OUR STORY

The shoreline is a threshold. When we stand at the place where the ocean meets the land, we know we’re standing in between the worlds.

In this preview of S7 Ep6, Marisa tells the story of King Canute, the Anglo-Danish king whose famous confrontation with the tide has been misread for centuries. His real message–about faith and hubris and our relationship to the power of the elements–turns out to be more urgent now than it ever was.

But the Canute story is just the doorway. The full Turas episode is a guided journey along the shorelines of the imagination and your own beloved countries. We explore the art of arrival and the power of liminality, and question what it means to truly inhabit a place rather than just pass through it.

The extended episode includes three writing prompts which invite you to explore your own history of arrivals, and your relationship with change and erosion.

This is the work that happens at Myth Workers' Hearth. Every Turas episode is built for the listener who wants to go deeper — into the myth, into the land, and into their own story.

Hear the teaser on KnotWork Myth & Storytelling: KnotWorkStorytelling.com

The full episode is waiting for you when you upgrade your subscription to the Myth Workers' Hearth: mythworkers.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a novel, a memoir, or you’re seeking to weave the mythic perspective into your creative work, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors' Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
• Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SHOW

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. As a paid Myth Workers' Hearth subscriber, you'll have access to Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers' Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to Myth Workers' Hearth: www.mythworkers.com

OUR STORY

Cú Chullain is Ireland’s most renowned mythological hero, and his story comes what’s seen as the greatest of Irish epics, the Táin Bo Cualigne. And yet, we’ve never told his story on KnotWork.

Clearly we were waiting for the right storyteller. In this episode, Peter Wucherpfennig offers an outsider perspective on Cú Chullain’s early life told through a modern frame: a young Phil Lynnot, front man of the iconic 70s band Thin Lizzy conjures the elements of myth. You’ll also hear WB Yeats’s "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death."

OUR GUEST

Peter Wucherpfennig is a German harpist and storyteller based in Darmstadt. After graduating in 1986, he completed fifteen months of compulsory service in the Bundeswehr before training as a nurse — a path that would prove unexpectedly resonant with the warrior myths he would later carry as a storyteller. He has worked in intensive care units since 1991. In the mid-nineties he picked up the harp and found himself in the company of Scottish storytellers. He gave his first public performance as a harpist and storyteller in 1996 (his word: disastrous) and has spent the years since traveling between the worlds of the hospital, the workers' council, and his own calling as a bard.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Cú Chulainn is remembered as the greatest hero of the Irish epic, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and was a powerful inspiration during the 1916 Easter Rising. Peter imagines him as the outcast hero.
• The power of the mentor: just as Cú Chulainn found Scáthach, as an adult, Peter was adopted by a landlady who said "you are my third son." Such relationships open an entirely different world.
• The significance of the island apart. Whether it's Tír na nÓg or Scáthach's island fortress, this isn’t a place to stay forever, but is a place to gather new tools. What does it mean to seek out those threshold spaces in our own lives?
• The power of fellowship. Peter and Marisa remember meeting at the Bard Summer School on Clare Island in County Mayo.

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a novel, a memoir, or you’re seeking to weave the mythic perspective into your creative work, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors' Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
• Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SHOW

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. As a paid Myth Workers' Hearth subscriber, you'll have access to Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers' Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to Myth Workers' Hearth: www.mythworkers.com

OUR STORY

The selkie story is one of the most enduring tales in the Celtic imagination. A woman caught between two worlds, a stolen skin, and the impossible choice between the sea and the shore.

But what if the story doesn't end when she slips beneath the waves? What if it lives on in her descendants, in us?

Hear the myth on KnotWork Myth & Storytelling: KnotWorkStorytelling.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. The full Turas episode is available exclusively to paid subscribers of Myth Workers’ Hearth on Substack.

