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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

The song about Molly Malone and her cockles and mussels is heard in Irish pubs around the world. But who was Molly, really? Erica O’Reilly imagines a tale of life and death, of real world work and otherworldly transformation.

OUR GUEST

As a sacred storyteller, spiritual counselor, and ordained minister (through the Sacred Stream Foundation in Berkeley, CA), Erica's work is rooted in creating spaces where souls feel seen, held, and heard.  

Erica’s life-long love for the arts and collaboration in community has taken her all over the world, including:  Ottawa, Toronto, Northern Ontario, New York, Italy, and Ireland.

Recently, her theater company, Into the Circle Theatre premiered its inaugural show (Stars, Stones, and Shadows: A Heroine’s Tale) at the 2023 Ottawa Fringe Festival to rave reviews.  

Into the Circle Theatre is passionately rooted in reverently honoring the tradition of the seanchaí in a modern context.  Through the inspirations and weaving of Irish culture, history, folklore, and mythology, the stories shared are hallowed tales of women re-membering and re-claiming their embodied wisdom and sovereign power.

Being of Irish and French ancestry, Erica is deeply grateful to the traditional spirits and land keepers of the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg People, where she was born and currently resides.

Find Erica at into-the-circle.com; on Substack, Weavings of the Wise & Embodied, and Instagram @wise.and.embodied

OUR CONVERSATION

• Erica’s experience of what it feels like to be what she calls a “sacred storyteller” 
• The idea of being a hollow bone for a story or character (some quick research suggests this is a Lakota tradition)
• Molly’s death journey - death in the Irish tradition including wakes, funerals, and keening
• Mná is Irish for “women” Mná feasa (wise women), mná chaointe (keening women), mná gluine (midwives), mná leigheas (medicine women)
• The washer woman and the energy of the bean sí (banshee) - scholar Patricia Lysaght talks of the banshee appearing to inform the community that death is coming; Erica imagines her as a guide for souls
• The tradition that warns people to never eat or drink anything when you enter in the fairy realm 
• Weaving story, voice, drum - Erica’s creative process and how it relies on a connection to the  
• Fite fuaite - the Irish for “inextricably interwoven”
• Imbas foronsnai - inspiration that illuminates or poetic inspiration

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

We find our way into the mythic imagination and Irish mythology through a selection of poems from award-winning poet, playwright and essayist Adam Wyeth.

OUR GUEST

Adam Wyeth is the critically acclaimed author of five books published with leading Irish publisher, Salmon Press. He is an Associate Artist of the Civic Theatre, Dublin. In 2019 he received The Kavanagh Fellowship Award. 

Adam’s debut collection, Silent Music was Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His second book, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic Mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, (Foreword by Paula Meehan) contains poems from Ireland’s leading poets followed by essays that unpack and explore Celtic mythological references in each work. His poetry collection The Art of Dying was published in 2016, and was named as an Irish Times Book of the Year. 

Adam’s plays have been performed across Ireland and in New York and Berlin. His play, This Is What Happened was published by Salmon in 2019. His latest book about:blank is an experimental hybrid piece, mixing poetry, prose and dramatic text. In 2020 Adam received the Arts Council Ireland Literature Project Award and was selected for The National Theatre of Ireland, The Abbey Theatre, to work on an audio production of about:blank. 

Adam is a member of Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools Scheme and has over twenty years of experience facilitating Creative Writing Workshops. As well as teaching, Adam provides one-to-one mentoring sessions for writers, giving critical feedback on poems and whole manuscripts via his website adamwyeth.com. 

