Nature Folklore

Flame, hearth, oaks & Brighid's journey to Cill Dara. During the modern setting of the Gregorian Calender Brighid's Eve & Day, 31st January & 1st February, thoughts, prayers, intentions, ceremony, ritual, and storytelling focuses both on St. Brighid of Kildare and Bride the Goddess that inspired Brighid's name.

Here at Sunday Sessions we are dedicating two online Sunday Sessions to the Bride-Brighid-Imbolc traditions and stories.

With this first one, on 31st January, our focus is on St. Brighid ,founder of the Cille Dara monastery and culture, her life that guided her there, her trinity of her skills of healing, smithing, and poetry, traditions of oak, flame, and hearth associated with her, and a wee bit on her cows and milk. Of course a bit on Brighid Crosses and Brideog Dolls too.

We will touch on her springs, wells, water bearing and births ... but really those topics will be held for the following Sunday Sessions of Imbolc Traditions on 7th February.

My first connection with Ogham symbols was during the 50s before I was a teen, and as a 60s teen dabbled with Ogham Divination as a 'toy. It was not until I met my stone mason boss on Iona, Attie McKechnie, during the 70s, that I learned a deeper story of the Ogham language and have been passionate about it since.

Attie was a mason's apprentice during the 1930s when Iona Abbey was being restored. He was a very fluent Gàidhlig speaker and extremely passionate about the language and it's origins. Attie aslo had a huge passionate interest in the way early medieval scribes used and change the old Scottish language. Through him I learned the tree language connections and how that found a system of scribing. Quite amazing for me to connect to Ogham on a Scottish Pilgrimage island hosting a few hawthorn trees, small hazel trees, and a few imported beech trees.

During this Sunday Session I will tell my version of the Ghaels bringing their tree language to land to be called Eara Ghael, Argyll, and what happened when they met the farming Picts and their rune style blade cut stone and wood symbols. How the two tribes forged a language so they could speak to each other.

Then how the early medieval scribes attempted to unravel this in a linear way that has preserved some of the roots of this communication, the Gàidhlig, still among some people today.

We will explore how we can actually return to some of the pre-scribed oral tree language as a guide for living a more inspired, fulfilled and better interpreted life today.

Labyrinths have been created and used by humans for, it seems, at least 15,000 years. Ever since humans learned the craft of converting calibrations into maths and geometry. This seems to have a Babylonian origin. But why were humans motivated to create them?

During this Sunday Session we will explore the wonder of these ancient labyrinths. This includes exploring the symbolism of the best known labyrinth, with the Minotaur in Knossos, Crete. Also included will be the origin of the Labyrinth names, which is something very different to those spiral of circles. I will also question why water and milk pouring on small stone labyrinths became tradition.

Of course, I will introduce you to our Labyrinth Gardens here at Carrowcrory, how labyrinths are used for inspiration, motivation, divinity connection, storytelling, mindfulness, and mental health therapy today.

Also some discussion about our intrusion of this human calibrated geometry onto landscapes, and even dare to call it 'sacred'. So, how can Labyrinths function as part of the whole of nature?

Divination seems to be our attempts to gain clearer insight to the pathways created by our questions. A kind of trying to find 'the spoilers' to display where our life's story is going. Some diviners may say this 'craft' is actually our wise mapping out of our story unravelling.

We usually use Divination as a tool for problem solving and decision making. It seems to be a popular thing many of us do through January alongside our dieting, operation transformations, habit controlling, getting our second garden seed order in, and assessing our garden and DIY tools.

So through this Sunday Session we will explore some stories of oracles and seers, omens and geomancy, astrology and tarot, throwing sticks, cards and dice to see how they land and what they inspire. I will question the transition between divination and gambling, when divination of questions become active games of chance.

My own fascinations are with astrology and hydromancy, so I may focus on the 'hydromancy' divination with water the most, during this session.

Please join in and share your thoughts and your practices of Divination, such as dreams interpretation.

Thank you for your support of Carrowcrory Sunday Sessions that went online March 2020 due to the current Coronavirus prevention practices. Our Sunday Sessions transferred to live streaming format until this virus faded away.

I have decided that Carrowcrory Sunday Sessions will still continue at 2pm, Irish time every Sunday, even when the Covid fades away and we can resume having visitors here at Carrowcrory on Sundays.

