Gobnait | 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, recordings, and handcraft tutorials shaped through the rhythms of land and season. Each piece follows the movement of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, attentive to the elemental and archetypal currents that mark the Irish year. Rooted in Irish cosmology, our native festivals, folklore, myth, and seasonal custom, these works are gathered here as both an honouring of those who have gone before us, and a lasting reference for those who are to come.

What is gathered here is not assembled quickly. Each piece is written through long attention, careful research, and the ongoing work of folklore collection and documentation. This is cultural work. It is time-intensive, and it carries real cost, even where it is shared freely. This archive remains open because a small number of people choose to support it. Without that support, work of this kind disappears – or is reduced, diluted, or lost.

If you find yourself returning here, reading regularly, or drawing from what is shared, you are already part of this field of work. Becoming a patron of it is a way of standing behind the continuation of living tradition – supporting the preservation, documentation, and transmission of Irish folklore and cultural memory into the future. If you wish to support the work and help sustain this living library, you can do so here:

If you carry any part of this work onward, we ask that you do so with clarity and proper acknowledgement of source and authorship, so that the line of transmission remains intact.

Go raibh maith agat.

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Hive and Forge – Transformation and Sacred Craft in Irish Cosmology (Part 4)

Across Ireland’s mythic, archaeological, and folkloric record, two forms of enclosure appear repeatedly as sites of transformation – the hive and the forge. These spaces are rarely treated simply as functional structures. They are places where raw matter enters, is tended through process, and emerges altered in both form and meaning. In Irish cosmology, transformation is seldom accidental. It is guided through skill, stewardship, and rhythm. The hive and the forge stand as pa

Síle na gCíoch and the Protective Language of Irish Sacred Space (Part 3)

There are certain carvings in Ireland that appear to speak in a language older than the buildings that now hold them. They emerge above doorways, beside windows, along castle walls and within monastic stone, their bodies exposed, their posture deliberate, their presence unmistakable. These figures are known as Síle na gCíoch - commonly anglicised as Sheela na Gig - and although they have been catalogued, debated and interpreted through archaeological and folkloric study for g

Land, Law and the Speaking Woman - Territorial Saints and Sovereignty in Irish Tradition (Part 2)

Certain figures do not arrive through deliberate study. They rise gradually through landscape, through repeated encounter with wells, stones, shrines, and place-memory that begins to gather weight over time. Only afterwards does research begin to articulate what presence had already suggested. Across Ireland, female territorial saints belong to this category of cultural intelligence. They are not simply devotional figures preserved in ecclesiastical history. They stand at an

Gobnait at the Threshold of Spring (Part 1)

This essay begins a four-part exploration of threshold, sovereignty, sacred protection and craft within Irish cosmology. Across this series we move from the seasonal hinge of spring and the figure of Gobnait, into the territorial intelligence of land law and the speaking woman, onward to the carved guardians of stone and sacred architecture, and finally into the transformative languages of hive and forge. Each instalment stands on its own, yet together they trace a single thr

HeARTbeat Retreat – Autumn Equinox 2026
September 26 + 27 | Bantry, West Cork, Ireland

Booking closes 6pm Friday, August 21st

At the Autumn Equinox, a small group of women will gather in West Cork for two days of ceremonial drum birthing, each making her own Red Rose + Red Ochre Ritual Drum and Sounder from reindeer rawhide, birch, rose, ochre, wool and stone.

This gathering belongs to Autumn, Water and the Enchantress – to womb, memory, ancestry, instinct and the emotional body. As the year tips towards its darker half, we turn from the outward momentum of summer towards another rhythm and the fierce softening of the rose, where blossom and thorn, openness and protection, grow from the same stem.

Across the weekend we will work with botanical dyeing, natural pigments, medicinal plants, sound and rhythm, Irish seasonal lore and ancestral craft. The land is not a backdrop to this work, but co-facilitator and witness. Rose petals from my garden and hand-gathered West Cork ochre colour our drum skins, while local quartz, medicinal plant bundles, botanical dyes and West Cork sheep’s wool carry the surrounding landscape into the instruments we make.

