PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in cailleach

You might not think an academic conference would be the best place to go and drink from the well of the Cailleach, to gather her cloak of belonging about yourself, to celebrate your motherline - but actually, it is the very best place as I found over this weekend's Full Moon. Over the course of the conference (July 6-9,2017) the themes of making visible the invisible, giving voice to those who have been silenced, and naming the nameless recurred again and again for me.

I have come reeling back from NUI Galway, fresh from the Motherlines conference instigated by MIRCI (Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement.) Back in the spring I was invited by Prof. Andrea O'Reilly to speak on a keynote panel with my presentation entitled "What My Mother Taught Me." But what a wealth of thought provoking feminist presentations to stretch one spiritually, intellectually, psychologically!

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
A Council of Crones

Even wise women need wise women. Life likes to mix things up. Including messages. People are complex critters. If only they could be as straightforward as taming feral cats! To navigate life I have my council of crones.

I am that most fortunate of women who has collected and maintained connections with smart, savvy, talentd, empathic and compassionate women who are scattered across many continents. They come from varied life and professional experience.  Not all have grey hair yet. But what they share is the wisdom of the cailleach. Each has been to the brink, eyeballed the abyss, didn't blink, and come back to tell the tale.

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

After autumn equinox I consciously looked for crone models as 'sponsors' for my croning. When I had my confirmation at age 12 I had a sponsor's hand on my shoulder. Now I wanted that virtual, spiritual hand on my shoulder as I crossed this threshold place. I needed some Wise Women at my shoulder. So I went researching, meditating and seeking my sponsers in the weeks before my Samhain croning ceremony.

The Cailleach Beara is an obvious starting point and certainly fulfilled the sponsorship role for my fellow crone.  But I had this intuitive niggle that it wasn't quite right.  On some level I needed not just a mythic witch or goddess. And then I went to Yorkshire on a visit and visited Mother Shipton's Well in Knaresborough.

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

b2ap3_thumbnail_Cailleach-Collage.jpg

 

...
Last modified on

Screen shot 2016-09-05 at 3.14.44 PM

Click on image for source. Sacred Stone Camp, North Dakota.

...
Last modified on

b2ap3_thumbnail_altoid-tin-labarodite-edit-shadow.jpg

Altoid tin altar  

...
Last modified on
Beltane: The Cailleach’s Story (and Cailleach Film)

Some days when I look out my window from the Appalachians, I magically see the landscape of home, Scotland. The great mountain of Ben Lomond­ drawing in clouds of rain off the Atlantic. I can even hear the call of seagulls. No matter where I am in the world, I always feel that deep connection of a place called home.

That land, of which I am an integral part, is still connected to me, and still feeds me stories even though we are an ocean apart. One familiar character is the Cailleach, so old that even she doesn’t realize her own age. If you were to ask her how old age she was, she would reply:

'When the ocean was a forest, I was just a young girl'

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Thanks you - lovely to read and wise and wonderful words for my soul.
  • Jude Lally
    Jude Lally says #
    Many thanks Lizann x

Additional information