Of late, we’ve been exploring the dreamtime, along with our own sense of inner worthiness. Feeling worthy often means embracing the gifts we’ve relegated to shadow for fear of how the overculture will respond.

This got me thinking about ancestors who embody their gifts, like Fedelm, the banfhile, the ‘poetess-seer’ whose appearance in the Irish saga Táin Bó Cúailnge holds more weight than the length of the words that tell her story. For me, Fedelm is a highlight of the Táin - always has been. So much so that, a number of years ago, she began appearing as a psychopomp in my journeys to the Otherworld, even manifesting in my night dreams.

In time, a retelling of her tale flowed through my ears, into my heart, and onto the page, which I will share today. We’ve explored Fedelm before in this community but she deserves her place in our Mythic Ancestors eBook.

Fedelms - Plural

There are a number of mythic ancestors called Fedelm in our tradition. The best known is the Fedelm of the Táin, whom you will experience below. As well as being a poet, she is a banfháith, a ‘prophetess’ who, like the three Moirai of Greek mythology or the Norns of Norse tradition, wields a weaver’s beam, a symbol of how women once wove the fabric of human destiny.

When we meet her she has returned to Ireland from ‘learning verse and vision in Alba’, honing her seership in Scotland. She is asked by Queen Medb if she has the gift of imbas forosnai, of ‘knowledge that illumines’, which she does, and goes on to prophesy for her queen, warning her that if Medb continues to battle, all will be crimson, all red with bloodshed.

Although the exact meaning of Fedelm remains obscure, comparison is sometimes drawn between her and Veleda, the seeress of the Bructeri tribe. Writing in the first century, the Roman historian Tacitus said of Veleda:

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Hello Shining Ones,

This message should arrive in your inbox at sunset, Irish time. I hope this day has been a gift for you as we soon transition into the twilight hours, a magical, liminal threshold time.

Last week, I opened the waitlist preorders for the Sunset Journal - a creative journal infused with Irish ancestral wisdom for anyone ready to reimagine their relationship with time. It has been surreal to see orders arrive from across Ireland, England, Scotland, the Orkney Islands, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This project started five years ago when I asked myself a question inspired by how our ancestors likely began their day at sunset, not sunrise as we do today. I simply asked myself:

What if you began your day at sunset?

Then I asked my clients, community, and anyone else I thought might be interested:

What would life look like if I believed that my day started at dusk, not dawn?

The question itself was fuelled by my experiences as a feminine embodiment coach. It felt like an antidote to productivity culture, where you begin your day like a warrior ready to take up arms and battle through life. In the neon demands of a 24/7, switched-on life, it felt radical to contemplate my day in an ancestral way.

In the Irish language, one of the words for sunset is luí na gréine, which means the ‘lying down of the sun’, contemplating the sunset felt like lying down with the ancestors.

That original question has now become the Sunset Journal.

Preorder Your Sunset Journal

Created with Soul

The Sunset Journal is a printed creative journal for anyone who feels inspired to cultivate a practice of beginning their day at sunset. It is infused with the wisdom of our ancestors, but made for contemporary life.

Content includes:

• Explorations of this sunset way of perceiving time, drawn from classical, mythological and folkloric sources

• Reflections on how our creativity can be fuelled by the darkness of dreams and the Otherworld, inspired by the Irish bardic tradition

• Insights into the mystical 8th-century text, the Cauldron of Poesy, and how we can tend to three cauldrons: Cauldron of Warming, Cauldron of Motion, and Cauldron of Wisdom as a framework for beginning our day at sunset

• Over three months (13 weeks) of double-page Daily Spreads with journal prompts to begin each day at sunset

• Plus 13 Sunset Distillations: a practice of gathering, distilling and decoding your daily entries into a unique symbol lexicon, your own inner oracle

Everything about this journal is intentional and artisan. I want it to feel like holding a piece of art, a piece of the great ancestral puzzle, a piece of living soul in your hands.

For me, this is not just a journal, it’s about creating a movement for kindred souls who love sunset, dusk, twilight, and night. To reclaim the magic of dark in a light obsessed world.

This is only the beginning.

The waitlist has already made a wonderful dent in the availability (which was originally 130 books for this first print run) so do preorder to avoid disappointment if you feel the inner pull.

Your copy will be in the post by October 2026, just as we move into the dark months and the coming of Samhain. If you are in the southern hemisphere, the journal will still work its wonders. You’ll begin the Sunset Way with the coming of Bealtaine.

Join the Sunset Way

I hope we’ll be sunset journalling together soon.

For now, in gratitude,

Jen x

This is the first of our new way of working, an alternative to the Fairytale Céilí. As many of you know, I am just about to publish my Sunset Journal, a creative guide for beginning your day at sunset.

In this class, The Sunset Way: Finding Creative Inspiration in Ancestral Time, I share some of my findings and reflections on how our ancestors related to the onset of night.

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I’ve just spent a magical evening here in Dublin with family, friends and neighbours witnessing moon and sun in a dance of shadow and light. It reminded me of an Irish folktale about a dream of a star that I shared a good while back and which now feels ready to be known again.

So here we are with the Star Hag.

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The Star

What do you feel when you dream into the image of the star? The symbolism that the star holds for us is as vast as the cosmos itself. Unlike the sun, our earth star, which we have an immediate connection with - it provides us with life, and can also scorch us - the stars of the night hold a different resonance: softer, more ethereal, and ancient in ways, as they connect us to the transcendental. The starlight that glows in the night sky began its journey to us millennia ago, illustrating to us the endurance of its creativity, its destiny.

