Sisterhood of the Antlers

Walking the path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland with stories, art, and ritual

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The Bear and the Cailleach

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Crow call stirs you from sleep and brings you over the threshold of night into day. You awake, wrapping yourself in a warm shawl and step out into the threshold where it’s not quite day and not quite night - the place that magic resides.

This is Autumn Equinox, the day that the Cailleach draws us over yet another threshold and into the dark of the year. Imagine this great old hag chanting powerful words, in no language you’ve never heard - for hers is the language of the mountains and the deepest water.

You take the road to the temple, feet walking a familiar path. This time your feet are crunching on dried leaves, there’s still a little mist swimming in the tops of the trees. Suddenly an owl swoops past you -  a wonderful symbol of moving from the light half of the year and moving into the dark time of the year.

Birds chatter, crows still cawing - for they themselves are guardians of the thresholds. As you get closer to the temple you can smell woodsmoke on the breeze, children are running around laughing and chasing each other. Chickens move quickly to get out of their way.

The temple is a great gathering place, it’s great circular roof is newly thatched and there's the wonderful aroma of the dry straw.

The women have stretched out banners and are repainting the symbols - great images of the She-Bear. Your people honor the bear and her magic and wisdom is your lineage - as was your mother and her mother before that. The great red, gold, black and green banners all telling the story your people have with bear. Their rituals honor Bear as the first descent story and their foremother's rituals as the first hearth, at the center of the Cave of the Grandmothers. 


A deeper ritual of entering the dark and descending into the underworld with bear

Today, Autumn Equinox, will have many rituals to the great She-Bear as she begins her preparation for her great descent into the deep, the dark and her winter sleep. Tonight you and all the women will journey through the worlds with Breejah, your ancient foremother, to visit the Cave of the Grandmothers - those ancient ones who are both women and yet bear.

You pause for a second, as each woman does, before taking the three steps into the temple. These three steps are sacred - and wither your painting banners, serving food or entering in ritual - all pause as they take the three steps. Their purpose is to slow you down, acknowledge the threshold as you leave the everyday world behind and cross into sacred place. These three steps mark the boundary between the two worlds.

As you pause before you take the three steps and place your basket down - peer into the basket, what does it hold? What are your tools that you use in this world? How are you going to prepare yourself as you move over this ancient thresholds and into the dark of the year?

Take some time to prepare before taking this journey with Breejah, an ancient priestess who honors bear, and a journey between the worlds. Maybe you’d like to get your journal and pen to record any thoughts or reflections from the journey. Maybe you’d like to get some colored pencils and paper if you’d like to sketch, draw colors or just markings that speak to you in your own language of your time with the Bear Grandmothers.

Click on the image above to get full details of our online Cailleach course and take advantage of the last week of the $10 off - use coupon code 'daughter19'. 

It is the Cailleach, the pre-Celtic old crone whose age-old ritual at brings us from the light of the year and into the dark - this mornings sunrise shines into the chamber of Cairn T to illuminate the symbols etched onto stone. Click on the image below to hear those gathered honor the Cailleach.

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Jude Lally is a forager of stories. You’ll find her out wandering the hills around Loch Lomond, reading the signs that guide her to stories in the land.

As a Cultural Activist, she draws upon the inspiration from old traditions to meet current needs.
She uses keening as a grief ritual, a cathartic ritual to express anger, fear, and despair for all that is unfolding within the great unraveling.
As a doll maker, she views this practice as one that stretches back to the first dolls which may have been fashioned from bones and stones and ancient stone figurines such as the Woman of Willendorf. She uses dolls as a way of holding and exploring our own story, and relationship to the land as well as ancestral figures.

She gained her MSc Masters Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) and lives on the West Coast of Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, near Loch Lomond. She is currently writing her first book, Path of the Ancestral Mothers.

Website: www.pathoftheancestralmothers.com

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