Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

OUR STORY

King Bran leaves the feasting hall and is wrapped in the haunting song of a magical silver branch. This is the beginning of his immram, an oversea journey to the Otherworld. Along the way, he meets Manannán Mac Lir, the god of the sea, and they eventually reach Tir na mBan, the Island of Women.

IN THIS EPISODE

• This story of Bran throws the typical hero’s journey on its head as he cannot return home with the elixir because time works so differently in the otherworld
• Silver Branch Perception, a way of seeing the world described by the Irish mystic-philosopher-scholar John Moriarty (author of Dreamtime and Invoking Ireland)
• My experiences with the Bard Mythologies Summer School, which carries Moriarty’s work forward today
• Reflections on traveling to the ancestral homeland of Ireland, including the art of arriving there fully, the pain of leaving, and the unique challenges of returning home again
• What it means to be “fully in yourself” as you travel and as you move through your everyday life 
• How my own life is changing on the other side of my own homecoming: homeschooling my younger daughter

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

This week, a ‘best of the podcast episode’: Achtan: A Brave Mother’s Tale.

Our guest Karina Tynan, psychotherapist and Irish mythology author, tells a story of sovereignty, or spellwork, and of our deepest entanglement with nature. Bees, wolves, and horses play a magical role in the tale of Achtan and the lengths she went to protect her infant son, the future king, Cormac, son of Airt.

In the conversation that follows we explore:

✨Mothering and parenting - both in the ancient times we imagine and in this difficult contemporary moment

✨Our need for magic, and the way we know that magic when we meet it

✨The way Karina blends her imagination and personal experience into all her mythological retellings

✨Sacrifice (whose roots mean “to make sacred”) particularly, when it comes to parenthood

✨Achtan is a druid’s daughter, and Karina imagines the details of the five spells of protection are woven around Cormac Mac Airt in the literature

✨Our fear of our own children’s fragility, including fears of giving our kids an eating disorder or pushing them to suicide

✨The importance of coming of age rituals in indigenous cultures and the lost value of adventure.

✨The role of rhythmic stories, fairy tale, adventure, and romances in the development of children

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Our Story

The sea has its own way of speaking - not in words, but tides, dreams, and memory. Not all who feel lost are meant to be found; some of us are simply remembering where we came from. 

Erica O'Reilly's The Call of the Sea and a Lost Sealskin emerged when she returned to Ottawa, after two weeks at an artists' residency on the coast of Kerry. In this piece, she explores the layered, cascading grief of returning to a land that doesn’t feel of “home.” 

This piece was first as part of her Substack series The Creative Process of De thír mo Mháithreacha: Of the Land of My Mothers. Be sure to subscribe to her amazing newsletter, Weavings of the Wise & Embodied.

Our Guest

As KnotWork’s 2025 resident storyteller, Erica’s heart-centered work is devoted to facilitating experiences where souls feel seen, held, and heard. 

Through her Into the Circle Theatre project, Erica weaves together Irish culture, history, folklore, and mythology.

As an Irish-Canadian, Erica is profoundly grateful to the traditional spirits and keepers of the land—past, present, and future—of the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation where she was born and currently resides. 

In this episode:

• Diasporic grief and what it is to feel at home in two worlds
• The selkie myth, that classic tale from Irish mythology of the seal woman who is torn between land and sea
• Creative residencies: making plans vs. letting go of expectations
• Storytelling is medicine and sharing stories out loud matters
• What it means to live between worlds and living the question: do you have to choose? 
• Planting seeds in the water, hoping for future adventures and new stories together

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

You can also dive deeper into the stories behind the stories in this episode with the latest post about the immram tradition and what makes a good story.

In This Episode

In this solo episode, Marisa Goudy explores the art of truly “arriving” through the lens of her recent journey to Ireland, blending personal storytelling with Irish mythic tradition.

Inspired by the ancient immram tales—sea journeys to the otherworld—Marisa reflects on how travel, memory, and landscape shape our sense of self and belonging. Rather than a simple travelogue, the episode weaves together 17 moments of arrival at the Bard Mythologies Summer School on Clare Island, each representing a different facet of presence, transformation, and connection.

Along the way, Marisa draws parallels between her experiences and Irish mythology (including the story of the voyage of Máel Dúin), considers the role of motherhood, grief, and friendship, and invites listeners to reflect on their own journeys and moments of arrival.

Also in this episode:

• Fiona Doris who gave us “Bid, the Unbiddable” S6 Ep4
• Tracy Chipman who joined us in S6 Ep19, had me on her show, “A Year and a Day” in an episode called The Poetry of Mothering
• Erica O’Reilly, our storyteller in residence who will join us next week with her own story of visiting Ireland this July
• Connecting with past KnotWork guests at the Bard Mythologies Summer School including: Treacy O’Connor, Mari Kennedy, Karina Tynan, and the founderes of the Bard, Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, and Sandy Dunlop.