When you're ready to go deeper, the full meaning of the story is waiting at Myth Workers' Hearth: mythworkers.com

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a novel, a memoir, or you’re seeking to weave the mythic perspective into your creative work, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors' Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
• Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SHOW

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. As a paid Myth Workers' Hearth subscriber, you'll have access to Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers' Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to Myth Workers' Hearth: www.mythworkers.com

OUR STORY

Jen Murphy tells us the core tales Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the great epic of Welsh mythology, beginning with King Math and his Goewin, his “virgin footholder” and concluding with the story of Arianrhod.

Jen concludes her telling with Blodeuwedd, who you met in S7 Ep 1.

OUR GUEST

Jen Murphy is an Irish mythologist, anthropologist and founder of The Celtic Creatives. A Dubliner born and bred, from the time she could talk, Jen's grandmother Frances O'Sullivan filled her ears with tales from Irish myth and folklore, fuelling a now 40-year fascination with the stories of her lineage. Jen's apprenticeship to following her soul's breadcrumbs has guided her formal studies in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies, Anthropology, and Jungian Psychology. Jen supports people to remember that they have a shining soul, to dream Celtic spirituality into their modern lives by making the Celtic soul a living aesthetic—centring the soul in the everyday experience of life—through mythwork, dreamwork, and the body.

Find her on Instagram @celticreatives and at https://celticcreatives.substack.com, https://www.celticcreatives.com/

IN THIS EPISODE

• How stories choose their tellers - Jen had prepared a different tale entirely, and then this telling of Arianrhod insisted on being told
• Jen takes us on a beautiful tour of the moon's monthly cycle as a map of our own becoming
• Arianrhod as living initiator: Jen maps the three refusals: name, arms, marriage - onto her own creative journey toward the Sunset Journal, a ritual practice rooted in beginning the day at dusk
• Reclaiming the night: Jen gives up the 5am productivity myth and discovers that creating by moonlight, as a confirmed night-owl, born just before the winter solstice is simply becoming more of her nature
• Jen's Sunset Journal is launching by Lúnasa (harvest season). Be the first to know when it’s available: https://www.celticcreatives.com/sunset

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir, or are a wellness professional or 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: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
• Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SHOW

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. As a paid Myth Workers' Hearth subscriber, you'll have access to Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers' Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to Myth Workers' Hearth: www.mythworkers.com

OUR STORY

We’ve told the story of King Bran and the silver branch several times on KnotWork. This time, we the woman’s story, the story of the Bean Sídhe who speaks her fifty quatrains of poetry and invites us all across the sea to Tír na mBan, the Island of Women.

ABOUT THE NEW SERIES: TURAS

Turas, the Irish word for journey, is a paid subscriber series within KnotWork Myth & Storytelling. Each episode takes us deeper into the imaginal landscape of Tír na mBan, the Island of Women from Irish mythology.

Every other week, through Samhain (early November), you’ll receive a story, an exploration of its modern echoes, and the invitation to further your own journey through writing prompts.

Turas is available exclusively to paid subscribers of Myth Workers’ Hearth on Substack.

Join us: www.mythworkers.com

IN THIS EPISODE

• Tír na mBan is a matrifocal rather than matriarchal society. Riane Eisler’s Partnership Model and the distinction between dominator and partnership cultures.
• The bean sídhe as Otherworld messenger — not a harbinger of death, but a woman who moves between worlds and weaves the energy between them.
• The Amazons in contrast with the women of Tír na mBan.

WRITING PROMPTS

1. This is a story of invitation. To be invited somewhere new shows you a whole lot about the aperture of your own being. The Bean Sídhe is standing beside your dinner table and suggests you drop the fork, drop everything, and come. Feel into your first response. Then, feel further. How open or closed is your heart, your mind, your imagination?
2. The Bean Sídhe invites us to the Otherworld, to a land without death or suffering, without laziness or drunkenness. She invites us to a place of song, color, abundance… That description is pretty open ended. What does your Otherworld look and feel like? Remember, it’s not about escape, it’s about relationship… this world and that world have something to offer each other.
3. An Island of Women? What do you think… Perhaps that’s all the prompt you need. Or, try this: I told you my own story of censored desire, of silencing my own longing for matrifocal wisdom and women rooted knowledge. What desires are you too well-behaved to name, explore, inhabit?