Our ancestors gazed upon the same stars as we do, and worshipped them. The great megalithic star-temples scattered across this island are testament to this. There are many myths across many cultures about stars. One of the most well-known is of Gilgamesh, the semi-divine Sumerian King, who has a dream of a star falling from heaven, which his mother, Ninsun, the cow goddess, interprets for him and tells him that she herself created the star; it is a gift from the divine.

In Jungian psychology, the star is often associated with the archetype of the Self, the symbol of wholeness. The path towards the Self in this sense is the path to becoming. As the saying goes, we are made from stardust; it’s already within us. Dreams of stars can allude to the symbolism of the star as new awareness, of following our inner compass, of renewal and soul-growth.

Today, it’s interesting to reflect how light pollution can obscure our view of the stars, how we have created artificial light especially in societies where the conscious, logic, rational approach to life is glorified. Whereas stars and the dreaming time are eternal wayshowers into the unconscious, into our inner treasures.

I created this collage following a dream I had of the Cailleach, the great crone herself and her staff that connected soil and stars. (I share about this dream in this short video).

Star Hag

As it can be difficult to find material on Celtic Dreaming, I’ve been rooting around sources for the past few years and am finding a trove of dreaming lore. One such example is a folktale I found on Dúchas, our national folklore collection.

In the story, which is said to have transpired not very long ago, a woman dreamt of a star that fell from the heavens. Where it landed pointed to a place near an old church, a holy site, a resting sanctuary of the ancestors. The dream repeated itself for another night, and yet another - three nights in total, a sacred triplicity of dreaming about this star. On the last night, the woman heard a disembodied voice, the dream maker say, “A treasure of gold and silver is there.”

When she woke, she told the menfolk about this dream, who then conspired to go to the spot near the old church at the dead of night, spades over shoulders, and begin to dig for the star treasure. When they arrived at the site, a storm of owls, the cailleacha na hoíche, the ‘witches of night’ in our native tongue, and leather-winged bats, descended upon them, until they found themselves in a dark tunnel.

Out of the darkness, appeared an old hag, holding starlight in her hand. All about their feet lay glistening golden chests and ornaments of silver, as the dream maker had foretold. But they could do nothing with these treasures as they were prisoners of the hag. All they could do was remain as they were until daylight broke, guiding them out of the tunnel. There, they found themselves far from home, in another part of Ireland, unknown to them.

The tunnel was never found again, and all in this tale have passed, but the star still beckons to another spot where this treasure can be found.

Star Wisdom

This tale is rich with imagery we can work with for our own inner-journey and I invite you, if you feel inspired, to bathe in the dream.

In this tale, a numinous dream is bestowed upon this woman, who then gives it away to the menfolk, she gives the luck of her own dream to those who don’t understand the power of it. They go into the night, into the unconscious, into the Otherworld, armed with spades and materialistic intentions.

The guardians of this sacred place descend upon them in the form of the owl, the bat, and the hag who holds the light. She is a bean feasa, the keeper of this otherworldly knowledge.

They become disoriented in her world as they have approached without pure intention; the inner-riches are at their feet, but they can do nothing with them. They have to wait it out until daylight comes.

They find themselves in new territory, so something has been initiated, but they must find their way back not through the waking world of the seen, of consciousness, but through the unseen realm of intention and intuition.

Still, the star shines eternal, beckoning whoever follows to walk its starlit path home.

The image of the Star Hag also reminds me of the sovereignty goddess in Irish mythology, who appears as a loathly lady who can transform into a starborn goddess when she meets a king worthy of her divine wisdom. He must recognise the value of both shadow and light.

Journal Prompt

What does the star symbolise for you?

Draw a star and write in, on or around it words you associate with this archetype, creating a constellation of meaning. Notice any illuminations that feel like they’re guiding you at this eclipse portal.

Celtic Dreaming

If the Star Hag calls you deeper in your dreaming, I recently launched a new self-guided workshop, Celtic Dreaming: A Voyager’s Guide to the Otherworld of Sleep. It includes video teachings on the dreaming traditions of our ancestors along with a downloadable guided eBook.

Enrol in Celtic Dreaming

I hope the sun, the moon and the stars rain their blessings down upon you on this eclipse threshold.

Croí isteach,

Jen x

Sources

Carl G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works, Vol. 5, paragraph 77

Dúchas

Sallie Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey: The Jungian Path from Darkness to Light

This Jungian Life

Hello Shining Ones,

In a recent night dream, I was having a conversation with a woman who told me she possessed more wealth than is imaginable, but that she often didn’t feel wealthy. The woman then asked me what true wealth is, and I responded in the dream, ‘True wealth is worthiness.’

I’ve been reflecting on this since. Lughnasa is the harvest season, a time when the old myths tell us that Lugh created a life-giving festival that he hoped was worthy of his beloved foster-mother, Queen Tailtiu, and the sacrifice she had made as an earth mother, to prepare the land for tilling.

Tailtiu made the ultimate sacrifice: she offered her life so the land would flourish. The earth mother knew that her sacrifice, a word whose roots mean to ‘make sacred’, would also result in her rebirth, not necessarily in her original form as a queen, but rather in the lush festivities she felt worthy of. This was her dying wish.

I’ve never thought about this tale as one of worthiness, but that’s the wonder of myths, they keep revealing themselves to us in new forms as we need them, and especially as guides for our dreaming.

And so, I’ve started this Lughnasa practice of ‘walking into worthiness’. Early in 2025, I created this short walking meditation, or rather, activation, for my Celtic Soul Garden course to support folks to feel into their own worthiness as creatives, as shining forces of creation.

I share this with you as our ritual for August, for Lúnasa.

Are you ready to walk with me?

The Ritual

What you will be doing:

• Here you will walk and receive a series of energetic activations into your body.