Adam lives in Dublin where he works as a freelance writer. For more info on Adam’s work and books visit www.salmonpoetry.com 

OUR CONVERSATION

• Joseph Campbell said, “myth is metaphor.” For Adam, a poem is like a mythology in miniature.
• The role of Jungian thought and depth psychology
• Adam’s story of moving to Ireland and discovering both poetry and mythology when he landed in the harbor town of Kinsale and learned from poet and scholar Desmond O’Grady the importance of “discipline, routine, and regularity” in a writing life.
• The Hidden World of Poetry was intended to introduce a “new mythmaking” for a non-Irish audience.
• How reading a poem is so different from the way we read anything else today. The breakthrough moment that comes through when we work with a poem over time.
• There’s no money in poetry, and so you can say anything you want. Poetry has power because it stands outside of the typical contemporary power structures.
• All great art comes from the mythic imagination. The power of active imagination and entering into conversation with a dream character.
• Adam’s working doc called “write rubbish speed writing”: it was intended to help him limber up before a writing session, but became an essential source of material for his writing, particularly about:blank  - the doc that is mean to be about limbering up has become the most important thing
• Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher.
• Dublin as character in about:blank. Taking inspiration from Ezra Pound, “make it new”
• Poetry that highlights the extraordinary nature of the internet and technology; internet like the unconscious. The human mind cannot bear too much reality, but the internet can

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

Calling All Writers & Creatives

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

Join our global writing community!

Enrollment in the Writers’ Knot is now open: 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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

And, your paid subscription gives you free access to the HARVEST retreat!

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

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. In this retelling, our host Marisa Goudy imagines why Tailtiu, a woman of the Fir Bolg, would sacrifice herself in this way.

REFLECTIONS

• The myth - and the reality - of the selfless mother. Is it possible to celebrate what motherhood is, but also decouple it from that expectation of self-sacrifice?
• The way the birth of the son leads to the initiation of the mother in myths around the world.
• The origins of the festival of Lughnasadh 
• What conveys divinity? Tailtiu was a member of the mortal Fir Bolg, but it was her devotion and her action that rendered her the goddess we remember today.
• This story is often used as the origin of agriculture, which is near-universally seen as a good thing,   but James C. Scott’s Against the Grain questions the “narrative of progress” - the creation of sedentary farming communities had a lot more to do with benefitting the state and concentrating power in the hands of the few than it did with offering people a reliable, nutritious food supply. 
• This story invites us to question everything. What if Tailtiu had made a different choice? What if she brought a group of women to help her and had not died? What if she had bumped into Lugh on her way? What if she hadn’t replicated the Greek model and brought agriculture to Ireland?

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

Calling All Writers & Creatives

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

Join our global writing community!

Enrollment in the Writers’ Knot is now open: 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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Our Story

Sophie and Wolfgang’s marriage was in trouble. Seeing as it was 1612 in Augsburg, they didn’t go to couple’s therapy, they went to a Jesuit priest who had a reputation for working miracles. What he had was a direct line of communication with Our Lady, the Undoer of Knots.

In this solo episode, Marisa talks about the experience of a story, and characters who will not reveal their secrets.

She also discusses how we manufacture our own “creative wastelands” and how they seem almost inevitable in a culture that demands that artists and writers continue to produce to claim and retain an audience. 

As writers, as artists, as creative entrepreneurs, we often end up in the wasteland when we try to do it all alone, and that is why Marisa founded her online writing community in 2018. 

The Writers’ Knot is a global community of storytellers, myth lovers, memoirists, novelists, poets, and bloggers. 

The next program begins on August 1 with a three hour virtual retreat called HARVEST. During this event, the group will explore the mythology of the Irish goddess Tailtiu and Lughnasa, the first harvest of the Celtic year.

You can register to attend HARVEST: the Lughnasa Writers’ Retreat (August 1, 2 - 5 PM ET): https://www.marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

Or, the event is free with your five month membership in the Writers’ Knot: https://www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Calling All Writers & Creatives: Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

Join our global writing community!

Enrollment in the Writers’ Knot is now open: marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

OUR STORY

The fairy woman Flidais and her cow Maol are mysterious characters from Irish mythology, but  Regina de Búrca brings deep, flawed humanity to this Otherworldly being.

