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Imbolc and Brigid: On Timing, Thresholds (and Confusion)
Willow, snowdrop and rowan protective talisman for the hearth and home As February approaches, references to Imbolc and Brigid begin to circulate again. Articles are shared, festivals announced, and familiar language returns – new beginnings, fresh starts, the promise of spring. The tone is often hopeful, sometimes celebratory, and usually well-intentioned. Yet for many people, it does not quite land. The difficulty is not with the impulse to mark change, but with how several
The Language That Carries Us: Part One – Before the Word
Oral tradition is fragile. Not because it lacks substance, but because it depends on closeness. It survives only where people remain in relationship – to one another, to place, and to those who came before them. Once that proximity is broken, once knowledge is lifted out of the hearth and placed at a distance, something essential thins. The words may remain, but the transmission weakens. In Ireland, much of what is most vital has never been written down. It has lived instead
Sedna, Snow Wisdom, and the Long Northern Memory
Every winter, I pull on the same pair of mukluks before stepping outside. They are old now – reindeer skin, hand-made in Greenland, lined with sheepswool that has softened to the shape of my feet over years of use. They keep my feet warm in a way no other boot ever has, but more than that, they carry memory. Each time I wear them, I am brought back to the North – to Greenland, to Iceland, to my time in the Arctic circle, to places where winter is not something endured until i
When Darkness Is No Longer Permitted to Do Its Work
On the Beara Peninsula, the winter solstice still arrives as a working cosmology rather than a seasonal motif. Under a north-facing sky where the old bearings remain legible, the longest night exposes a deeper crisis – not of technology, but of orientation, rest, and cultural memory. On the winter solstice, standing on the Beara Peninsula and facing north, the rupture shaping modern life reveals itself as cosmological rather than technological. This is the longest night of th
WATCH: Grianstad an Gheimhridh ag Sí an Bhrú (Newgrange Winter Solstice 2025 live stream)
The annual Winter Solstice event at Newgrange in County Meath is going to be streamed virtually this year on December 21 and you can tune in to watch live right here. We are delighted to partner with Ireland’s Office of Public Works (OPW) to help bring the annual, magical event of the Winter Solstice at Newgrange right into your homes around the world. In a statement, Ireland’s Office of Public Works (OPW) said: "It is great that the OPW is able once more to broadcast the Win
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
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
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 honouring Ireland's matron saint. Imbolc (one of our eight indigenous wheel of the year festivals) takes place on February 4th, 2024 (astronomical Imbolc), and this ancient festival celebrates the Earth Awakening. This article aims to clarify the difference between the two, and the connection too, and I highly recommend you read the other Br
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...