The provenance of these materials matters. Our reindeer rawhide is ethically sourced directly from Sámi reindeer herders in Northern Finland, where reindeer husbandry remains an important part of Sámi cultural life and traditional livelihood. The sustainably sourced birch hoops are individually steamed and formed by my hand.

For the first time, we gather in the community hall in the West Cork valley where I grew up, a place my friends and family helped to build and landscape. There is an intimacy in bringing this work so close to the nest, into a landscape that formed me and carries so much family and community history.

This Red Drum gathering will not be offered again in this form. If you feel drawn to Water + the Enchantress, to making your own ritual drum by hand and spending two days immersed in land, sound and ancestral craft in West Cork, this is the time to join us.

Places are still available.

Full details + enrolment:
theheARTofritual.com/heartbeatretreats

#theheARTofritual

This is a scheduled post.

Last Samhain, while gathering sloes from the blackthorn thicket near the stone circle behind my father’s house, I already knew I would make this mead.

The berries waited through the dark half of the year until Bealtaine arrived once more. What I did not expect was that the whitethorn I planted from seed ten years ago would flower for the very first time on astronomical Bealtaine itself. So blossoms from that tree became part of the brew.

Into it went rowan flower and elderberry gathered here in the garden, bilberries, blueberries, blackberries, rosehips, and juniper gathered high in the Alps above the cloud line, along with mugwort, sweet woodruff, daisy, and five protective thorns. The honey was the final jar of hawthorn blossom honey made by bees feeding almost entirely on hawthorn nectar.

There is something of the Wheel held within the mead – sea level and mountain, valley and sky, blossom and dark berry gathered together across the turning of the year. All going well, it will travel with me to West Cork this October for this year’s Elements of Being™ retreat.

I am from this place, Cailleach country. I know these shorelines, weather systems, mountains, silences, stories, and thresholds intimately because they have shaped my life since childhood. The gathering takes place here deliberately during the season of An Chailleach Bhéarra herself, as the old year dies back and the long turning toward winter begins.

Held as a primarily silent retreat, the week moves slowly and spaciously. Nothing is asked of people beyond arriving as they are. Over the years there have been moonrise sea kayaking journeys around the islands of the bay, basket weaving by the fire, salmon skin tanning while listening to the selkie myths, evenings at local set dancing gatherings, soda bread baking in the kitchen, cultured butter worked slowly by hand, candlelit evenings listening to live traditional Irish music while weather pressed against the windows, and long stretches of comfortable silence where very little needed to be said at all.

Join me in person:
October 23 - 30, 2026
Beara Peninsula, West Cork, Ireland

Full details:
theheARTofritual.com/elementsofbeingretreat

Ten years ago, I planted this hawthorn from seed, one among many that have gone into the ground over the years as part of an ongoing practice of gathering and setting native broadleaf seed – hawthorn, blackthorn, oak, birch, rowan, hazel, holly, yew, crab apple – work that is repeated each season without certainty as to what will take and what will not, and which follows its own pace.

Hawthorn does not move quickly. The seed can lie in the ground for close to two years before it will germinate at all, and growth after that is steady and slow.

Last year, voles tunnelled beneath the roots and destabilised this tree more than once, lifting it from the soil and leaving it needing to be reset and steadied again before it could continue.

Today, for the first time, it has come into flower, and it has done so on astronomical Bealtaine. Hawthorn is the tree of Bealtaine. In Irish tradition it is recognised as a dwelling place of the Sídhe, and carries deep cultural respect that shapes how it is approached and honoured in the landscape.

What has been largely unseen arrives today at it's first blossoming. From here, the fire season begins, the movement towards the Summer Solstice when the days lengthen, the light strengthens, and the demand to move quickly and take on more increases.

This tree has not followed that pace. It has held steady through cold, disturbance, and interruption, and has reached this point without acceleration.

I am keeping my own pace in the same way.
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

The path is revealing itself now.

