places available. All that is needed ​over these two days is included in this fee – wild clay and slips, fibres and beeswax, tools for working, ​and fresh seasonal soulfoods and ​healing beverages to sustain the body. This fee also includes two full days of tuition, the cost of transporting your earthen vessels to and from Innsbruck for firing, and two kiln firings at the pottery studio. The clay vessels we form will be fired when they are bone dry, approx. 1-2 weeks after our gathering, and available for pickup or posted to you when their firing is complete.​ Please note that postal costs are not included in this fee.

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WHAT DO I NEED TO BRING?

Weather appropriate clothing (we work both indoors and outdoors), (natural) offerings for the group altar and mandala, a selection of small ritual items that hold meaning and reverence for you that you might like to design your altars around (or bring with you to be inspired by), a large bag to bring home what you have ritually crafted, and a journal and pencil to document your experience.

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 HOW DO I GET THERE? 

For those of you traveling to us from outside of Austria, the nearest international airports are Munich (Germany), Salzburg and Innsbruck (Austria). All are between a 45 minute and 90 minute drive from where we gather for the weekend. There are shuttle services available between the airport and our center which can be arranged directly with Four Seasons Travel in advance or in the airport arrival hall. There are also train services available from within the airports which will take you to our local station in Kufstein, simply follow the signs in the arrivals hall and you will find both self service ticket machines and desk clerks available for your assistance.  If you are travelling from outside of the area and need to book accommodation, Kufstein is just 3kms away and there are many hotels, guesthouses and self catering apartments available via www.booking.com and the Kufstein Tourist Office, www.kufstein.com.

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Full address and GPS coordinates are sent to registered participants only.​​​​

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