Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

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Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

Rab Fulton brings us “a healing story” with its roots in 19th century Ireland. A stranger comes to northern Galway, and he doesn’t know how to be with the land or honor the stories and traditions of this new land. Thanks to a foolish choice, and a bit of magic, the man eventually becomes an integral part of the community.

OUR GUEST

Rab Fulton is a Galway-based Scottish/Irish storyteller, author, and educator. Along with with Kerry Graham, Rab is the host of The Celtic Tales Chronicles podcast. 

His books include West of Ireland Folk Tales for Children and Galway Bay Folk Tales.

You can find Rab telling stories upstairs in the Crane Bar in Galway’s West End  every Thursday evening. Get your tickets in advance - they often sell out!

Follow Rab on instagram @celtictalesgalway for details on upcoming events, including the storytelling project 'Growing With Stories' with Amelia Perez. 

Find more about Rab on LinkedIn and at www.celtictalesgalway.com

OUR CONVERSATION

• Rab tells a 200 year old story that speaks to our 21st century questions: How we deal with our anger? What’s possible when we commit to resolving our conflicts? How do we welcome the stranger and how do we honor traditions when we come to new places?
• What the new immigrants to Ireland bring to this land and how we weave new people into the Irish narrative.
• The burdens of single definitions of what nationalities are - we contain multitudes. Neither Scottish nor Irish society have ever been homogeneous.  Galway, a port city that was essentially an English city, was a very diverse city, and that diversity still carries on today.
• Rab’s many years of storytelling at the Crane Bar and some insight into being a working storyteller.
• Growing up in Glasgow in a working class family with a duality of language speaking Scots, a cousin of English sometimes called “bad English.” The only Scottish history Rab was told was about the land clearances, an act of ethnic cleansing, and it was framed as a good economic practice.  
• Why do we tell stories? Never underestimate the power of sheer pleasure!
•  It’s as important to be a story listener as it is to be a storyteller.
• Check out the KWS episode featuring another Scottish storyteller Katy Swift: Bride and the Cailleach, S3 Ep 10 

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
• Learn about our global creative community, The Writers’ Knot: 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. Get the stories behind each episode and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

IN THIS EPISODE

In this episode, Irish songcarrier Sionnáin offers an ode to the Cailleach called “The Wise One.”

This is the second installment in our Myth Workers & Culture Makers series and includes a deep, powerful conversation about ancient tradition and living lore.

OUR GUEST

Sionnáin is a singer, songwriter & musician from the West of Ireland. Her path has guided her into gathering both traditional and channeled songs from the landscape of Éire.

She lives and breathes the sounds of the land, offering them up as prayers, woven with raw edges, soundscapes and the great depths of the ancient places that shape her journey.

Find her on IG at shannonsoulsounds. There, you'll find another gorgeous version of "The Wise One," including beautiful visusals.

Learn about Sionnáin’s upcoming program: The Descent:Dreaming with the Cailleach & Rising with Brigid

Contact her at [email protected] 

OUR CONVERSATION

• The song, “The Wise One,” was born beside the fire at the Paps of Anu in County Kerry. 
• The Cailleach is the wise old woman, the sacred hag, grandmother essence, and according to some traditions in Éire and Alba (Scotland), the goddess who created the land itself. Cailleach is rooted in contrast - she is strong and fierce, but also soft and nurturing.
• Caoineadh - the ancient Irish lament tradition (Anglicized as “keen”). The mná chaointe, keening women who would perform the ritual of grief at the wake. For more: visit Mary McLaughlin, a scholar and keeper of the wisdom of the tradition.
• The legacy of grief related to An tOcras Mór or An Gorta Mor, the famine or the Great Hunger.
• The conscious choice to open and receive the ancestors, the songs, the magic
• Tuam: the Galway town and site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home from 1925-1961, where the remains of 796 babies were found in a disused septic tank. 
• Ireland’s Samhain community traditions that were about sharing and visiting, rather than the commercialized version we have today.

