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My Dear Kin,
Warmest greetings your way as the merry month of May arrives. The bealfires are being lit, ringing in the dawn of the season of the Sun and its rituals of purification and protection are underway, as well as its celebrations of fertility, sexuality, and renewal. What an honor and blessed ritual it would be on this night to extinguish one’s home fires and then journey to a roaring communal bonfire, whereby we might light our candle, warmed by the shared bond of the village, and then return its flame to our home. The light of the community, of the season, brought into the home to protect, to nourish, and to inspire.
Bealtaine is here, and I feel honored and blessed to be celebrating this time in sisterhood, friendship, and on ancestral lands. I live as a person whose bloodlines are woven from many lands and many tribes from this fair and wise part of the world. I am compelled to honor my ancestors, their stories, and their ways by regularly pilgrimaging to the lands, waters, and skies that wove my bones. I also do this for those who may not have the means or the ability to travel, and I pray that through my sharing, they might feel the ancient sapphire, ruby, and emerald sparks of consciousness that rise up when communing with these important, vast, and inspiring places. These places also hold endless layers of grief, pain, and loss, entangled with resilience, humor, and beauty. The older I get (I just celebrated my 46th solar return), the more I realize I know nothing, and I wonder about just how profoundly complicated and also profoundly simple life is… OH life.
For now, let’s honor the peak of Spring and call forward in one glorious hawthornic, heathered, gorse-filled hymn, the warm wonders of Bealtaine.
Beltane - The Wild Heart
Beltane is the celebration of the Fire of Bel, the ancient god of the Sun who at this time marries Danu, great mother Goddess of the Earth. This is the time on the wheel of the year when the Sun and the Earth become one - when fertility peaks, when union abounds, and when celebrations of the warming Earth take place. This is a celebration of skin and ph…
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Beltane
Welcome, dear ones, welcome to the beloved, ancient fire festival of Beltane! This sun-fire festival is a full half-year turn of the wheel from Samhain when the ancestral veil is thinnest. At Beltane, the veils are also thinned, but they are the curtains that protect the realms of the fae, our etheric kin. We offer them sweetness and play at this time o…
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A Celtic Convergence
For years now, I have been seeking my place. Where can my voice most authentically lend itself to the cauldrons of Celtic creation? I was not raised in the cultures of Éire and Alba; I was raised on lands in another hemisphere, far, far away, in a culture that never fit (me), in seasons that were upside down, by a people that were rough and harsh and couldn’t name the medicine or wisdom of the plants that surrounded them. ‘Australian culture’ has always perplexed me, and the systems of governance there, even more so. The land spoke to me, though it was clear I was not from there, yet a welcome child given my desire and capacity to listen to the lands sing.
My actual voice (my accent) is from that place, though a little skewed and confused as I’ve lived now for over two decades in another settler society, a few hundred years senior to Australia yet still fraught with the deep wounds colonialism and environmental destruction bring. I never expected to stay in the US. It is also a strange place. It was young love that brought me there, and it is a forever love that keeps me there and has me living inland and tending a garden in the high desert plains. No one would have seen that coming for this ocean-loving selkie.
I have also found an incredible community in the US, my childhood dream come true. A band of wild, wise, creative, intuitive, caring, and kind plant women who honor the earth and each other. Women who can listen to the wind and channel the wisdom in all the ways I can and more. It is my treasure and my pleasure, my heaven, to share life with them. They are everything, and I am traveling with one of them right now, as I write to you, preparing our fires to be lit here in Scotland.
So, no longer from Australia, and not from the US; the face I wear, my bones and blood, and the stories I sing, are from the wild islands of the far west of Europe, yet I was not raised there. Woven of the many threads. From the Earth and sea, yet not from any one place. Outcast in some ways, adrift in others. Perhaps you can relate? Or perhaps your people still live rooted in the lands of your ancestors? Or maybe a wee mix of both? Or perhaps neither?
I continue to query my place in this space and in this world. What is mine to hold, to release, to surrender? What might I share, with integrity and care? When I commune with the stones and trees here, I notice silken roots growing from my womb, the tips of my long hair, and the soles of my soft feet. These roots are welcomed downward, kissed by the wet soil of the land. The waterfalls that flow from the tops of dark mountains hum my soul name, and I know I am kin to every drop of water that falls and falls and falls. I see my face in every sheep and every lamb mirrored back to me.
Given the ancient histories of human movement, grouped by choice, need, or force, I wonder if instead of naming where we are from, we might instead consider naming by where, or by whom, or by what we are claimed?
Mine might look like this.
My beloved claims my heart.
Alba claims my bones.
The sea claims my sight.
Éire claims my wisdom.
The spéirbhean claims my voice.
And if I whittled it down further…
The rose claims my path.
The yarrow claims my edges.
The hawthorn claims my song.
The birch claims my stories.
And so…
The Cailleach claims my humor.