That is what this time of year asks of us. What has been stirring beneath the surface begins to show its outline. The invitation is no longer simply to observe, or to admire from a distance, but to place your weight upon it and begin to walk.

This image belongs to that moment. The foot, the earth pigment, the contact with the ground, the deliberate gesture of movement across the surface all continue the same visual and seasonal arc carried through the previous posts. The first marked a path. The second gave that path structure through the cycle of the year. What is shown here is the point at which the path is lived through the body.

BIOPHILIA is a one to one, year long online mentorship structured through Irish cosmology and the Celtic Wheel of the Year, moving season by season from Samhain across the full turn of the cycle. It is worked in real time, through conversation, observation, and lived experience, allowing patterns to be recognised and met directly rather than held at a distance.

The process is not fixed, and it does not take a single form. What is shared is the depth of attention and the continuity of engagement across the year. The expression is always individual.

What develops through this is a form of literacy – the ability to read the relationship between outer season and inner weather, and to understand more clearly what is being asked of you as it unfolds.

The principles at the root of this can be met anywhere. You do not need prior knowledge or to be from any particular place. What matters is the willingness to engage.

Applications are now open. The next cycle begins in November. Three places are offered each year.

For full information, and to apply, visit theheartofritual.com/biophiliamentorship
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

In the previous post, I spoke about BIOPHILIA Mentorship™ as a form of work entered into over time, through conversation, attention, and lived experience.

What you see here is a glimpse into that journey, held within Irish cosmology and the Celtic Wheel of the Year.

This is a hand-formed wild clay Celtic Wheel of the Year, filled with native botanical and mineral pigments aligned with each seasonal threshold. It has been made in response to the movement into fire season, where colour, play, and visibility begin to come forward. It is a response to that phase of the year, and one expression from one point within a much longer body of work.

This mentorship moves season by season across the full turning of the year, beginning at Samhain, the Celtic New Year. Each month, we work directly with the themes, archetypal movements, elemental dynamics, and philosophical ground of that phase, building a clear understanding of where you are within the wider arc and what is being asked of you within it.

Each session closes with a set of invitations shaped through that same seasonal intelligence – the element, the archetypal movement, and the conditions of that time. These are worked with over the following month in ways that are individual, practical, and grounded.

The next session opens with conversation around what has been observed, what has shifted, and what is beginning to take form. Over time, this builds a way of recognising and working with these patterns as they arise in your own life.

This is intimate, one-to-one work carried through real conversation across the year, allowing for a level of connection, continuity, and relationship that is now uncommon. This is taught from within a living Irish tradition, by someone born and raised within that culture.

This online mentorship is open worldwide. No prior knowledge is needed.

If you recognise the value of working in this way, the next cycle begins in November. Three places are offered each year.

Full details and to apply
theheartofritual.com/biophiliamentorship
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

There is a kind of work that can only happen over time, in direct conversation, and in relationship to a life as it is actually being lived. It has to be entered into, carried, and worked with, and is often recognised rather than explained.

BIOPHILIA Mentorship™ is a one-to-one, year-long online mentorship structured through the Celtic Wheel of the Year. The work is grounded in Irish cosmology and oral tradition, drawing together eco-psychology, archetypal psychology, elemental philosophy, land-based practice, ritual, and creative process. These are engaged both as frameworks and as lived experience, carried through conversation and integrated over time.

We meet once each month for a three-hour session, held one-to-one. Between meetings, the work continues through carefully designed invitations that support integration, allowing what is explored in conversation to take root in how you move through your life across the year.

This is relational work, shaped through attention, listening, and sustained engagement over time, and it cannot be separated from your participation in it.

It is open to those based anywhere in the world. You do not need to be Irish, nor do you need prior knowledge. What matters is your willingness to work in a steady and committed way over time.

This kind of one-to-one, year-long mentorship is rare. It stands apart from the fast, scalable, and often superficial ways in which knowledge is now delivered and consumed. It is a slower, more deliberate way of working – slow medicine for fast times.

Only three places are offered each year, allowing the work to remain direct, personal, and fully attended.