WORK WITH MARISA

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir, or are a wellness professional or 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: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
• Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SHOW

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. As a paid Myth Workers' Hearth subscriber, you'll have access to Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers' Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to Myth Workers' Hearth: www.mythworkers.com

OUR STORY

Just in time for Bealtaine, the Irish festival of fertility and new life, we explore the erotic energy at the heart of all creation, specifically in the context of Celtic mythology.

We open with a brief retelling of the story of the woman made of flowers Blodeuwedd, which appears in the fourth branch of the Welsh mythological epic, the Mabinogi. You’ll hear an excerpt of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Irish language poem, “Blodeuwedd,” and the translation by John Montague.

OUR GUEST

Robert brings two decades of experience in diverse industries, including spirituality/well-being, international development, leadership development, finance and education. He is passionate about service and deeply curious about how people can facilitate sustainable transformation to enable more peace, justice, and freedom in our world. Robert’s career has enabled him to cross the private and public sectors multiple times working at and with organizations such as Concern Worldwide, The Gates Foundation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Crossland Group, and Kripalu. Originally from Ireland, Robert has been certified as a CPA, Irish and Celtic Shamanic practitioner, Yoga teacher, Reiki healer, Meditation teacher, and in the Enneagram.

Find him on Instagram @wicklowcelt and at www.robertmulhall.com

IN THIS EPISODE

• Though Irish culture may not necessarily be directly associated with “the erotic,” the springtime festival of Bealtaine is alive erotic energy. When you look closely enough, you’ll find it is woven through Irish tradition
• The snake as through-line: Patrick's banishment of the snakes, Kundalini, and the connection between Eros, creativity, rage, and fire as expressions of the same primal force
• Manchán Magan's work recovering old Irish words for the erotic and the inseparability of desire and the natural world. See Thirty-Two Words for Field.
• The sovereignty rites at Tara and Uisneach: what it actually meant for a king to marry and consummate a relationship with the land and the goddess of sovereignty
• What gets dampened when we separate Eros from everything else. The great question: what if it's all Eros?
• Robert's poem "I Fell in Love with the Trees" and the invitation to experience nature not as backdrop but as lover, teacher, and kin
• Forgiving the body as preparation for welcoming Eros
• Fire as alchemical medicine: Robert's fire ceremony and the difference between external preparation for difficult times and internal readiness

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. As a paid newsletter subscriber, you'll have access to the special “podcast within a podcast” series called Turas and be invited to our monthly Myth Workers’ Hearth Gatherings.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Workers’ Hearth

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. As a paid subscriber you'll be invited to join us for the Myth Workers' Salon and keep in touch with the show during my upcoming Imbolc sabbatical.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. Words Are Magic

OUR STORY

A sacred Immram, the great voyage of a birthing mother goddess. In this story, presented in both Irish and English, you’ll meet Brigid, Danu, and the midwife, the bean ghlúine who held the portal of life and death and helped bring new babes into the world.

OUR GUEST

Sarah Richardson is the author of WOMAN: A Guide to Living Your Best Life by Setting Yourself Free and Coming Home to Your True Self. A midwife of conscious conception, birth, death & rebirth. A woman of the medicine way. Sarah brings over 15 years of experience in the medical field as a registered midwife and the mysteries, which is steeped in her lineage. Her work is a safe welcoming hand — and a cheeky wink — across the veil, guiding others into deeper connection with the unseen and the ancestors. She serves as a living portal into the otherworld, inviting others to remember, reclaim, reconnect and rejoice in the fullness of their authentic selves. Her soul’s devotion is to the Goddess in all her forms — restoring our connection to our sacred source so we can receive the radiant, embodied BIG life that is our birthright. She is the Founder of the Womb & Word Collective and the Co-Founder of Dream Midwifery.