During today's Sunday Sessions, we will continue Apple Tree |Wassailing blessings, and other tree blessings for this time just before the new tree saps start to rise.

We will consider Epiphany way beyond the Christian setting of it. I also intend to include a live panel discussing affirmations for this time. Do volunteer to be a live guest for this, message me through the contact link.

I will also share an evolving changing and more sharing approach to Sunday Sessions this year now that the content from the 2020 Sunday Sessions is heading into my 'Sidhe, Water & Folklore Course' now developing for our Patreon subscribers to access.

Through my personal experiences of first footing for several years on a Scottish island and Wassailing apple trees in Somerset and Ireland I notice similarities. There is a common bonding of wonderful and essential personal affirmations blended with simple connecting fellowship with our community of family and neighbours, even during Covid times. There is also a lovely slow down and re-connect with where we live, the landscape around us, and how it all provides for us, if we respect it.

First Footin', a heart warming simple traditions of calling on local family and neighbours, and sharing local whisky, or tea, slices of black bun, a sort of rich fruit cake in pastry, and a bowl of soup or stew. Wassailing, a joyful shared blessing of our elder apple trees in three parts, blessing the roots, blessing the tree, and blessing each other who are served by the harvest from the trees.

The common link is the social fellowships that both traditions draw us into with the banter of gossip and stories, thoughts for those passed on, joy for the living and their affirmations, and sharing our hopes, dreams and toasts to good health. We can adapt that to our Covid times.

Join us and celebrate with this, our last, and more casual, Sunday Session of 2020.

From a local tale of the mating of the Cailleach conceiving the new light to be birthed in Spring, to reverence for the Tree Of Life, and the slow burning of the Yule Log. The joy of the Green we bring into out homes to remind us of life and the green of Spring will soon be with us

Our celebration of Yule with stories of the changing wheel of the year, the fallen rising again, plus some fun tasty traditional recipes for this time, especially with ginger which was once only allowed in bread, by law, at this time.

Join us to share in the joy of this time.

Through December, and Christmas, we put up the Christmas decorations, buy a tree, or get out the artificial tree from the attic or shed, and decorate that too. We do our Christmas shopping for food treats, and items to give as gifts to people. Much of this tradition that we do every December seems to be of habits and routine, We feel an obligation to do all of this, despite not being able to afford it and maxing out our credit to make all of this 'fun' happen.

So, during this Sunday Sessions we visit a few nature based and human fellowship traditions, of December, that we may have forgotten, never heard of, or we celebrate today in ways that seem to be very disconnected from their origins.

Through this Sunday Session I will include trees for celebration, tree blessings such as fruit tree 'wassailing', songs from ancient times that we have adapted today, and folk drama fun and healing rituals that have become mumming, guising, straw boys and wren boys these days.

Enjoy the mysteries of ancient December Traditions and how you may perform them today. In return, perhaps enjoy more meaning and blessings than from the familiar consumer ways.

One of five Ogham subject sessions I now host each year, and perhaps divination with Ogham is the most popular and most mysterious, because there are no defined scripted ancient archives. All we have is a combination of speculation of ancient ways from fragments passed down combined with modern divination and oracle methods that bring in the ogham trees symbols instead of planets, constellations, mythological deities and totem animals and birds.

So through this Sunday Session we explore clues to how Trees and Ogham symbols could have been used as divination and prophecy tools from ancient time. Also we review the methods of divination using Ogham that have developed over about the past 200 years, and especially during the past 30 years.

There is a fourth time of celebration of Samhain, but barely observed now, and that was when Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, an open star cluster in the north-west of the constellation Taurus, rises in the bright night sky of November. 

1000s of years ago, this used to be close to the sidereal cross quarter point of Samhain, in this northern hemisphere. This was around 7th November. Due to the 'precession of the equinoxes', Pleiades now rises here at sunset later in the month. This now happens on the night of 21st November, hence why it has lost favour as a Samhain celebration time.  

Even so, this Sunday Sessions will cover November traditions not yet covered in previous Samhain tradition episodes during this month and October. Among the sessions subjects will be brooms and broomstick traditions, black cats, cattle folklore traditions, stories of Don Lord Of The Dead, mead making and ceremonies and celebrations with mead, and some foodie ideas for this time too. 

Includes a couple of mead makers live sharing their craft, and an author of a lovely book of home kitchen and crafts memories from the past that can be used today.