Sisterhood of the Antlers

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

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Jude Lally

Jude Lally

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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An Invitation to Cast a Caim

Crisises. Take your pick, we aren’t running out of them any time soon. 

War / Climate breakdown / political instability / social injustices / economic inequality/ people escaping war and oppression seeking asylum / food insecurity / access to healthcare / violence against women and girls / violence against trans people …

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Ritual of Burying the Doll

It is my ritual of Autumn Equinox to bury a small clay doll. She represents part of me that sinks into the deep dark of the winter months. Deep in the underworld, she is nestled under the soil, among sleeping tree roots.

This ritual only started a few years ago as normally I would symbolically bury her in a large black clay cauldron. In 2019 I took her with me while visiting home and on the Island of Eigg I followed a dream and buried her in the soil.

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Today is my celebration of being born into this world and in this life, there is only one thing we can be truly certain of, and that is death.

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Felted Bear Hearth Altar by Jude Lally 
 
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that just one more worry, just one more stress can tip me right over the edge and into free fall. As we move from Autumn Equinox and cycle towards Samhain what is is that keeps you balanced? What is it that you root yourself down into? 

For me, it begins by trying to shut off my head, although silencing those chattering voices aren't always easy and so I try to let my feet or hands take over.

Feet take me a walk around the neighborhood and never too far afield these days but there is still lots of magic to be found in the hedgerows. 
Hands perform rituals which have always been a focus to keep me sane, to make meaning when sometimes it feels that there is none. They keep me tethered to the land and the voices of the old ones. Small little gestures about how I'm feeling - needing an unravelling here and a weaving there. 

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Dzooqua (Doll), Tsagaglala Petroglyph and the Cauldron of the Cailleach 

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Beltane morning. I am in the foothills of the Appalachians yet there is a cool breeze blowing which transports me to the Isle of Oronsay, sitting on top of a Mesolithic shell midden - made by people who perhaps moved around their landscape in a great ritualistic gesture.

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