Search
Singing the Soul Home: Keening, Wake, and the Old Irish Lament
In the hush between life and death, the Irish keening tradition once rang out with an untamed cry. A sound that split the air, carrying grief into the marrow of those who heard it, and carrying the soul of the departed into the unseen. Keening was not mere weeping. It was ritual, fierce in its necessity, a cry that acknowledged death’s arrival and accompanied the journey beyond. Caoineadh, from caoin meaning to weep or lament, was both song and wail, both word and wordless c
When the Wheel Stands Still: Death, Despair, and the Starry Kin
There comes a moment in the turning of the year when the wheel itself seems to halt, pausing in breathless stillness. Time hangs heavy. Shadows lengthen, and the breath of the land draws in upon itself. In Ireland, this moment stretches between the dark of Samhain and the first trembling light of the Winter Solstice – a season where the dead walk amongst us, and the living seek fire, food, and fellowship to keep despair at bay. The old folk knew these weeks as a haunted pause
Opening the Window: Death Customs and Soul Beliefs in Irish Tradition
In Ireland, death has never been a hidden thing. It moves through the home, the community, and the land as something to be honoured, witnessed, and spoken of. Death is not treated as an abrupt severing, but as a threshold that involves the living and the dead in a shared passage. In rural Ireland, particularly, these thresholds have traditionally been marked through a series of household rituals, communal practices, and seasonal observances that bind the fate of the soul to t
Elemental BEing and the Language of Nature
A reflection on returning to the elemental language of being, where the states we move through are not problems to fix but seasons to honour. If we began to describe ourselves through the language of nature, we might find a gentler way of understanding who we are. So much of the modern world teaches us to define ourselves by what is wrong, to diagnose, to categorise, to measure. But the earth doesn’t work like that. It changes by relationship, not by rule. The oak doesn’t apo
Water at the Threshold: Autumn Rituals of Bathing and Remembrance
The path climbs steeply. On either side, belladonna plants rise like green sentinels, their glossy leaves and purple-throated flowers marking the way. At the height of summer, on the day of the solstice, I walk this path each year to greet them. Their presence has become part of my calendar, a quiet ritual of return. At the top, the sound of water thickens in the air before the falls themselves come into view. Angel Falls, I call it, for the angelica that surrounds it in tow
At the Waters of the Equinox
At the edge of the valley, the mountain rises in stone and shadow. At its foot the lake lies still, receiving the whole mountain into...
The Womb, The Waters, And The Memory Of The Blood
This is an essay on blood, water, and memory – and the rituals that once wove body and land together from first bleed to last. To tend...
To Rise Like a Tide – On Resisting Hopelessness in a Time of Unmaking
It would be tempting, these days, to curl into the dark – to say the work is too great, the damage too deep, the hunger too vast. That we...
The Harrowing March of the O’Sullivan Beare
Along the rugged sweep of Bantry Bay, the land holds memory like stone. To the north rises the Beara Peninsula, to the south the long...
The Mythic Tapestry of West Cork and Munster
Munster is a land of stone and tide, of folded green hills and winds that come salt-laden from the western sea. To those who walk its...
The Body of a River, The Body of a Human
The magical Esknamucky Waterfall. Photograph by Nigel Wheal A river is never still, even in its seeming quiet. Beneath its skin lies a...
The Arc of Fire, and 'Emotional Kintsugi'
In Ireland, we say that story is medicine. Our indigenous oral traditions do not treat story as unburdening, but as offering – something...
Beauty and the Shapeshifter
What does it mean to live in a world where beauty is everywhere and yet nowhere? Where our eyes are flooded with polished images, but our...
Reclaiming Enchantment After Exhaustion
There are times when the marrow of life feels spent. We arrive at the edge of our own strength and find only hollowness echoing back....
Lúnasa: Where Joy And Grief Share The Same Table
Joy and grief are not strangers at Lúnasa – they sit together at the same table, share the same bread, drink from the same cup. This...
The Path of Life and the Changing Year
One of the more interesting observations I have noticed when I write about the changing seasons and the turning of the year is how many...
The Strange Wonder of Fairy Light
We often find that accounts of people encountering fairies at night begin with a strange and unusual light near a rath, stone circle or...
When We Are No Place at All
"The middle-despite the common use of that word-is not halfway between here and there, beginning and end, birth and death, right and...
The Owl Woman
As we enter the darkness of the falling year and the coming of the Cailleach, it is interesting to note the various roles the owl plays...
How to Recapture Your Imagination
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom under the grip of a spyglass. If you had the spyglass, you could see anything in the world. If you...