The Morrigan claims my cunning.
The bees claim my listening.
The kelp claims my anchoring.
On and on and on it goes…
Where it stops?
Nobody knows.
Who/what/where claims you, dear kin? I’m vastly more interested in knowing by what you are claimed, than where you are ‘from’ for it splashes color and texture onto the unique fabric of your being, and at least for me, helps me to understand how you came to find yourself in this moment in time. I welcome in this particular dance of nuance and clarity.
I’d love to understand, deeply, how you see the world, and perhaps, how the world sees you.
Guideposts, markers, influences, inspirations…
Claimed.
A Thousand Worlds
I write to you today from the southwest of a gently warming An t-Eilean Muileach, Alba (Isle of Mull, Scotland). This island is vast and majestic, replete with crystal beaches, stone islands that shuffle in the night (trust me, they do), and endless waterfalls. It houses one of the clan seats of my lineage on my maternal grandfather’s side, Clan Maclean, and their stark cliff dwelling home, Duart Castle.
Thirteen days ago I left Denver for Dublin where I spent a couple of days with dear friends visiting some of the scared sites of our lineage. My beloved sister Kimberley of Banfhile in her spacious wisdom toured me around a place deeply known in my bones, yet I had not visited in this lifetime. It was a gloriously wet, windy, cool, and misty day. Magics abounded. I can’t wait for us to return together, though it’s unclear if we’ll make it back to this timeline.
I then traveled to Manchester to reconnect with a dear soul sister, and we traveled to Wales for my birthday, then onward to the Isle of Arran to visit family, and now, the isles of Mull and Iona.
We are staying in a small stone bothy on a farm by the water, replete with views of cliffs, surrounded by oodles of white, fluffy, playful lambs. The island is full of the energy of Spring; six kittens were born on the farm the day we arrived. While on Arran, I saw a Golden Eagle and was mesmerised.
Here on Mull, another Golden Eagle was spotted, as well as a host of other avian friends, and the sister I’m traveling with insists it is part of an initiation I seem to be (endlessly) journeying through. The midlife unraveling, dying, bloating, chrysalis. I am officially liquified. I pray wings emerge once my amorphous goo-state returns to form and flesh. The knowing of who I am is unraveling with every step, for I’m sure I’m not who I once was, and I’ve no idea who I’m becoming. I walk through a thousand worlds every day and every night. Dreams take me to the edge of the cosmos and beyond, inter-realm dialogues with former selves, pixies, friends, and many creatures not of this Earth.
And many of this Earth.
A return to the Isle of Arran with a dear soul sister was incredibly special. She too felt deeply at home there, and we were blessed with beautiful weather, views, and forest connections. Many of the large trees Mum and I saw last September had fallen during winter storms, yet the beauty and resiliency of the Island and its people remained, unsurprisingly.
The Isle of Mull holds strange and wonderful energies. Vast valleys and cliffs, sweet towns and people, birch and gorse the likes of which you have never seen…
And then, there was Iona.
It is stark when one visits a space that has been prayed over. Not casually, for a year or two, but daily, multiple times daily, for an age.
The Isle of Iona is a 10-minute ferry-ride from Mull and is a world unto itself. Again, this journey, a thousand worlds opening up with each moment. We walked all day today, this last day of April, and we greeted with some truly spectacular weather, views, energies, flowers, and people. We even bumped into the royal couple (we were stopped a short walk away from where they were being photographed), Prince William and Princess Katherine (though in Scotland they are known as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay), visiting on their 14th wedding anniversary. The day was a truly glorious and magical.
This island, is a dream.
Claimed.
I’ll leave you with a snapshot of me and some of the beautiful souls I spent time with here. These women are also a dream…
Claimed!
May the blessings of the season be yours!
I’m off to light a fire and will sing to each and every one of you who has joined me here in this salty, warm, mossy, wild, corner of the digital realm.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
May you and yours be blessed by the rising green wonders of the season!
May your loins be brought to life, lifting high as the sap rises and returns the green glory to our blue jewel home planet.
May you be forever claimed by beauty, strength, honor, and grace.
Ever with love and care, your kin of gorse and haw, weed and stone, sea and sky.
h x
Human Kindness
In an effort to provide gentle and continual reminders of the myriad pools and places where human kindness, both towards other humans and towards the natural world exists, this wee organization recently crossed my path.
May kindness be your activism, compassion your shield, and radically fierce, dragon-fueled self-worth your home eternal. May we accept nothing but grace. Long may it reign.
Loose Ends
This small nonprofit was founded by two women who had each finished craft projects for people who had passed on. They function as matchmakers, matching unfinished projects with those who have the skill to finish them. I can imagine the joy of receiving back the finished product a dear grandparent, aunt, or friend was working on. Something tangible to hold on to, to keep their memory close, to honor them. Such kindness.
Thank you for taking us on your amazing journey. Beautiful writing. ❤️
The color of the water!