I offer this from within a lived tradition, carried through long practice rather than assembled from external sources, and shaped in response to the person in front of me.

If you recognise the value of this way of working, take that seriously now and read the full mentorship page carefully before applying. The structure, expectations, and application process are outlined there in detail.

Applications are now open.

theheartofritual.com/biophiliamentorship

The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™

You may have noticed that your capacity has changed. What once moved easily now takes more from you, or does not move at all. Attention slips more quickly, and rest does not seem to reach as deeply as it should. Continuing in the same way is no longer workable, even if you cannot fully explain why.

Nesting: The Human Work of Shelter and Becoming™ is a long-form, self-paced online programme written for this shift in capacity. It offers a way of working with reduced energy, withdrawal, and the need for space without forcing resolution or trying to restore a previous pace. Instead, it allows a different kind of order to take shape, based on what is actually possible now.

The work centres around essential movements which include reducing unnecessary exposure, creating conditions that can hold you without strain, and learning how to remain with what is present without pushing for change. Over time, effort reorganises, and steadiness begins to return without pressure.

A nest is built in response to need, shaped from what is available, and held only for as long as required. Within it, life gathers strength without interruption. When that strength is established, movement resumes naturally.

This is a body of work to live with rather than complete. It is written and delivered through the Online Hedge School, allowing you to return to it at your own pace, in accordance with your own capacity. The work has been shaped through decades of clinical practice, facilitation, and teaching.

Full programme details: theheartofritual.com/nesting

The Online Hedge School is the dedicated home for my long-form online curricula in Irish cosmology, the Celtic Wheel of the Year, archetypal psychology, elemental philosophy, and Irish folklore. Each body of work is structured for depth, discernment, and cultural integrity, and is designed to be studied wherever you are, at your own pace.

Find out more at: theheartofritual.com/onlinehedgeschool
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

A small nest rests upon stone, scarcely larger than an inch across, holding two eggs no more than 6 mm in length. Moss, windfallen lichen, and thin strands of abandoned spider silk gather into form, each movement asking for patience beyond ordinary scale. Worked with a small twig in place of a beak, the structure follows not only the proportions of the Bee Hummingbird — the smallest bird species known — but also its weaving methods and materials, learned through observation and adapted with what was available here. I chose this bird because Jeremie always moved through the world like a hummingbird — vivid, restless, intensely alive. Beautiful. Ephemeral.

The materials carry their own stories. A tiny clear quartz cluster comes from the Beara, my home. The stone beneath the nest was gathered along the rose granite coast of Brittany, where Jeremie was from — a place I stop at each year while travelling between Ireland and the Alps to leave small offerings for loved ones who have passed. Windfallen lichen was fixed gently with bone glue before the nest was set in place, allowing these places and journeys to meet within a single ground.

The eggs are formed from selenite Jeremie and I gathered together in Spain. There are two: one for Jeremie, and one for those who love him, held together within the same fragile space of grief.

News of his death reached me days after it happened, leaving no way to stand where farewell was taking place. In the weeks that followed, my hands turned toward making as a way to steady myself and give prayer somewhere to live. The nest became an altar — a place where immense love and immense grief could exist together.

For a year it has remained here, held between making and return. When I go back to the island where Jeremie lived, it will be left among the places we once shared, given back to weather, wind and time, with a view of the sunset he loved.

This tiny nest holds the work of standing witness across distance. It honours Jeremie and those who love him, held together within remembrance — a reminder that sacred spaces can be made wherever care, memory and attention gather.

❤️🐾🌱

Twenty-four thorns establish the perimeter. Gathered in winter from whitethorn, blackthorn, crabapple, and a rose long rooted here, they form four pillars within the rose family. A square implied beneath a circle. Stability preceding light.

The thorns do not meet. The red stitching does not seal them. What is formed here is not a container but an enclosure.

An enclosure breathes. It marks a boundary without suffocating what lives within it. The language we choose shapes the structures we build. Within the Biophilia Mentorship this month, we have been tracing this relationship between word, pattern, spell, and energetic architecture – how speech becomes structure, and how terminology can quietly limit what it claims to protect.