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Write with Us this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

OUR STORY

As the traditional Irish myth goes, Tailtiu, the foster mother of Lugh of the Tuatha Dé Danann, clears vast fields so the people can plant their first crops. And then, she dies from exhaustion. The great festival of Lughnasa (on or around August 1) is held in her honor.

REFLECTIONS

• The power of retelling stories, both to honor the cyclical nature of time and to give ourselves the chance to see it with new eyes
• How we tend to flatten the stories and experiences of groups of "others" in preference for singular hero's tales
• What does this story say about work and overwork, and the way that we can get so caught up in what we convince ourselves must be done, regardless of the cost?
• Deep gratitude to the work of Bard Mythologies. Find the passage about the Fir Bolg, and more, at bardmythologies.com

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Write with Marisa this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

Our Story

Inanna, Goddess of the Upperworld, is at the core of a 6,000 year old myth from ancient Sumer. Upon the request of her sister Ereshkigal, Inanna pays a visit to the Underworld. As she passes through each of the seven gates, more of her symbols of power, intellect, and wealth are stripped away. Upon arrival, Inanna is sentenced to death by her sister Ereshkigal. As is the way of myth, death is intricately connected to rebirth. Through the intercession of her father, Enki, God of Wisdom and Light, Inanna is revived and ascends to the Upperworld, renewed and transformed. At least… those are the basics. Pearl’s retelling of the story is a deep dive into contemporary dreams and timeless truths about the emerging of the feminine and the merging with the masculine.

Our Guest

Pearl Gregor is an explorer and a seeker. She is a writer, dream coach, story teller, author of the three books in the series Dreams Along the Way, and an international public speaker.  Pearl is a farmer, grandmother, a blogger, and a Crone of wisdom. 

Join Pearl to explore the deep mysteries of dreams, psyche and soul. You can read her books, or join her in her latest passion, a Dream Readers’ Myth Circle.

Find Pearl at www.DreamsAlongTheWay.com and on Facebook  and Instagram

Our Conversation

This story of Inanna is woven with seven years of dreams that came to Pearl at midlife. We explore:

• Pearl had never heard of Inanna when images from this myth came to her in dreams. The book Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women Sylvia Perera appeared as a guide and confirmation. 
• We need both the light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, though the patriarchal mindset has shaped our perspective of what the feminine should be
• The role of “strange women” in a woman’s dreamlife; the integration of the “strange” parts of the self and the movement into circles of women
• The process of “birthing a new world,” as described by Jean Shinoda Bolen in  Moving Toward the Millionth Circle
• The power of “collective dreaming.”
• More of Pearl and Marisa in the conversation series, Dream, Sovereignty, and Wise Woman Ways
• As Pearl says, “Skip Descartes and what you learned in school, there is nothing logical about rebirthing an entire universe.” 

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Write with Marisa this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Our Story

An Irish sovereignty goddess whose origins lie with the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann, Áine is also a sun deity, a bean sidhe (woman of the Sí), and fairy queen. 

In a story from the mythological period, Áine has an ill-fated meeting with the unjust king Aillil Ólomm, who strips the land bare and threatens the goddess. Later, Áine is also found in a 14th century tale of Gerald, Earl of Desmond, also known as “The Wizard Earl.” Finally, a story collected in 1938 by the Irish Folklore Commission about a wise woman named Áine with two daughters who refuse to follow their mother’s marital advice, each with disastrous results.

Our Guest

Jen Murphy is the founder of The Celtic Creatives. A Dubliner born and bred, her ever-unfolding apprenticeship to following her soul’s breadcrumbs has guided her work and academic studies in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies, Sociocultural Anthropology, Creativity and Innovation, and Jungian Psychology with Art Therapy. She is also a qualified Feminine Embodiment Coach and Non-Linear Movement Teacher. 

Find Jen at www.celticembodiment.com/ and on Instagram: @celticembodiment 

Subscribe to her brilliant Substack, The Celtic Creatives: https://celticcreatives.substack.com/

Our Conversation

• The ancient Celtic Sovereignty myth: the divine marriage (the banais ríghi). When the Sovereignty goddess unites with the king, she expects fir flaithemon, the prince’s truth. A worthy ruler needs to be just, truthful, and discerning. Parallels to Sumerian tales of Inanna and her partners.
• The importance of reciprocity - between people and land, between sovereignty goddess and king
• The ways that religion and politics collude together and exploit the land
• Connections to Arthurian Grail legend and “The Elucidation,” a tale that describes the rape of the Well Maidens that leads to the closing of the wells and creation of the Wasteland.
• Hospitality as a key aspect of mythology and culture
• Ireland as a “goddess obsessed” island. And yet, with all of the divine feminine magic, all of the Mother Goddess worship, it was not a Utopia for women. There were ways in which the coming of the church offered a haven for women, and monasteries became places of learning.
• Jen’s personal story of what it meant to see all part of herself, integrate the energy of midsummer, the deepest energy of the grandmothers, a death of a part of the self, and  rebirth and integration

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Write with Marisa this September

The Writers’ Knot is welcoming new members! This is the global creative community where where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.

