Category: Celtic traditions

At Samhain, celebrated the eve of October 31 through November 1, the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the spirits becomes more permeable. Our Halloween traditions come from ancient Celtic pagan practices to honor and feed the dead, listen to their advice, and scare away evil spirits. Many pagans believe …

Love is the antidote for trauma. I’m not talking about the kind of love that requires us to blunt our awareness of the terrible events we experience and hear about. I’m talking about awake love: love that takes in everything and holds us with beauty and joy in the midst of it. But trauma often …

  February 1 is Imbolc, a time for us to sweep out whatever in our homes and lives is completed or no longer useful and open our bellies, hearts, minds, and souls to new callings, new currents, new commitments. Given what is going on in our communities, nation, and world, how can we leap into …

In pagan traditions, Samhain is the New Year, the time when the old year dies away. We move into a period of darkness and rest before spring’s rebirth. Death is all around us. Leaves, first brilliant red, orange, and yellow, lie brown and rotting on the ground. Stalks of summer’s yellow sunchokes turn black, signaling …

  A week ago, I sat on a wooden bench at the edge of Elk Prairie in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, just north of Orick, California, watching the resident herd of Roosevelt elk graze. The prairie is a huge open expanse in the middle of forest dominated by coast redwood and Sitka spruce trees, …

Image by Jens Rasch from Pixabay Brigid, or Brid in modern Irish, is the triple goddess of healing, poetry, and alchemy. As the goddess of fire, she rules the forge and is the patron of blacksmiths, who through their art transform molten metal into useful, beautiful, and even magical objects. I am the great-granddaughter of …

It’s the darkest time of year in the darkest year in memory, for many of us. Death, suffering, fear, isolation, cruelty, oppression, corruption, destruction, mendacity, malice. It all feels overwhelming. How can we trust light will return? At the moment of Winter Solstice, the balance of light and darkness shifts almost imperceptibly. The days begin …

Síle na Gigh showed me, squatting, spreading her luscious lower lips wide open, grinning. Síle showed me the way to the womb of the Great Mother, Gaia, Mother Earth. As our group of women called in the elements – air, fire, water, earth – we listened to hear what they had to say to us. …

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Within the next six months, we will determine the fate of democracy in the United States. This is not hyperbole. If our democracy dies, many people will die too – even more than COVID-19 has already killed. Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC) are particularly at …

Sr. Phil O’Shea at Solas Bhride Centre, Kildare, Ireland, 2016 “Solas Bhride is a Christian Spirituality Centre which welcomes people of all faiths and of no faith. The Vision of the Centre is to unfold the legacy of St. Brigid and its relevance for our time.” Yesterday, on Jan. 31, the eve of Imbolc, two …