This work is a form of non-verbal reasoning. The ground is eco-printed from fallen rose leaves steeped in iron-rich bog water. The fibre binding each thorn was dyed from windfall petals of that same rose. Thorns gathered in dormancy, fibre drawn into tension. A restrained sun without excess.

At the centre there is space. This is deliberate. Between the first stirring of the year and the full commitment of outward movement, there exists a narrow interval in which what has newly come into being remains intelligent yet fragile. Protection at this stage is not confinement, it's orientation, awareness, discernment. The open centre allows whatever is forming to be placed there – a vow, a direction, a body of work, a household, a season of repair. The structure adapts. It does not entomb. This is work that walks, lives, and breathes.

Biophilia is a year-long, one-to-one online mentorship moving through the Celtic Wheel of the Year, rooted in Irish cosmology and informed by archetypal psychology, elemental philosophy, and lived land-based practice. It follows seasonal rhythm as structure rather than metaphor, working through hand, language, material, and sustained dialogue across the year.

Applications are now open. For full details and to apply visit theheartofritual.com/biophiliamentorship

_______________________________

The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

Between Imbolc and the Spring Equinox there is a room most people walk through without recognising it. The light is lengthening and lambs are unsteady on the fields, sap beginning to rise in the hedgerows, and in the mind something leans forward, eager for movement. Restlessness can feel persuasive at this time of year. It can dress itself up as readiness. The land is not doing that.

What is happening now is slower and more deliberate. Frost still holds in shaded corners. The hills carry last season’s damp beneath the brightening sky. The ground has not yet settled enough to bear full weight. Beneath what appears as emergence there is a strengthening underway, a gathering of coherence before effort. The visible stirring rests on an invisible consolidation.

Imbolc places Brigid first as midwife and keeper of the hearth. This is the tending phase, the guarding of what is fragile, the quiet fortifying of what will later have to stand. Only as the Equinox draws near does she shift into torchbearer and way-shower, carrying fire forward into Bealtaine and the long bright stretch beyond. The sequence is exact. If we reverse it, something thins.

Impatience belongs to the air season, when thoughts quicken and plans multiply. A subtle agitation can mistake movement for progress. But haste has consequence. Energy disperses. The nervous system goes forward unprepared. What should have been steadied in stillness is dragged into motion unfinished.

The work now is not outward display, but inward alignment. It may look like fewer commitments, quieter evenings, stronger boundaries around time and attention. It may look like walking the same path until the mind settles, or standing beside a field long enough to notice how little has actually changed. This is not passivity. It is calibration.

Spring is often imagined as ignition, yet its first labour is containment — strengthening what will soon be asked to carry weight. Living in step with that pacing is not dramatic, but it is decisive. It shapes how we will meet the growing year.
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

There is a lifetime of story held beneath these pictures. Sheep’s wool gathered from the hedgerows of West Cork, lifted from brambles where ewes passed in winter, washed, carded, and dyed with plants met through seasonal land work. The soft, muted pink beneath my finger comes from willow pruned in its dormant season. Storm-damaged branches were cleared, rods cut while the sap lay low for weaving and living structure, and only the smallest fragments steeped for pigment. Compost comes last.

Spring moves in filaments and fibres. Thought travels in strands. Sheep’s wool belongs to this season. In Ireland the pastoral year shapes the ritual year. The ewe heavy with lamb gives Imbolc its name. When fleece takes on the hue of willow – the tree of February – riverbank and meadow meet in one thread. Nothing has been imposed. It has been observed.

Willow runs through my work in quiet continuity. From winter pruning come baskets, growing supports, bird feeders, Brigid’s crosses, charcoal, plant paper, glaze, and colour. This year cuttings are being gathered for Heartlands Field, where a living hedge will steady a wind-struck slope, hold moisture, shelter small creatures, and in time feed the first bees of the year. Heritage varieties are being planted so craft can be learned again through practice rather than nostalgia.