OUR GUEST

Regina de Búrca was raised in a bookshop in the West of Ireland, where her fascination with the Irish language and mythology began. In 2010, she graduated with an MA in Writing for Young People from Bath Spa University in England and has had various short stories published since then. She has been an editor of the online speculative fiction magazine 'The Future Fire' since 2009 and was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright short story competition for a story about a Sheela-na-Gig. In 2021, she produced the first Irish language version of the Rider Waite Tarot deck. Right now, she is working on the  'Journey through the Tarot via Irish Herstory' on Substack, a series of posts that connect historic Irish women to each of the 78 Rider-Waite Tarot cards. 

Follow her on Instagram and Facebook

Regina is generously offering a special discount for podcast listeners. You can save 10% off Tarot decks and readings when you  use code KNOTWORK at checkout. Visit theirishtarot.com for more.

OUR CONVERSATION

• A story of exile and curses that explores the consequences of following power rather than love. 
• Regina is fascinated by how the gods become mortal, and vice versa.This fairy woman’s humanity shows so clearly (particularly when it comes to addiction and the need to escape pain. 
• Maol the cow is the only being in the story who is described in detail - this is a storyteller’s technique to emphasize her importance
• A story with something terrible at the core of it - animal abuse - and how to hold it with sensitivity, and a happy ending
• Elen of the Ways, also known as Elen of the Woods, is sometimes conflated with Flidais. The ways in which modern interpretations can blend ancient goddesses, particularly those we do not know much about. 
• The paradoxical distinctions between the human and the animal.
• Sheela Na Gig, the crone and the fertility talisman who appears at the very end of the story
• Sympathetic magic: when  you touch something and then you’re imbued with its powers. 
• The potency of the time of year and wheel of the year in the story. The power of the light at Litha, the summer solstice.
• The rising temperatures across the globe and role of the Sun in tarot - when is the Sun positive, and when does it burn?
• The Irish goddess Áine: listen back to Jen Murphy’s story in S. 2 Ep. 5 
• Reclaiming the story of Pamela Colman Smith, the illustrator of the Rider-Waite  tarot deck

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Calling All Writers & Creative: Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

Join our global writing community!

Enrollment in the Writers’ Knot is now open: marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

OUR STORY

According to the Book of Invasions, the closest thing Ireland has to a creation story, Cessair was the first person to set foot on Irish soil. She was also the granddaughter of Noah and, as Sandy Dunlop of Bard Mythologies tells it, she was also a woman of the world.

OUR GUEST

Sandy Dunlop has run Bard Mythologies with his wife Ellen for twenty-five years. He sees himself as a "cultural mythographer" with an understanding of the way cultural myths are used and abused by the powerful. He ran a consultancy specializing in helping global brands discover their archetypal and mythical roots.

On bardmythologies.com you can learn more about the Bard Summer School and you’ll find a rich collection of Irish Myths and Global Myths that take you deep into the time honored oral storytelling tradition. 

Instagram and TikTok: @bard.mythologies

OUR CONVERSATION

• Not-chosenness can be seen as the story of the Irish people.
• As Marshall McLuhan says, as the fish knows absolutely nothing is water, humans know nothing about their own culture.
• Sandy challenges the “strong man” myth, and those like Trump and Jordan Peterson who use (and misuse) this myth to their advantage.
• The great Babylonian myth of the goddess Tiamat and her consort Apsu; the body of the great mother was dismembered by the strong man Marduk to create the world.  
• The role of the autonomic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) in how characters respond in stories and in how we respond to the events in our lives.
• You can hear Marisa’s story of Cessair and Fintan Mac Bochra in S3 Ep 9, When Tides Rise, Build Your Own Boat

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Calling All Writers & Creative: Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

OUR STORY

Mannanán was the god of the sea. He was also a shapeshifter who interceded in the affairs of the humans who came to Ireland after his people, the great gods of the Tuatha Dé Dannan, were driven into the hills. In this story, Mannanán leads King Cormac mac Airt on a journey into the Otherworld.

OUR GUEST

Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue is an herbalist, poet, and teacher, and an initiated priest of the Feri and Crossroads traditions.   He lives in western Maine and is the author of three books:  The Silver Branch and the Otherworld (now available for pre-order), Courting the Wild Queen, and The Forest Reminds Us Who We Are.  He also writes for Plant Healer Quarterly and for his own Seánfhocail newsletter on Substack. Seán offers weekly online classes through his Otherworld Well Hedge School.