• It is designed so that you can do this with ease at any time of your day, or incorporate it into a daily walk, a walk to the shops, a school or errand run, or a short journey from one place to another.

• Although we love cycles here, I do recommend that you walk from one place to another in a linear fashion. The body loves moving as felt senses arise, and since you will be walking into your ‘future’ in this practice, your body is invited to respond to, vibrate with, and calibrate into forward momentum.

Before you walk:

Ideally before your first walk, journal in response to the following three questions:

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A Chairde, Friends,

We are entering Lúnasa, the Irish word for August, and the harvest season (also Lughnasa, Lughnasad, Lughnasadh). An abundant welcome to anyone who is new in our community, and to all who have been here for a time.

You may receive two emails from me with your new schedule (sorry!) because you also see paid membership content. Please save this email, this is specific to Founding Members. Thanks a million!

🗝️ Library

A reminder of where everything is saved:

1. Imbas Dispatch: All Imbas Dispatch and Celtic Oracle newsletters are saved in this section called Celtic Symbols.

2. Celtic Creatives Toolkit: All your tools are saved in this section called The Ritualist.

3. Mythic Ancestor eBook: All of your mythic ancestor profiles (and the eBook) are saved in this section called Celtic Archetypes eBook.

4. Fairytale Céilí: You will find these in the Fairytale Céilí section.

5. Archive: If you’d like a single thread of every single post in The Celtic Creatives go to the Archive section.

🕰️ Schedule

As you know, our fairytale céilí is the live gathering in our community. I would love to try something new for Lughnasa, seeing as it is the season of abundance.

Over the course of the season, August-October, we will have two classes where I will share teachings on a specific theme related to Celtic mysticism, and one fairytale céilí.

To accommodate busy schedules, the classes will be one hour long and the fairytale céilí its usual 1.5 hours. I’d love to hear your feedback on this as the season unfolds.

Please note: as I will be travelling in August, this month’s class will be pre-recorded. The others will be live. Details are below.

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Hello Shining Ones,

We are entering Lúnasa, the Irish word for August, and the harvest season (also Lughnasa, Lughnasad, Lughnasadh). An abundant welcome to anyone who is new in our community, and to all who have been here for a time.

Your updated schedule for Lughnasa, August-October 2026 is shared below. Please do save or bookmark this post. Thanks a million.

🗝️ Library

A reminder of where everything is saved:

1. Imbas Dispatch: All Imbas Dispatch and Celtic Oracle newsletters are saved in this section called Celtic Symbols.

2. Celtic Creatives Toolkit: All your tools are saved in this section called The Ritualist.

3. Mythic Ancestor eBook: All of your mythic ancestor profiles (and the eBook) are saved in this section called Celtic Archetypes eBook.

4. Fairytale Céilí: You will find these in the Fairytale Céilí section.

5. Archive: If you’d like a single thread of every single post in The Celtic Creatives go to the Archive section.

🕰️ Schedule

As you know, our fairytale céilí is the live gathering in our community. I would love to try something new for Lughnasa, seeing as it is the season of abundance.

Over the course of the season, August-October, we will have two classes where I will share teachings on a specific theme related to Celtic mysticism, and one fairytale céilí.

To accommodate busy schedules, the classes will be one hour long and the fairytale céilí its usual 1.5 hours. I’d love to hear your feedback on this as the season unfolds.

Please note: as I will be travelling in August, this month’s class will be pre-recorded. The others will be live. Details are below.

Read more

I’m never entirely comfortable with how the Irish heroine Deirdre (“Deer-dra”, also Derdriu or Deirdriu in Old Irish) has become known as ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’, inspired by Irish playright, John Millington Synge’s play of the same name. I feel there’s more to Deirdre than the sorrows that seem to shadow her path. But hers is a sorrowful tale. She is a tragic heroine. I wonder if my reticence comes from a place within me of not wanting to only identify with the sorrows or hardships I’ve endured in my own life. Still, as the eighth-century mystical text the Cauldron of Poesy tells us, we cannot become wise without our sorrows.

Let’s see what sorrowful wisdom Deirdre has for us this month.

(Please be aware, Deirdre’s death is by suicide. Take care of yourself as you read.)

Archetype of Revival

Like all Gaelic myths, Deirdre’s story originated in oral tradition. Her earliest written form arrives to us in Lebor na Núachongbála, known today as the ‘Book of Leinster’, a medieval manuscript compiled sometime between 1152 and 1161 in a monastery on the shores of Lough Derg in Co. Tipperary. We are told in the text that ‘Áed Ua Crimthainn wrote this book and collected it from many other books.’ This speaks to how monastic scribes compiled their books often from earlier manuscripts. The style of Old Irish in Deirdre’s tale dates from the 8th or 9th century, so 300 or 400 years before this version.

Here it is called Longes mac nUislenn, ‘The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’. These ‘sons’ are a triplicity, Naoise, Ardán and Ainnle. They are sometimes called the ‘Sons of Uisneach’, which is Ireland’s sacred navel. This would make them sons of both person and place. One of my own sons bears the middle name Naoise after the raven-haired warrior who, as we shall see, becomes Deirdre’s lover. By the 15th century, this myth was also known as one of the Trí Truaighe na Scéalaigheachta, ‘The Three Sorrows of Storytelling’, along with The Fate of the Children of Lir and The Fate of the Children of Tuireann.

There was a great variety of stories a file, a ‘poet-seer’, was expected to have in their repertoire, like the táin, the ‘cattle-raid’, the compert, the ‘conception or begetting’, the aislinge, the ‘dream vision’, or the imram, the ‘sea-voyage to the Otherworld’. The tale of Deirdre crosses a number of story-borders as a tale of exile (loinges), and also as an aithed, an ‘elopement’. The elopement tales find a sister genre in the tochmarc, the ‘wooing’, though with a striking difference. In the aithed, it is often the woman who is the main protagonist; she is the instigator of the action. Not one to be passively wooed, she does the wooing.

