Keening With the Cailleach
Sunday 27th November, 7.30-9.30 UK GMT/ 2.30 - 4.30 US Eastern
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SACRED STORIES
KEENING
CAILLEACH AS MIDWIFE
CAILLEACH ORACLE DOLL
I invite you to bring all the different threads of sorrow - your personal sorrow, sorrow you feel on a global level - the sorrows for our bird and animal kin, sorrows of injustices too many to count, sorrow’s for all unfolding from climate devastation, and those deep-rooted sorrows we can’t even name.
This is also a ritual of renewal like clothes that are washed as Clarissa Pinkola Estes highlights, to wash is to purify, a baptism - to renew, a reviving re-discovering what we hold true, what we hold sacred. This is a sacred ritual.
The Cailleach at the Corryvrecken Whirlpool - Digital art by Jude Lally
Through the story of the Cailleach’s Cauldron, you're invited to enter the swirling waters of her whirlpool, to let those sorrows go as the waters churn around you. It’s not an easy ride but a worthwhile one. This cauldron has a way of pulling things apart, of pulling you apart and in a ritual of renewal to put things back together again. It’s her great ritual of renewal to
Tigh na Bodach, Shrine of the Cailleach, Glen Cailleach, Perthshire, Scotland
The second story we will explore is Tigh Na Bodach, the Shrine of the Cailleach that has sat in Glen Cailleach for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years - who knows? You're invited to take your place by the women who tend to the stones, who have spent their summer up in the high glens grazing the cattle.
This ritual is packing away the stones until Bealtaine. They will remain in the little shrine over the winter months and in this ritual, the women give thanks and pass the stones around before placing them in the shrine. It is a ritual of gratitude and also an opportunity to place things into the shrine - problems you haven’t worked out and answer for projects that maybe should be wrapped up in layers of cloth and placed at the back of the shrine.
Cailleach Oracle Doll
As this time of the year is like a battle of artificial lights pitted against an ancient darkness, a fertile and restful darkness I also you to gather some natural materials - a shell or a bone, a feather, yarn or a small branch. As we listen to music you’ll assemble a simple oracle doll - a way of tending to the Cailleach over the dark months. A reminder of what you tucked into the back of the shrine and what you whispered to the stones - a doll to be reassembled come Spring Equinox.