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This listing is for one 'Winter Dreamland' Sweetgrass & Sweet Woodruff Ritual Bathing Bar from The heART of Ritual.
 
I've long wanted to create a soap that is blue but it took a couple of years for me to grow and process the woad I needed for the blue organic pigment. I'm simply overjoyed to finally be able to share this one with you, I had no idea what shade of blue would result from this, how intensive it would be, or if a woad soap would stain my hands blue, so had to make it, test it for myself. I am really pleased with the results! (No, the soap does not stain your hands at all).
 
Blue is one of the therapeutic colours of the Air element, the principal element of Spring, so this is the main reason I've wanted to make a blue bathing bar for so long! This offering is both blue and white, the colours of the sky and billowy bright clouds, and created using my own base oils made with wild native European sweetgrass and sweet woodruff. Both of these fragrant botanicals are steeped in lore and traditions, and relate too with the themes of the season - cleansing, cleaning, purifying *and* the air elements themselves...the fae! All this, and more, inspired me and I ended up creating a little magical mid winter dreamtime wonderland filled with fluffy golden 'clocks' (seed heads, and a reference to time/air), delicate dried 'baby's breath' blossoms from the garden, and flakes of shimmery white golden muscovite. As soon as I had finished adorning the botanicals and crystals, I looked at the scene in front of me and it reminded me of what Mister Ziggy and I see whilst out on the land this time of year - animal tracks and paw prints are everywhere! Seeing as this bathing bar relates with the wee folk in so many many ways, I decided to carve a pair of tiny feet shaped stamps from hawthorn twigs (the tree of the Sídhe/fae folk) and created footprints throughout the 'snow' on top. One more thing to note here is that I purposely swirled twigs through the mixture as it began to get solid to try and get little miniature caverns into these bars. I was reminded alot of glaciers, permafrost, crystal geodes and ice caverns when I saw the colour that developed from the woad and so wanted to bring in these little pockets of spaces beneath the surface of the soap as a nod to the fertile places within. All of my cold process soaps take six weeks to cure, and when I saw this particular soap cut into individual bars, the footprints and the miniature caverns beneath, it made sense to me that the fae came from these places and a whole beautiful narrative developed - like all creatures, the winter fae too live beneath the ground during the cold season and come out when the snow begins to melt. Their footprints on top mean the thaw must be arriving soon, and the world is waking up to spring!
 
Note that these are very large bars of soap, so they go a long way! ;-)

'Winter Dreamland' Sweetgrass & Sweet Woodruff Ritual Bathing Bar

€14.00Price
Tax Included
Quantity
Only 3 left in stock

  • Please note that our products are not a substitute for any medical treatment or advice you may currently be receiving. The information presented is intended for informational, research, and energetic purposes only, and it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any dis-ease. Persons with health related issues should consult a medical professional for assistance.

    Topical ritual products are not intended for consumption and as with all natural products, a skin 'patch test’ is recommended beforehand to see if you have any unique sensitivities. Discontinue use if a rash occurs. Our topical ritual products should not be applied to broken skin, sensitive skin, or mucus membranes. Please ensure you wash your hands thoroughly after applying to the skin.

    This listing is for one portion of the aforementioned product only and does not include any other decorative items photographed. These photographs are for illustrative purposes only.

OUR SHOP IS CURRENTLY CLOSED, BUT WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU AGAIN SHORTLY.

Our Autumn 2025 shop opening took place from 6pm on September 7th until 6pm on September 14th
 All times are listed in CEST. Orders begin shipping from 22 September, fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. Made-to-order pieces dispatch from 6 October onward, unless noted otherwise. All orders are shipped from Europe.

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WINTER 2025 COLLECTION: 

Full details of each season’s collection are shared exclusively through our seasonal newsletter. This missive carries the deeper ground of the season – its energies, themes, and archetypes. Shared only four times a year, it offers original long-form writings on the mythic, elemental, and archetypal ground of the season within Irish cosmology and the Celtic Wheel of the Year, along with the creative soil from which each collection emerges. Readers also receive early access and a members-only preview of these handcrafted, ephemeral offerings.

 

Click HERE to receive our newsletter each season.

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SEASONAL OVERVIEW

Season • Winter

Element • Earth

Direction • North

Archetype • Elder Archetype

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THE FRAMEWORK FOR THIS COLLECTION

Our Winter/Earth Element Collection arrives into the season of Samhain – that threshold between the last new moon of the dying Celtic year in October, astronomical Samhain, and the first new moon of the year to come in November. It is here that endings and beginnings lie folded together – a dreamtime of moons that leads us into the deepest dark – asking us to walk slowly, to walk in Earth time. 

 

This is not the hurried clock-time of the everyday. It is slow time – deep time – recorded in bedrock and fault-line, in layers pressed through clay and shale. As the earth keeps her history in stone and strata, so we carry memory in bone. The land is our larger body – marrow and mountain, clay and skin, each carrying memory. To enter this season is to enter those depths, to map again the contour lines of the inner ground, to feel where the body holds fractures, pressure, weight-bearing, release. The work is slow. The work is old. Stone remembers, and so do we. Our bodies are cairns of remembrance.

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Between Samhain and Solstice we are pilgrims moving through inner hollows and chambers of the soul. It is sanctuary time, a time of reverence and devotion, where prayer is not passive but visceral and embodied – where we kneel not before idols but within the tabernacle of our own being. The ember of light is entrusted to us here, and it must be guarded with care – fanned in trust, sheltered in hope, nourished with care, until it kindles to flame and warmth.

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Samhain is also the season of surrender. To grieve what has passed in the twelve months gone. To honour ancestors, yes, but also to lay down the burdens of the year, the losses and thresholds crossed, the shocks and griefs that linger. As leaves return to soil, so sorrow returns to earth, darkening into humus that feeds what will come. In the body, this work is felt in the earth element – in the musculoskeletal frame, in the gut’s deep work of breaking down and letting go. To release is to create space, and to hold is to become heavy. The earth teaches us this balance, for she both receives and yields in the same breath.

 

This is the annual pilgrimage to the soul’s inner shrine – beyond one life, beyond one line of ancestry. It is the thread that connects us with stone and to soil, with grandmother and grandfather, with all who came before and all who will come after. In this time-out-of-time we reweave ourselves into that thread, into the north, into the slow, enduring rhythm of earth itself. And from that ground – from a living tapestry of blood and bone and surrender – the Solstice light is born again. A flame at the heart of winter.

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REFERENCES THROUGHOUT THIS COLLECTION​

Focus for the Winter collection is the element of Earth, Embodied Ritual & Green Prayer, Illuminating the Dark & the Inner Hearth, Chakras of the Root, Knees/Elbows, Feet/Hands and Earth Star, Physical WellBEing, the Musculoskeletal System, the Digestive System & Intestinal Health, Death, Grief Processing & Trauma Composting, Vulnerability & Surrender, The Pilgrim & the Inner Journey, Protection, Connection & Roots, Hibernation & Radical Rest, Cultivating Sanctuary & Stillness, Conscious Nourishment & Nurturance, and of course, Earth Rituals for the Head, Heart and Hands.

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