This myth is one that has captured imaginations for well over a thousand years, not only with the scribe Áed Ua Crimthainn who copied it from others, but with Synge, Maire O’Neill, W.B. Yeats, Æ, Lady Augusta Gregory, Standish O’Grady, Samuel Ferguson, James Stephens, and Ireland’s first president, Douglas Hyde. Deirdre, in ways, is an archetype of the Gaelic revival. She symbolises a woman who will not conform to what is projected onto her by the forces that seek to control her. Her story took hold in the collective psyche during Ireland’s greatest rebellion against the British Empire, and in it she fights a narcissistic king whose force, brutality and treachery to enhance his own vanity mirror the workings of empire itself.

Womb Shriek

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It’s been a time since I shared a new oracle card from Celtic Dream Oracle: Ancient Symbols to Guide Your Modern Life. This card took from February to now, July, to come through. That’s how this oracle emerges: some cards arrive in one fell swoop; others shapeshift and gestate for months.

Spiral

Keywords:

Unconscious, Widdershins, Inner Power

Suit:

The Gifts

Symbol:

Two serpents entwine over three spiralling stones. The one who slithers left travels towards the dark, deep into the realm of the unconscious, the Otherworld and soul. The one who slithers right travels towards the light, bringing the depths up into consciousness, the waking world and ego.

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Lore:

When our eyes fall upon a spiral, we are met with something we know, or conscious, and something mysterious, or unconscious. There’s nowhere I sense this more than when I’m at Newgrange (Sí an Bhrú), the 5,000-year-old Neolithic temple on the River Boyne. The entrance stone to Newgrange, pictured three times in this oracle card, is adorned with marvellous spirals. These spirals are separated by a line thought to represent the temple’s 19-metre passageway, aligned to the sunrise after the longest night of the year. If you follow the energy from the centre of the double spiral to the right, you move sunwise. If you follow the energy of the tri-spiral to the left, you move widdershins.

There is a long-held ritual in Ireland of walking deiseal, ‘sunwise’, and tuathal, ‘widdershins’, to activate different energies. We see this with the goddess Bóinn, who in her creation myth walks three times widdershins around a secret well to become the River Boyne. One of the words for a sorceress in Old Irish is bantúathaid, a woman who moves to the left. There is much superstition in Irish folklore about moving tuathal, as it is believed to be a form of cursing. But what if, as the spiral at Newgrange indicates, it symbolises a movement down into the unconscious? The islands of the Celtic Otherworld are said to lie in the widdershins direction, to the left, the west, the setting of the sun. This is the hidden realm of the divine, of the ancestors, of soul magic. A place deep within us that we desperately long for and are afraid of because it exists beyond what we’ve been taught is rational, and no one wants to be perceived as mad.

Carved into the back recess of Newgrange’s womb is another triple spiral. If you were to follow this spiral with your gaze, you would enter a unicursal maze, like a labyrinth, where there is one pathway and no dead ends. To complete it, you must travel deiseal and tuathal, cycling with what is conscious and known, and what is unconscious and a mystery. This is in essence the way of the spiral.

In the oracle, you see the serpent wrapped around the stone, another form of coiling spiral, a symbol Ireland has become synonymous with, even though the snake likely never made its home here. We all know the story of St Patrick banishing the snakes of Ireland, often seen as a deliberate rejection of the Old Ways, of the goddess of birth, life, death, and rebirth, and of feminine spiritual authority. A rejection, in other words, of spiral consciousness. Still, because the spiral and the serpent are archetypal images that live deep in the patterns of the human psyche, we see these motifs seep into the illuminated manuscripts of Celtic Christianity, with its intricate spirals, triskeles, and knotwork. The spiral within never stops spinning.

There is a curious tale in the Dindshenchas, the ‘Lore of Places’, that tells us that the Mórrígan had a son called Méiche, who beat with not one, but three hearts in his chest, each coiled with a serpent. Fearing these snakes would grow in power and lay waste to Ireland, the king-warrior Mac Cécht, ‘Son of the Ploughshare’, ploughed out the hearts and burned them. He threw their ashes into the River Barrow (An Bhearú in Irish, meaning ‘boiling’), and all river life boiled and perished.

Mac Cécht, who is himself a triple king, is married to Fódhla, a triple goddess with her sisters Banba and Ériu, from whom Ireland, Éire, gets its name. These goddesses embody the fertility and abundance of the land. Their mother is Ernmas, who is also mother to another triple goddess, the Mórrígan, Méiche’s own mother and her sisters, who evoke the chthonic and destructive aspects of the feminine principle. The Mórrígan herself can shapeshift into an eel, which, although biologically different to a snake, overlaps mythologically.

Both the trinity of Ériu and the trinity of the Mórrígan are necessary; heart and serpent must co-exist. If we can transmute the shadowy aspects of the self that the chthonic serpent represents, we strengthen our hearts as the compass of soul. In doing so, we fiercen our capacity for love, and for a more resilient, abundant life. Our shadow contains the unconscious aspects of ourselves that we deem ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which the ego has rejected, repressed, or never recognised. This includes hidden talents the ego has exiled for fear of living more fully. Like Méiche’s snakes, it feels dangerous to grow, but not living is also a form of destruction. We see this in the myth: Mac Cécht, the fearful ego voice of ‘What if it all goes wrong?’, destroys the serpent hearts, robbing Méiche of his triple heart’s potential, and killing the waters of life.