Registration is now open and due to the intimate nature of this community, space is extremely limited: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Our Story

At a ceilidh, a home-based gathering, in the Highlands of Scotland, a young man is asked to follow the custom of sharing a song or a story. He has nothing to share, so he is asked to contribute by drawing water from the well. While there, he sees a mysterious boat and climbs in and it takes him to a far shore. When he steps on the shore, he realizes everything has changed. Suddenly, he is a she, and our protagonist begins a new life on the other side of the loch…

Our Guest

Dr Michael Newton earned a Ph.D. in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 1998 and was an Assistant Professor in the Celtic Studies department of St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia 2008-2013. He has written a multitude of books and articles about Gaelic culture and history and is a leading authority on Scottish Gaelic heritage in North America. In 2018 he was recognized with the International award at the annual Scottish Gaelic awards in Glasgow, Scotland. The book that he co-edited with Wilson McLeod, An Ubhal as Àirde / The Highest Apple: An Anthology of Scottish Gaelic Literature, was awarded with the Best Gaelic Non-Fiction Book of 2020 by the Gaelic Books Council of Scotland. He established the Hidden Glen Folk School of Scottish Highland Heritage in 2019 to teach a range of topics to students online and is reaching a global audience including Scotland, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Find Michael on Substack with his newsletter The Virtual Gael. His scholarly articles are available at academia.edu 

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. Words Are Magic

IN THIS EPISODE

As part of our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, the writer behind the On Culture Work Substack newsletter, Tad Hargrave offers stories and observations about how to feed and shape culture within community.

OUR GUEST

Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing (and then learned to be a hippy again). Since 2001, he has been weaving together strands of ethical marketing, Waldorf School education, a history in the performing arts, local culture making, anti-globalization activism, an interest in his ancestral, traditional cultures, community building and supporting local economies into his work helping people create profitable businesses that are ethically grown while restoring the beauty of the marketplace. You can learn more about Tad and his work at marketingforhippies.com. 

He also writes on Culture Work on his Substack: https://tadhargrave.substack.com/

OUR CONVERSATION

• Tad’s working definition of culture work comes from Stephen Jenkinson and his Orphan Wisdom School and  Kakisimow Iskwew, “culture is our set of original instructions about how to live on the land in a good way.”
• What can we do to feed the culture around us? How are we killing it?
• How ceremony can be part of life
• How to (and how not to) facilitate homecoming and farewell events within community

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Explore your own mythic landscape…

Join us for our summertime writers’ retreat on June 25th! 

During a three hour online retreat, we’ll explore a series of imaginal landscapes that help to illuminate and reframe your own relationship to your creativity and to your voice. You can expect a guided journey, a lot of time to write, and chances to dive into conversation with other myth-minded participants.

This event is open to all paid Myth Is Medicine subscribers. To subscribe, or to upgrade your subscription, please visit: https://mythismedicine.substack.com/ 

IN THIS EPISODE

As part of our Myth Workers & Culture Makers series, American musician Katy Hellman of Emerald Ground Water talks about how folklore and a connection to the Irish ancestors was so fundamental to the development of her latest album.

OUR GUEST

Katy Hellman is a songwriter, storyteller, astrologer, and community organizer based in Burlington, Vermont. She weaves worlds together through her art, one-on-one work, and community engagement. Drawing on mythology, ancestry, and folklore, Katy infuses her work with mythic wisdom—believing these stories offer vital guidance on what it means to be human.

Her latest project is the debut album from her band, Emerald Ground Water, titled The World Below. The album delves into the depths of inner experience, echoing with ancestral sounds and drawing on the archetypal power of fairy tales and myth. She blends these ancient sounds with more contemporary inspiration of psych rock, prog rock and freak folk. 

Find the album on all major streaming platforms. Find the tour dates and the album's fabulous accompanying PDF booklet at https://www.emeraldgroundwatermusic.com/

OUR CONVERSATION

• Katy consciously sings from a shared well of sound with people from her ancestral and musical lineage
• Katy & Marisa met through the Bard Mythologies online Nine Waves Program
• Imbas forosnai - the Irish druidic practice of channeling “inspiration that illuminates”
• Seeing the scars of colonization and industrialization in the treeless Irish landscape
• Developing a relationship with a spiritual guide or “fairy hitchhiker” that might follow you home after visits to Ireland
• Inspired by Stephanie MacKay: grief is generative, while despair is not 
• Feeling ancestral support and care through the creation of art
• The power of calling in Cailleach, so often associated with winter, in the midst of a summer solstice heatwave. As we say on KnotWork, every season is Cailleach season!  (Including the recent story from the Outer Hebrides told by Tracy Chipman.)
• The Cailleach gives you permission to feel ugly and rageful 
• Dee Mulrooney speaks about the power of the diaspora to support the culture and offer new perspective to the “mother culture”
• Katy has deep expertise in astrology, so the stars and planets ground this conversation too!

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.