Food For Thought | 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 a 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.

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

The Work of Winter: Touch and the Remembering of the Body

Touch. The first sense. The first language. Before sound, before sight, before any word was formed, there was the meeting of skin with world, a quiet dialogue between body and existence. Through touch we learned that we are here, that there is ground beneath us, that life can be met and known. It is the oldest way of saying yes. Many speak of five senses, yet if we listen more closely, there are many, many more, each opening a doorway between head, heart, and hands. At the fo

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

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

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

Spring, the Air Element, and the Silent Extinction of Words

Imbolc marks the first day of Spring in Ireland and the Celtic Wheel of the Year. The principal element of Spring is Air, and this...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'A Morning Offering', by John O'Donoghue

I bless the night that nourished my heart To set the ghosts of longing free Into the flow and figure of dream That went to harvest from...

Seeking to walk beautifully on the Earth - A talk from Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty

Recorded in the early 1990's, this incredible recording gifts magical insights into the fertile ground that is the mind of the late great...

On Imaginal Cells and Trusting the Process

To better understand the opportunity hidden in today’s crises, consider the tale of another world in transition. Imagine you are a single...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Ancient Language', by Hannah Stephenson

If you stand at the edge of the forest and stare into it every tree at the edge will blow a little extra oxygen toward you It has been...