When this card appears:

We all have serpents around our hearts, which contain both medicine and poison. If we have the courage to work with them as the unconscious, to spiral tuathal into the unknown places within us and undertake the task of shedding the old worn-out skins that keep us stuck, poisoned and unliving, then walk deiseal to bring this soul wisdom out into life, our hearts beat stronger, pulsing with lifeforce, kundalini, and our inner power.

One of the earliest known symbols of medicine is the Rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, depicting a serpent spiralling around a wooden staff. People worked with the unknown in the Asclepion temples by asking for a dream to guide their healing, entering a state of dream incubation. Perhaps Newgrange was also once a dreaming temple.

The spiral is here to guide you, both in your dreaming and your waking life, to reveal what is hidden within you that wants to be lived. The spiral is spinning, the serpent has stirred, it’s time to acknowledge your inner power.

Ritual:

Place a stone on the ground in front of you.

Stand with your feet almost touching the stone. Take a breath. Invoke:

‘I am a Daughter (or Son, Child, etc.) of the Spiral, reveal to me that which is unknown.’

Begin to walk tuathal, widdershins, in a spiral formation, away from the stone, which forms the centre. Take a soft, meditative gaze as you walk.

Go slow. Trust that revelation will come. If not today, then when you are ready.
Once you have a sense of completion walking tuathal, offer your gratitude to the Spiral.

Commit to taking whatever is revealed (even if it’s nothing, i.e. patience) with you into your conscious life.

Turn to the right and begin walking deiseal, sunwise, until you reach the centre stone.

Pick up your centre stone, holding it against your heart. Breathe. Then, when you are ready, close down the ritual space.

Coming Soon

Sunset Journal

I am buzzing to share that pre-orders for my limited edition Sunset Journal will open by Lughnasa. The journal will be in your hands in September, a perfect autumn companion. Sign up for the waitlist and you’ll be first to hear when pre-orders open:

Sunset Journal

Dream Imram: A Voyager’s Guide to the Otherworld of Sleep

Before July leaves us, I will also open enrolment for a new self-paced workshop for anyone who is curious about the dreaming traditions of our ancestors, and how this wisdom can enhance your own night dreams as a form of spiritual practice and Otherworldly co-creation. Stay close for details, more coming soon…

Croí isteach,

Jen x

Sources

Aidan Meehan, Celtic Design: Spiral Patterns

Mary Condren, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland

Whitley Stokes, ‘The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindshenchas’ Revue Celtique 15 (1894): 272–336, 418–484

Where did you travel to in your last dream? Why do you sense the dream maker brought you there? How did you feel upon your return, upon waking?

This month’s ritual is a guide on how to cultivate a practice of what I call Imram Dreaming, tending to your night dreams like voyages to the Otherworld.

Stick on the kettle and settle in, as I want to give you some context for this first before we get to the ritual. I promise you it’s worth it. This is a simple and wildly rich way to allow the spirituality of our ancestors to imbue our lives with everyday, or rather, every night magic.

Voyaging to the Otherworld

In Irish mysticism, we have the imram myths (also spelled immram). Imram means ‘the act of rowing’ or ‘sea-voyaging’ in Old Irish. These tales centre around a voyage to the islands of the Celtic Otherworld believed to lie in the direction of the west, of night.

As this is our Fairytale Céilí revision month in the membership, you may feel a nudge to circle back to Imram Brain, ‘The Voyage of Bran’ céilí as part of these explorations:

The most well-known of the imram tales include the Voyage of Bran, Immram Curaig Maíle Dúin, the ‘Voyage of Mael Dúin’s Boat’, and Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, the ‘Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot’, a christianised version of the imram tradition as Celtic Christianity retained features from the Old Ways.

The Voyage of Bran is likely the oldest of these imrama first written down in the 7th or 8th century, followed by Mael Dúin, and later Brendan. The latter’s tale was well known in Medieval Christendom as a form of peregrinatio, of rowing out and putting your full faith in God or the Divine to guide you wherever you need to go, the ultimate surrender. The 12th century chronicler, Gerald of Wales, said of Brendan:

Bran is initiated into his imram by a fairywoman who bears the silver branch, a magical talisman like an Otherworldly passport that summons the recipient to travel between worlds. This woman in ‘strange raiment’ tells Bran of 150 islands beyond this world and that he must begin his voyage, and perhaps he will have the fortune of reaching Tír na mBan, ‘Land of Women’.

Mael Dúin, fostered from infancy by a queen who he believes to be his birth mother, sets sail on his imram after he discovers his true birth mother was a nun and that his father was murdered. His voyage is initiated by grief, loss of identity and revenge, aided by a druid, a person skilled in working with the Otherworld.

Island Hopping

The island hopping that goes on in these imrama is not like your average holiday. These islands are as wild as they are magical with fantastical creatures and curious inversions of reality. Mael Dúin and his crew visit 31 islands in total, including one with humongous ants the size of foals, a high island on which is built a hostel with two doors. One door opens inland and the other directly out to sea; the latter contains a rotating valve like a cat flap, through which the sea flings salmon into the centre of the house. Another island is inhabited by red-coloured, fiery pigs who go underground from dawn until sunset, emerging to eat the golden apples of its woods.

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I’ve been reflecting lately on wells as portals to the Otherworld, and those who are guardians of the wells, safeguarding the passage between worlds, and the healing that can emerge from these liminal spaces. And so, for this month, I thought I’d share mythic ancestors who are enshrouded with well magic.

So let’s begin here with the wells who carry the goddess’s name and healing essence. We’ll travel with Brigid, Bóinn, Airmid and the Well Maidens from the Grail Romances.

Painting above of The Danaides by John William Waterhouse, 1903.