Follow Seán on Instagram and Facebook.

OUR CONVERSATION

• Irish philosopher John Moriarty would say that to meet Mannanán is to become undone. To meet Mannanán is to learn that being human is a habit that can be broken.
• What it means to live poetry, like the bards who spend 18 years in study  
• “Gardaí dúchas” is a term Seán coined for self-appointed guardians of the Irish tradition who insist that anyone whose understanding of gods or heroes or stories does not conform with the understandings gleaned from either medieval text or mid-twentieth century folklore
• How time works in the Celtic otherworld. The Celtic year and the Celtic day begin at darkness, just as everything begins in darkness.
• Ancestral work goes forward and backwards. We need to connect to the ancestors and we need to remember that we are also someone else’s ancestors. Generations from now, people will gather around bonfires telling the story of how we survived. 
• The many meanings attached to Irish words, like Art which means bear, stone, power, and god 
• Ireland and Palestine as nations that understand colonization.
• The Easter Rising took place near Bealtaine - we can think of the proclamations as a conjuring of another world as the events of that day led to including women in the new constitution and the restoration of the language. That process is still ongoing.
• The Celtic Twilight and its concept of identity was rooted in colonial ideas, but it was a necessary stage to pass through. We would not be having this conversation without that early 20th century cultural revival.

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Calling All Writers & Creative: Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

OUR STORY

Rather than a single story, Aisling Fraser brings us a series of poems rooted into the land, people, and mythology of Ireland. All of her work is an invocation of wild diversity that invites us to tune into nature’s voice and be carried back to the deepest part of the soul.

OUR GUEST

Aisling Fraser is the founder of Danu Wellness, a healing space designed to reconnect you with the truest version of yourself. She is a mother, therapist and imbas poet who works as a medium for an ancient Celtic Healing Process which is deeply rooted in the Heritage and History of Ireland.

Find Aisling at: www.danuwellnesscork.com, Instagram @DanuWellnessCork, and Substack @WordsFromAcrosstheVeil

OUR CONVERSATION

• Imbas forosnai: the Irish druidic practice which means something like “inspiration that illuminates.” Seers or poets would enter into the darkest caves into sensory deprivation and return with the words that would support the community.
• The Irish bardic tradition - putting that which is beyond words into words. Poetry is a way to communicate with the land. Words can be crafted in service to the entire community, not just for the individual.
• A new way to understand Sovereignty: it can only be established through connection with everything. It's a connection to my land, not in a sense of ownership, but in knowing we are of the earth and environment. 
• The paradox of story: though there are so many reasons to celebrate it, when we cling to story as part of cultural and personal identity, story can become a limiting force.
• Recognizing the way humans transformed Ireland, from a great forested landscape to what is essentially a desert of green fields full of sheep. We can honor the importance of farming today, but also remember what was.
• Mary Reynolds, author of We Are the ARK: Returning Our Gardens to Their True Nature Through Acts of Restorative Kindness 
• Honor the plantcestors - wisdom in the plants and nature that wants to present itself to us if we’re willing to stay long enough to listen
• The story of the Nordic people, the Vikings, is important to Aisling’s work and to the origins of the Irish people. She also feels a calling to the Blackwater River, sourced near the Paps of Anu at Sliabh Luachra, a sacred, ancient city of Shrone where the Tuath Dé Dannan were said to live.
• The shared lost ancestors: The Irish lost on the voyage to North America, are lost to Ireland and the diaspora.  

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

OUR STORY

This tale of druidic magic and epic battle tells of how the Sons of Mil, the first of the Gaels, came to Ireland and divided the land with the race of the gods, the Tuatha Dé Dannan. At the geographical centers of Ireland’s spirit and power, Uisneach and Tara, you’ll meet the great poet Amergin, the three goddesses who gave Ireland its name, and the Good God Dagda.

