Cultural Anthropology | The heART of Ritual

The heART of Ritual

musings

Welcome to the MUSINGS room of our digital hearth.

This is a living archive – a gathering of writings, poems, stories, recipes, videos, and handcraft tutorials. Each one is woven through the rhythms of nature, the turning of the Celtic Wheel, and the elemental and archetypal movements of the Irish year. Rooted in the cosmology, indigenous festivals, folklore, myths, and seasonal customs of Ireland, these offerings speak from the old ways into the now – and are gathered here as both an honouring of those who have gone before us, and a lasting reference for those who are to come.

This collection is freely shared as an ongoing gift to the community – yet each piece is the fruit of long attention and handcraft. If you carry it onward, please do so with integrity and give proper credit to the author and source, so the lineage remains unbroken.

Go raibh maith agat.

The Language That Carries Us: Part Two – When the Word Is Spoken

If Part One belongs to language held in the body, this second movement belongs to the moment when breath becomes sound. In oral cultures, speech is never neutral. Words are not simply descriptive. They are acts. They intervene in the world they enter. This is why, within Irish tradition, language was never treated casually, and why silence was understood not as absence, but as restraint and discernment. To speak was to step into relationship and to accept consequence, not on

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

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

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

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...

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...

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 Women Who Walk Between Worlds

I was chatting to somebody about hypnosis recently, a subject I know very little about, to be honest. I do know that it is used in...

The ancient roots of 'Valentine's Day'

Although the heart is probably the symbol most associate with Valentines Day, it might surprise people that the wolf can also lay claim...

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

Keening Traditions and the Irish Wake

When looking at the lifecycle in terms of folklore it cannot escape ones notice that many aspects of the life cycle have clearly defined...

Blúiríní Béaloidis 15 - The Salmon In Folk Tradition

Irish communities have been sustained for centuries by the fruits of our seas, rivers and lakes, from which both physical and economic...

Blúiríní Bealoidis 26 - Seals In Folk Tradition

Seals have been an integral part of coastal life in Ireland for generations, and as such there exists a large body of tradition, belief...

Blúiríní Béaloidis 03 - The Moon In Folk Tradition

Since the earliest times, Man has sought to come to terms with the unknown powers and forces that act upon life and wellbeing. It is...

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...

The Hazel Tree in Irish Magic, Witchcraft and Folklore

The hazel tree was held in high and mystical regard by the ancient Irish people. In Irish mythology the hazel tree was said to bestow...

Blúiríní Béaloidis 25 - Midsummer

Midsummer has long been observed as a period of jubilant celebration, with communal gatherings at bonfires and prayers, recitations,...

Amoral Tricksters that Enhance World Mythology and Entertain Cultures

Mythologies around the world speak of beings which cannot be defined as good or evil. German folklore mentions a household elemental...