Despite their desperate refusal, these fifty sisters, daughters of Danaus, King of Libya, were forced by their uncle to marry their cousins. In retaliation against his brother, Danaus issued a dark command on his daughters so that all but one of them killed their cousin-husbands on their wedding night. The ‘one’, Hypermnestra, spared her husband because he respected her desire to remain a virgin. The Danaides were condemned for eternity to carry water in sieves or perforated jugs.

It is likely these sisters were originally water nymphs, sacred guardians of the waters. Akin to Celtic mythology, in the Greek tradition, water tends to be located in the realm of the divine feminine.

Brigid and Her Healing Wells

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We crossed the Solstice threshold enriching our bones with the feast that is the mythological lineage we have inherited - and continue to let story our lives in new ways as our ancestors did once upon a time.

• We opened with a guided drop-in, travelling down a winding tower to meet our personal otherworldly guide at the edge of the Celtic Otherworld.

• We mapped the four cycles: Mythological, Ulster, Fenian and the Cycle of Kings, as a framework for understanding the whole tradition.

• We explored the mythic ancestors who live within these four cycles like Ériu in the Mythological Cycle, Medb in the Ulster Cycle, Fionn in the Fenian Cycle, and Cormac Mac Airt in the Cycle of Kings, and so on…

• We looked at who carried the mythology: the filí, the poet-seers and druids in oral culture, and the Christian monks who then captured their voices on vellum.

Resources

You can download a PDF of the slides here:

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Last night, we gathered with hermit, shapeshifter and ancient soul, Tuán Mac Cairell, guided by seanchaí, ’s rich and rousing telling.

The way Jonathon invoked this tale reminded me of Sean Kane’s Wisdom of the Mythtellers, where Kane says that the energy-voice of mythic beings is released and arrives in a dream state moving through the storyteller who brings them into form. You can feel the energy of Tuán arrive in Jonathon’s telling.

Through the spirit of Tuán and the wisdom he brings to our times, we travelled in our bodies to our cave beyond the mountain pass, where we met with our own inner hermit.

The wise guide who dwells deep within.

The wise guide who has lived many lifetimes.

The wise guide who holds our North Star in her, his, their lantern.

The wise guide who knows our way, even when we don’t.

Some of what we explored in our céilí:

• Those who remember and those who forget. How Tuán is a keeper of the living thread of memory, and how myths themselves tell of the memory-keepers.

• Shapeshifting between human and animal form as a symbol of initiation.

• Reincarnation back into human form after time spent in the bodies of (and lives as) our more-than-human kin.

• The symbol of the regnerative spiral and the womb as a sacred portal.

• The offering of story as a prayer.

For the replay

If you are watching the replay or revisiting our gathering, a reminder of what you will need:

• A candle (make sure to keep it in a safe place when moving)

• A journal and pen

• Comforts like a warm brew or a blanket, whatever you require to enter the realm of story

• A quiet, safe space where you feel comfortable to move with your eyes closed

• A yoga mat, rug or blanket to support your knees as you move, along with comfy clothes that allow a full range of movement

• An eye mask (optional) if you prefer to move with covered eyes

• Good sound equipment to hear the narration and music clearly

• You’ll also have a rest period after the movement part of the céilí so perhaps have a pillow and blanket at the ready

Playlist

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Hello Shining Ones,

The Summer Solstice is almost upon us here in Ireland, where the energy of Bealtaine crowns and we begin the birthing process that will take us into the harvest season of Lughnasa.

As a gift for the Solstice, I share a new guided meditation where you will be invited to climb onto Lugh’s chariot and travel with him into the stars to Venus and Áine, where you will receive a message for your life at this time.

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Lugh and Áine have been our otherworldly guides for the 9-Day Celtic Solar Light ritual many of us have been immersed in within our community. The vision of this starlight journey came through as I was falling asleep on the first night of the ritual. It was like it was flowing out from the Dreaming.

I’ve been really feeling Áine in a Venusian way of late, perhaps because Venus is my Time Lord in Hellenistic astrology for 2026, and I began this year with the phrase ‘romancing life’. Venus means ‘love’ or ‘charm’ with the Proto-Indo-European root ‘to wish’ or ‘to desire’. Her Greek sister Aphrodite’s name is a loan word, but her epithet is the ‘golden goddess’.

There is no clear pantheon in Celtic mythology where deities are much closer to the Dreaming. You have to engage with a dreamlike consciousness to enter the Celtic Otherworld. Yet still, we can draw kinship between Venus, Aphrodite and our beloved Áine, who is both an ancient goddess of fertility and sovereignty, and a fairy queen deeply wed to the midsummer energy.

Her name means ‘brightness’, ‘lustre’, ‘glow’, ‘radiance’, ‘splendour’, ‘brilliance’, ‘wit’, and ‘glory’ in Old Irish. You also see Áine as an epithet for those who hold her light.

She is a golden goddess.

The Ritual

Prepare - Enclosure:

• You can do this on 21st June or whenever you feel called. You can do it on 21st December if you like. Although it has come through at the Summer Solstice, it is for whenever you need an infusion of starlight from Áine and are seeking imbas - otherworldly wisdom to guide your life. And of course, if you are in the southern hemisphere, this could be a potent Winter Solstice ritual.

• Curate a Solstice temenos, a sacred space for this journey, in whatever way is meaningful for you.

• You might like to light a candle in honour of the Solstice, meditate on its flame, and set an intention for your otherworldly journey. Then blow out your candle and enter the darkness.

• If you so wish, have a journal at the ready to capture any insights you receive from the inner realms beyond time.

Initiate - Metamorphosis:

When you are ready, press play on your ‘Bring Home the Starlight’ guided audio.

