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The Bog Shaman: An Invitation to Intimacy, Wonder, and Place at the home of the Cailleach Bhéarra
On the Beara Peninsula, winter enters quietly through the bog. It always has. This is the land’s first threshold, the place that feels the shift long before the rest of the world takes notice. Winter comes on the scent of damp earth and peat, in the faint metallic clarity of cold air, in the soft resistance beneath your boots as you step onto the dark, springing ground. Before frost etches its fine geometry across stone and heather, the boglands are already turning inward. Mo


On Darkness as Origin
There are nights in West Cork when the land feels stripped back to its rawest truth. Down on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula, that long and narrow reach of earth running out into the Atlantic on the south side of Bantry Bay, winter arrives without softenings or shelter. No hedgerows here. No gentle boundaries. Just long golden mountain grasses blown flat by Atlantic wind, heather and gorse crouched low as if bracing itself, and the ground beneath holding its shape in stone and sil


Situating Prayer: A Personal Reflection on Death, Ritual, and the Temple of the Heart
There are moments when time seems to collapse inward, as though it folds along a secret seam only the soul can sense. In that silence, everything that has gone before and everything still to come seem to breathe together. I felt this the morning I learned that Helena had died – my neighbour, friend, mountain grandmother figure, lover of plants and pack and sky. The news came just after the autumn equinox, a hinge-time in the year when the light tips toward darkness and the ai


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....


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...


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...


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....


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...


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...


Samhain and the Cailleach
Samhain, the astronomical moment of liminality, is drawing closer. Although Halloween will be celebrated on the 31st of October, the...


Customs and Folklore of the Autumn Equinox
This year, the Autumn Equinox takes place on the 22nd of September here in Western Europe. This is the moment in the year when the hours...


The Feast Day of Brigid (Lá Fhéile Bhríde) and the ancient Irish festival of Imbolc
If you're Irish like me, you will know that today (February 1st) is the feast day of St. Brigid (Lá Fhéile Bhríde), a fixed date holiday...


Blúiríní Béaloidis 05: The Threshold Of Plenty - Harvest Customs In Irish Tradition
The arrival of the harvest was for our forebears a time of great celebration, for it marked the point at which the lean months of June...


Sage Advice on how to see the Fae Folk
"The condition favourable to the belief that Fairies are being seen would seem to be that the right type of person should be in an...


Dark Bealtaine Folklore and The Fairy Queen
Depending on where you live on this beautiful planet, astronomical Bealtaine will take place on either May 5th or 6th this year. The dark...


Bealtaine, Fairies, and the Pleiades
In a previous post I wrote about the connection between our concepts of the similar patterns which appear throughout the universe,...


Spring Equinox & The Fairy Hunt
"And beyond them, almost hidden by the moon shadows, were the Lords of the Ever-Living Ones: the antlered helmets of the Wild Hunt, the...


St Brigid: Dove Among Birds, Vine Among Trees, Sun Among Stars
Starting next year, we’ve been given a new National Holiday! February 1 is celebrated as St Brigid’s Day in Ireland and to honour our...


Blúiríní Béaloidis 18 - Brigid In Folk Tradition
St. Brigid’s Day falls on the first of February, and is traditionally understood as marking the beginning of spring in Irish custom....