I do not teach plants as commodities. I teach attention. There is a difference between asking what a plant is good for and learning who it is within its landscape. We move through their space, at their pace.

The pink wool in this photograph holds river, ewe, thorn, wind, fire, field, and bee. It is not a product. It is a record of relationship.

If you feel called to work in this way, one place remains in the herbal apprenticeship, beginning April. Two places remain for the Irish HeARTbeat Retreat this Autumn. Elements of Being, our one week residential in Cailleach country this Samhain, is nearly full, so be sure to book soon. Applications are open for the next cycle of my one to one Biophilia Mentorship.

See theheartofritual.com/gather
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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™.

Autumn Equinox HeARTbeat Retreat
Bantry, West Cork, Ireland | September 26 + 27, 2026

This September, the Irish heARTbeat Retreat returns to West Cork for a women's Red Drum birthing gathering rooted in the womb, the rose, ancestral tide, memory, moon rhythm, and the Enchantress.

Held within the turning of the Autumn Equinox, this weekend honours the season when the outer world softens and the inner world grows more audible. It is a time for deep listening rather than striving, cyclical awareness rather than linear progress, and meeting the emotional and ancestral waters that shape belonging, protection, release, and renewal.

Across the gathering, each participant ceremoniously births her own Red Rose and Red Ochre Ritual Drum and Sounder - created not simply as instruments, but as lifelong ritual colleagues formed through relationship with land, material, story, and personal rhythm.

Participants work with rose petal dye grown in my own garden, hand gathered West Cork ochre, ethically sourced Sámi reindeer rawhide, hand-shaped birch hoops, wild botanical colour, plant bundles, local quartz crystal, and botanically dyed West Cork sheep’s wool. Each drum and sounder carries the imprint of place, season, and personal story.

The work meets ancestral and emotional themes through craft, rhythm, folklore, and seasonal ceremony rather than therapeutic excavation, allowing the process to remain grounded, creative, and deeply held. The gathering is intentionally small and carefully guided throughout.

Full details, including the downloadable colour brochure, are available via
theheartofritual.com/heartbeatretreats

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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

Friday the 13th carries a charge. Even those who dismiss superstition feel it. The date sits slightly askew in the mind, edged with unease. In Irish, that current would once have been named plainly – piseog – not as foolishness, but as recognition that words, numbers, days, and gestures are not empty of consequence.

A piseog was never merely a folk supestrstition. It marked the place where language meets atmosphere. Where naming alters a room. Where a blessing steadies, and a careless word unsettles. Not everything was spoken directly. Not everything was called by its true name. There were reasons.

Witch Words and Spirits Beyond the Circle’s Edge follows that older intelligence. It looks beyond the visible circle – beyond staged ritual and inherited aesthetics – toward the quieter perimeter where speech, restraint, and small acts of protection once held households in balance. It asks what happens when ritual becomes display, and what remains when attention returns to land, threshold, and consequence.

Shared today because Friday the 13th still carries a whisper of piseog in the collective body, not out of fear, but as memory.

Read the full article: theheartofritual.com/post/witch-words-and-spirits-beyond-the-circle-s-edge

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The heART of Ritual
theheARTofritual.com

© 2026 The heART of Ritual™. All rights reserved.

#theheARTofritual

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The heART of Ritual

musings

Hive and Forge – Transformation and Sacred Craft in Irish Cosmology (Part 4)

Síle na gCíoch and the Protective Language of Irish Sacred Space (Part 3)

Land, Law and the Speaking Woman - Territorial Saints and Sovereignty in Irish Tradition (Part 2)

Gobnait at the Threshold of Spring (Part 1)

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The heART of Ritual

musings

Hive and Forge – Transformation and Sacred Craft in Irish Cosmology (Part 4)

Síle na gCíoch and the Protective Language of Irish Sacred Space (Part 3)

Land, Law and the Speaking Woman - Territorial Saints and Sovereignty in Irish Tradition (Part 2)

Gobnait at the Threshold of Spring (Part 1)

​

About

Gather

Musings

Collections

Members Login

Contact

Newsletter

Elsewhere

Legal