Integrate - Emergence:

Following your meditation, try not to jolt yourself back into your day. See how long you can maintain your connection to your vast inner world of guidance.

You might like to brew yourself a nourishing cuppa and journal in response to whatever you received from this experience.

When this feels complete, make an offering to your body. This could be a hug, a hand on your heart, a bow... honouring the intelligence of this wise and wild ally, and all they hold for you.

Then offer your gratitude to Lugh, Áine and Venus.

Close down your space with intention.

Fairytale Céilí

🌌A gentle reminder to members, we have our Fairytale Céilí tonight with our wonderful guest storyteller, .

I deeply hope you will receive from this journey if you feel called to embark for the stars.

Croí isteach,

Jen

A Chairde, Friends,

Greetings from a wild and wet Dublin, Áine and Lugh had better sort a few rays out for us during our Nine Days of Light: Celtic Solar Ritual that we begin this Saturday, 13th June.

This simple ritual brought its treasures for those who participated in 2025 so I’m excited for what 2026 holds for us all, especially with the lush Venus energy we are in this week, and Áine holds that Venusian principle within her.

I will start a Substack chat on Saturday for anyone who would like to do this together as a tuath.

Fairytale Céilí with Jonathon Huet

In the midst of our 9-day ritual, on Thursday, 18th June, we will have our fairytale céilí with guest storyteller, Jonathon Huet - - where Jonathon will share his wonderful telling of The Tale of Tuán mac Cairell. You can read more about Tuan here in your Mythic Ancestors eBook.

Jonathon works with the hermit archetype in his expression of Tuan, which is a potent energy for this solstice time, as a symbol of our inner lamp, illuminated by our star -our soul - to guide us across new thresholds and help us balance cycles of shining and retreating.

Date & Time:

Thursday, 18th June, 20:00-21:30 Irish Time.

What to Bring:

• A candle

• A journal and pen

• Comforts like a warm brew or a blanket, whatever you need to enter the realm of story

• A quiet, safe space where you feel comfortable to move with your eyes closed

• A yoga mat, rug or blanket to support your knees as you move, along with comfy clothes that allow a full range of movement

• An eye mask (optional) for those who prefer to move with covered eyes

• Good sound equipment to hear the narration and music clearly

• 90-minutes of dedicated time to tend to your inner-landscape

About Jonathon:

Jonathon Huet is a woodsman, Shamanic practitioner, naturalist and bushcraft instructor. He is a creative, professional storyteller and speaker who is trained in Bushcraft, Woodcraft and Expedition Leadership. Over the last 30 years he has researched and studied the folklore of the natural world running many workshops exploring the deep spiritual practices rooted in the sister islands of Britain and Ireland. His practice is based on full inclusivity working with trauma, mental health and wellbeing. For the past ten years he has trained with Caitlín Matthews and other teachers on the Walkers Between Worlds Shamanic Training Programme which has deepened his connection even further to nature and his ancestral lands.

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Hello Shining Ones,

Some of you will recall that last year, for the summer solstice, when Bealtaine’s energy reached its apex, we did a 9-day ritual to immerse in the solar energies of Áine and Lugh as Celtic symbols of the sun, our earth star.

This is an invitation to do the same for 2026, with our devotion beginning on Saturday, 13th June and ending on Sunday, 21st June.

If you are in the southern hemisphere, you can do the same ritual to honour the winter solstice.

In 2025, our collective devotion produced some lush fruits within our tuath, our kin group. For me personally, the Celtic Dream Oracle deck I have been working on for the past year came directly from this ritual, which I share more on below.

The solstice is a potent portal, one whose energies our ancestors amplified by building magnificent megalithic temples with midsummer alignments. (Mythical Ireland has a great resource on this, which you can read here).

Áine and Lugh

Áine and Lugh will be our otherworldly guides for these 9 days.

Áine is both a goddess and fairy queen. Her name means ‘brightness’, ‘lustre’, ‘glow’, ‘radiance’, ‘splendour’, ‘brilliance’, ‘wit’, or ‘glory’ in Old Irish, and as befits these fire-born qualities, she is said to have a sister called Grian, meaning ‘sun’. You can read her full mythic profile here:

Lugh’s name is thought to come from the proto-Celtic ‘bind by oath’ or ‘light’, a cognate of the Latin ‘lux’, also meaning ‘light’. He is the solar one who defeats his grandfather Balor of the Evil Eye, whose deathly eyeball symbolises the more dangerous, scorching aspects of the sun, which are everywhere in our striving, hyper-productive, always-on overculture. It’s no wonder so many of us suffer from ‘burn-out’.

You can read his full profile here:

Nine Days of Light Ritual

What you will need:

• A candle

• Journal and pen

• Whatever else you’d like to add to this ritual e.g. your favourite oracle cards

• The Alchemical Rooms Activation provided below

Days 1-3

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Here we are, another mythic ancestor beckoning us into her world. Today we will spend some time with Mis (“Mish”), who I have noticed coming through lately with clients, and in dreams.

As I type, I recall my own Mis dream from October 2022 — just a little warning, it is graphic, as is Mis herself.

Dreaming of Mis

Dream Title: ‘Pantry Mis Woman’

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A Chairde, Friends,

I was recently a guest on the mythical treasury that is the KnotWork Myth & Storytelling Podcast with my dear friend, .

Here, I shared a tale of the goddess, Arianrhod, the ‘Silver Wheel’, daughter of the great Welsh mother, Dôn. This comes from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the great epic of Welsh mythology. It begins with King Math and his ‘virgin footholder’, Goewin, until we encounter Arianrhod in the middle of the myth, and then end with Blodeuwedd, ‘Flower Face’, who is transformed into an owl as a form of punishment, though in ways it liberates her from the daytime clutches of the men - Math and Gwydion - who create her.