Subscribe to Sarah's Substack, The Womb & Word Collective and her collaboration with Jen Murphy, Dream Midwifery

Find her on Instagram @sarahrichardsonauthor.ie and at www.sarahrichardson.ie

IN THIS EPISODE

1. The significance of Brigid’s Day and the season of Imbolc
2. Sarah’s description of the Four Faces of the Ancient Irish Grandmothers:
3. Bean Ghlúine, The Midwife; Bean Chaointe,The Keener; Bean Feasa,The Seer; Bean Leighis,The Medicine Woman
4. Sarah’s own first experiences as a midwife and how this story is told in memory of a pair of twins, one born alive and one stillborn
5. Our craving for a wise woman mentor, and the bean ghlúine is that being for Sarah
6. What it’s like to be comfortable in the shadows, the Cailleach, and Samhain and what it’s like to embrace the joy and light that come with Brigid
7. Ancestral stories and how they cause us to both fear and reclaim aspects of ourselves
8. Saint Brigid of the Flaming Harrow who helped her Mary when she was “churched” after the birth of Jesus (hear the story in S6 Ep42)

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

WORK WITH MARISA

1. 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
2. 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.

Take Marisa's Brigid class at Celtic Junction!

Marisa will be teaching a three-session online class for Celtic Junction, starting January 28.

Register for Brigid & Expressions of the Irish Divine Feminine

Our Story

As the season of Imbolc draws closer, an episode from the KnotWork archives. Kate Chadbourne offers us two tales of Brigit, Ireland's patron goddess and saint. The first describes Brigit as the Blessed Virgin Mary's best friend and the first celebration of Saint Brigit's Day. The second is a story of resourcefulness and kindness: when Brigit saves a fox and outfoxes a king.

Our Guest

Kate Chadbourne is a singer, harper, and storyteller, an award-winning songwriter and poet, and a scholar of Irish language and folklore with a PhD from Harvard. She's a beloved performer at venues throughout New England and founder of The Bardic Academy, a school for writers, musicians, singers, and young scholars. Kate recently released her novel The Poet on the Train.

Learn more about Kate as a performer, teacher, editor, and guide at The Bardic Academy and her vibrant YouTube channel.

In This Episode:

1. Fite fuaite—an Irish phrase that speaks to the weaving together of ideas
2. The meanings of Brigit's names: "Flaming arrow" and "life force, vitality"
3. Prayer as co-conspiring with the universe: Brigit doesn't ask God to take care of everything, she asks for the eyes to see the solution and does her part
4. "Conspiring" means "to be inspirited together"
5. The power of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, which reminds us of our most treasured values and our connection to nature
6. Imbolc: the feast of Ewe Lactation—a great excuse to have the finest butter, cheese, and ice cream!

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

1. 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 writingcoachmarisa.com
2. Learn about group writing opportunities: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
3. Find more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: www.marisagoudy.com

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

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

Take Marisa's Brigid class at Celtic Junction!

Marisa will be teaching a three-session online class for Celtic Junction, starting January 28.

Register for Brigid & Expressions of the Irish Divine Feminine

In this episode:

As part of our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, we sit down with Natalie O'Shea, founder and Executive Director of Celtic Junction Arts Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. We explore the Brigid's Cross as a living symbol and community touchstone.

This Imbolc-season conversation weaves together the power of place, the preservation of language and tradition, and the resonance between Irish and indigenous wisdom on Dakota land.