OUR GUEST

Brian Walsh is a professional storyteller who specializes in Celtic Mythology and folk tales. He is also a clinician and educator in a hospital setting, where story listening is at the heart of his work.

Brian’s has told at diverse venues including the Toronto International Storytelling Festival, the Parliament of World Religions, Pubs, University settings, and around the campfire under the stars.

He lives and works in Toronto, Canada, on territory covered by the treaty 13 and the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant — an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy, the Ojibwe, and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Find Brian’s upcoming gigs at brianwalsh.ca and on instagram @brianwalsh.ca.

OUR CONVERSATION

• What it means to tell stories of Ireland here as members of the Irish diaspora on Turtle Island: If gods only had resonance on one island, they would not be gods, they would be genus loci (protective spirits of a place).
• There is time and place for specific stories, and then there is telling according to what the moment requires.
• This is a Bealtaine story: according to the Irish Annals the Sons of Mil arrive in Ireland on the eve of festival:  Thursday, April 30 1699 BCE
• Elements of fairy lore come from this story - the balance and reciprocity required for co-existing with the Good People.
• Role of memorized poetry of Amergin in Brian’s telling of the story. The rosc pattern in poetry is a sort of circular sacred repetition.
• Stories can be used to raise people up or to weaponize. This story could be heard as a tale about the right of conquest, or as a caution about the power of keeping the balance between peoples, between the human and the divine, between the people of the earth.
• Asking audiences to sit with you in the ambiguities of these stories. We can’t make the gods into moral figures by contemporary standards.
• The trope of the worthy opponent enables both sides to ask when the work of a battle has been done and when it is time for reconciliation.
• Brian’s personal story of coming to this tale and to Irish mythology: a search for roots beginning as a young teen that led to a sense of home. How the Canadian wilderness of northern Alberta the landscape of ancient Ireland in a way that the current Irish flora and fauna do not.

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• 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.

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. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Our Story

Meet Achtan, a druid’s daughter and mother of a future king, Cormac, son of Airt. This is a story of sovereignty, of spellwork, and of our deepest entanglement with nature. Bees, wolves, and horses also play a magical role in this tale.

Our Guest

Karina Tynan is a psychotherapist and the author of two collections of Retellings from Irish Mythology: TÁIN : The Women’s Stories offers a new lens on great Irish epic, Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), and SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology, which  are linked through the presence of the goddess in her many manifestations. 

Karina's interest in Irish mythology began almost 30 years ago through the Bard Summer School which commences each July on Clare Island, Co Mayo, Ireland. Each year the summer school explores an Irish myth for its contemporary relevance. 

You can purchase Karina’s books at bookshops across Ireland. International readers can buy them directly from the author: https://karinatynan.com/

Find Karina on Instagram @irishmythsretold

Both books are illustrated by Karina’s daughter, artist Kathy Tynan, kathytynan.net & @kathy.tynan. The books are designs by Karina’s niece, Ruby Henderson  Insta: @ruby.hndrsn

Our Conversation

• Our need for magic, and the way we know that magic when we meet it: magic wakes you up.
• Ultimately, this is a powerful conversation both about growing and about parenting - both in the ancient times we imagine and in this difficult contemporary moment. 
• Sacrifice (whose roots mean “to make sacred”) particularly, when it comes to parenthood
• The five spells of druidic protection are inspired by the original sources and Karina's imagination
• Irish myth’s tradition of the geis (pl. geasa): a cross between a curse and a taboo. Modern examples of geasa: the ethics of psychotherapy; the way humans - or, the richest humans - are transgressing the limits of our planet’s ability to support life with the addiction to fossil fuels
• 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 fathering - both for partner and child
• The role of rhythmic stories, fairy tale, adventure, and romances in the development of children
• The role of ritual, particularly coming of age rituals which get people to wake up and be alive to what happens in life.

Our Music

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 writingcoachmarisa.com
• The Writers’ Knot opens to new members on Lughnasadh, August 1. Learn more and join the interest list: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community
• Find more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: www.marisagoudy.com

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