One of the most potent motifs in this tale, is the casting of the three tynghedau by Arianrhod. A tynged is a ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ or what in the Irish tradition is known as a geis or geas, a ‘taboo’ or ‘spell’ that prohibits the recipient from carrying out specific actions, or in the reverse, requires them to take these actions. More often than not, it is women who cast these spells.

This is a myth where women fight for and are punished for their sovereignty, and yet still, we feel the energy of their self-liberation, of holding onto the fortress under the moon.

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There’s more in the podcast on my own personal experience of Arianrhod:

• How stories choose their tellers - Jen had prepared a different tale entirely, and then this telling of Arianrhod insisted on being told

• Jen takes us on a beautiful tour of the moon’s monthly cycle as a map of our own becoming

• Arianrhod as living initiator: Jen maps the three refusals: name, arms, marriage - onto her own creative journey toward the Sunset Journal, a ritual practice rooted in beginning the day at dusk

• Reclaiming the night: Jen gives up the 5am productivity myth and discovers that creating by moonlight, as a confirmed night-owl, born just before the winter solstice is simply becoming more of her nature

Watch or Listen

To watch:

To Listen:

• On the Web

• On Apple

• On Spotify

More Episodes

This was my fourth time being on the podcast since 2022. If your ears are singing for more, you might enjoy:

• The Skerries Selkie: Reclaiming our Sealskins

• Bright And Obscure: Stories of the Irish Goddess Áine

• Fite Fuaite ‘Interwoven’: A story-weaving with the Cailleach, Hathor, Bóinn, Anahita, Sinend, Kali, the Mórrígan, Inanna, Mis, Sophia, Brigid, Baubo and Sheela na Gig

The Sunset Journal

On the latest podcast, I mention my upcoming self-care journal, The Sunset Journal on how to begin your day in the ancestral way. If you’re curious to learn more, you can read about this concept here:

And sign-up to the waitlist here. The published journal will be ready at Lughnasa.

The Sunset Journal

Croí isteach,

Jen x

Last night, we heard Arianrhod’s myth, the version passed down to us, and then had the opportunity to hear her own voice, herstory speak through our bodies as we moved in response to the tale.

If you’re planning to watch the replay, I’ve shared some guidance for our céilí below. This weekend’s new moon feels like an auspicious time to move with Arianrhod — I’ll be experiencing the céilí again myself, for a third time.

And if you desire to devote to Arianrhod, or even to work more intentionally with the moon, you also have this month’s ritual, ‘Arianrhod and the Silver Wheel’, where you will travel to Caer Arianrhod, the goddess’s fortress in the western sea, and surrender to Arianrhod’s guidance for your life at this time. Let her reveal to you what moon phase you are in, and how this can be an oracle for your path.

Some of what we explored in our céilí:

• The main body of Arianrhod’s story, which comes from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the Welsh cycle of myths.

• Shame, the silencing of women’s voices, and cultural taboos like Arianrhod’s rejection of motherhood.

• The casting of the three tynghedau by Arianrhod. A ‘tynged’ is a destiny or fate or what in the Irish tradition is known as a ‘geis’ or ‘geas’, a taboo or spell that prohibits the recipient from carrying out specific actions, or in the reverse, requires them to take these actions. More often than not, it is women who cast these spells.

• The treachery of illusion and reclaiming our own sense of magic in our bodies.

For the replay

If you are watching the replay or revisiting our gathering, a reminder of what you will need:

• A candle (make sure to keep it in a safe place when moving)

• A journal and pen

• Comforts like a warm brew or a blanket, whatever you require to enter the realm of story

• A quiet, safe space where you feel comfortable to move with your eyes closed

• A yoga mat, rug or blanket to support your knees as you move, along with comfy clothes that allow a full range of movement

• An eye mask (optional) if you prefer to move with covered eyes

• Good sound equipment to hear the narration and music clearly

• You’ll also have a rest period after the movement part of the céilí so perhaps have a pillow and blanket at the ready

Playlist

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Today, I have a new guided meditation for you that comes from the night sky. As I’ve been devoting myself to my sunset journalling over the past while, I’ve reoriented my way of working with time, spending more of it immersed in lunar realms. Morning pages have become midnight pages, and I am deepening my connection with deities, or what we call here ‘mythic ancestors’, who guide us deep into the Dreaming. One of these ancestors is Arianrhod, the ‘Silver Wheel’, daughter of the great Welsh mother, Dôn. The constellation Corona Borealis, the ‘northern crown’, is often cited in modern sources as Caer Arianrhod, Arianrhod’s fortress at the edge of the Otherworld, which you will visit in this guided journey.

We will also explore the main body of Arianrhod’s story from the fourth branch of the Mabinogi in our Fairytale Céilí this Thursday, 14th.

And… has a new episode of the wondrous KnotWork Myth & Storytelling podcast coming out later this week, where I joined Marisa as her guest and we ended up down a synchronistic warren and then back up in the skies with Arianrhod and all things moon magic so keep an ear out for this (I’ll share when it’s live).

The Ritual

• As you will be journeying to Caer Arianrhod into the setting sun, the dawn of dusk, of twilight, of night, into lunar time, you might like to do this guided meditation as the sun sets or at night. We also have the Taurus new moon this weekend, which offers us a reset around our self-worth and what we embody. Perhaps Arianrhod will have some guidance for you here…

• Curate a lunar temenos, a sacred moon space for this journey in whatever way is meaningful for you.

• Have your journal handy to reflect upon the writing prompts below when you return from your time in Caer Arianrhod.

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