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
• Learn about our global creative community, The Writers’ Knot: 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 CONVERSATION

We express ourselves through mythic concepts and symbols, all the time, even when we don’t engage in traditional storytelling. This new series called Myth Workers & Culture Makers takes us into conversation with artists, leaders, and creatives of all kind who shape their work - and our world - through myth.

OUR GUEST

Aodh Ó Riagáin is an Irish creator of illustration, hand-drawn animation, comics and beyond, working with a foundation of traditional tools. Creatively known by the moniker Oreganillo., Aodh is working in the bardic and the druidic tradition of storytelling and myth-making. 

Connect with Aodh: https://oreganillo.org/ and on Instagram @oreganilloartworks

In this episode:

• Aodh considers taking up the bardic tradition to be a lifelong quest 
• Irish words that helped Aodh tap into the Irish mythic tradition (and receive the Silver Branch of Manannán): ceantar, which means place or locality, and alltar, which is its opposite - the otherworld.
• Aodh’s fascination with Queen Medb (Maeve), the subject of his graphic novel in progress. Goddesses like Medb and Mongfind can help us work with contemporary issues of power.  
• Aodh’s short film, Candlebaths - a meditation on fire.
• Ursula K LeGuin’s essay Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
• How shamans, druids, and witches would have been neurodivergent people who have a complex and vibrant internal world but are “maybe not so good in the material world.”
• Aodh’s five year plan: make a feature film that deals with Irish mythology

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
• Learn about our global creative community, The Writers’ Knot: 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

Marisa returns to the story of the Irish sovereignty goddess Mongfind, who has featured in several episodes. After some reflections on what it means to keep working this myth in a contemporary context, this episode includes a replay of Marisa’s 2023 story, The Last Sovereignty Goddess.

In this episode:

• For a more complete Mongfind story that sticks to the original source material, listen to S1 Ep2, Ireland's Forgotten Goddess-Queen-Witch
• The idea for KnotWork Storytelling emerged from a “conversation” with the goddess over an autumn equinox fire in 2021. Mongfind’s original message included the declaration: I am interrupted feminine power. 
• Marisa reflects on power, and how not all females in power represent feminine power. 
• Riane Eisler, systems scientist, futurist, and author of The Chalice and the Blade makes the distinction not between masculine and feminine approaches, but between domination and partnership systems. 
• Kamala Harris’s promise to build the “most lethal fighting force in the world” is an example of the perpetuation of the domination system. 
• As Eisler says in Advaya’s Reimagining Women and Power Course: “The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy; it’s partnership.”
• And, Marisa remembers a childhood classmate who died this week. Matthew Nelson engaged in self-immolation, the most profound act of civil disobedience to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He set himself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Boston on September 11.

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 through September 9. 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 our global writing community!

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

Want to talk about whether the group is a good match? Let's set up a quick call.

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

This week, our story isn’t a retelling of an ancient myth or offering a new spin on an old bit of folklore. Instead, it’s a long, open ended response to this question:

Is it possible I'm hiding behind stories? 

Host Marisa Goudy reflects on how stories have shaped her work and wrestles with this question.

Inspired by a powerful conversation with friend and colleague Carmen Schreffler, this episode explores the delicate balance between storytelling and the deeper meaning-making process.

Here's a writing prompt from a recent Writers’ Knot session that will help you explore what it means to “get unstoried’:

Most prompts in the Writers’ Knot include the phrase “tell the story of…” 

Stories are necessary. Stories make us human. And, we may set limitations on our understanding of the more-than-human world when we impose story on everything we encounter.

Be with an unstoried place, creature, or experience. Dare to strip away the story and be with what is. Allow this to be both possible and impossible. Allow yourself to resort to metaphor and even tell the story of how you tried to write without imagining the story of it all. 

Join the Writers’ Knot: The Writers’ Knot community is open to new members until September 9, 2024. If you’re a writer or creative looking for a supportive global community and these ideas resonate, this is the writing group for you. Learn more at www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-community

About Carmen Schreffler: Carmen is a previous podcast guest and member of the Writers’ Knot. Learn more about her approach to work and life on her Substack, Way of WildPreneur. 

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 through September 9. 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

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.