Our Guest

In addition to being founder and Executive Director of the Celtic Junction Arts Center of Minnesota, Natalie is an officer of Ireland Network Minnesota, and a member of National Irish Cultural Centers of North America (NICCoNA), representing her region nationally and internationally. She is an actor, speaker, and writer/ director of three annual productions with an international resume of theater work. Natalie’s honors include being named an Advisory Editor for University of St. Thomas’s New Hibernia Review and one of the Irish Echo’s “Arts & Culture Heroes” in 2020, as a “Rebuilder of Irish America” in 2021 and 2022, and honored as an Ambassador of Irish Culture in 2025. She toured the world for three and a half years with Riverdance, The Show where she met her Dubliner husband Cormac Ó Sé before moving to Ireland and, eventually, back to Minnesota.

Find out more about what's happening at celticjunction.org and on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and LinkedIn

Our Conversation:

1. We recorded this session on January 7, the day Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. As a community organization, Celtic Junction is doing what they can to support the people of the Twin Cities in this difficult time.
2. The Brigid's Cross as living symbol offering us the four directions, a sense perpetual movement, and the ritual of annual renewal
3. Building Irish cultural community in Minnesota on Dakota land
4. Language, place, and the intersection of Irish and Indigenous wisdom
5. The divine feminine as goddess, saint, and living presence
6. Keeping tradition alive without holding it too tightly

The old hymn to Brigid quoted at the start of the episode:

Gabhaim molta Bhríde,

Ionmhain le hÉirinn;

Ionmhain le gach tir í,

Molaimis go léir í.

I proclaim the praises of Brigid;

she is dear to Ireland;

she is dear to every country;

let us all join in her praises.

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

1. 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 writingcoachmarisa.com
2. Learn about group writing opportunities: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups
3. Find more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: www.marisagoudy.com

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

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

The Authors’ Knot Program, February - November 2026

Registration is open now for our intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, novelists. and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.”

Learn more and apply to join the Authors’ Knot.

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

OUR STORY

Ciarán of Saighir was born jus as Christianity was emerging in Ireland. This is the story of a woman’s vision, a long pilgrimage, and what happens when you keep company with a boar, a wolf, a badger, and a fox in a very inhospitable forest.

The story was recorded during a Myth Workers’ Salon, a gathering of Myth Is Medicine newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to join the next gathering and hear the story before it’s on the podcast, sing up or upgrade your current subscription at: https://mythismedicine.substack.com/

IN THIS EPISODE

1. January 6 and all of its spiritual and traditional celebrations: Little Christmas, Epiphany , Nollaig Na mBan (“women’s Christmas” in the Irish)
2. The human habit of trying to tame the wild and the trouble with anthropocentrism
3. Connecting with the animal nature within and reconnecting to nature in a profound, elemental way
4. What it means to be a liminal creature, to hold space for both worlds, for multiple traditions, like paganism and Catholicism
5. Sources of this story: John Moriarty in Invoking Ireland, Martin Shaw in Jawbone, Ciaran Carson’s The Star Factory in which he quotes Patricia Lynch’s Knights of God

OUR STORY

Ciarán of Saighir was born jus as Christianity was emerging in Ireland. This is the story of a woman’s vision, a long pilgrimage, and what happens when you keep company with a boar, a wolf, a badger, and a fox in a very inhospitable forest.

The story was recorded during a Myth Workers’ Salon, a gathering of Myth Is Medicine newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to join the next gathering and hear the story before it’s on the podcast, sing up or upgrade your current subscription at: https://mythismedicine.substack.com/

IN THIS EPISODE

1. January 6 and all of its spiritual and traditional celebrations: Little Christmas, Epiphany , Nollaig Na mBan (“women’s Christmas” in the Irish)
2. What it means to tame the wild and the trouble with anthropocentrism
3. Connecting with the animal nature within and reconnecting to nature in a profound, elemental way
4. What it means to be a liminal creature, to hold space for both worlds, for multiple traditions, like paganism and Catholicism
5. Sources of this story: John Moriarty in Invoking Ireland, Martin Shaw in Jawbone, the original manuscript at celt.ucc.ie, Ciaran Carson’s The Star Factory in which he quotes Patricia Lynch’s Knights of God.