Subscribe now

Harvest News

London Friends… I’ll be at Love Shack Fantastical Fungi Restaurant on Thursday 27th August for a screening of ‘Magic in the Mundane’ and Q & A with fellow psychonauts Darren Le Baron and Dr David Luke. Get you ticket!

In collaboration with the Rooted Healing podcast, this post has been read aloud by me and woven with sounds for a soothing sonic experience. Listen in on Spotify HERE or find your streaming platform on the Rooted Healing website.

As the corn ripens in the fields and fruit grows heavy in orchards and gardens beneath the generous warmth of the summer sun, the first whispers of harvest are all around us. The verdant greens and rampant growth of the past few months are beginning to soften and the landscape is turning towards a palette of gold, yellow and softer shades of green. The hedgerows surrounding my garden are heavy with ripening berries and the long grasses and wildflowers bow beneath the weight of their seeds.

There is a T-junction near my home that I pass through almost daily. Opposite it, a generous farmer plants a verge of sunflowers. For a few brief weeks around Lughnasadh, I sit waiting for the traffic and find myself facing a bright sea of golden, smiling blooms and it brings me utter joy. This gift from a stranger feels like the purest expression of Lughnasadh. A harvest shared beyond one's own boundaries becomes a blessing for the whole community. Every year those sunflowers remind me that fruitfulness reaches its fulfilment when it is offered to others.

Lughnasadh welcomes us into this season of thanksgiving with the invitation for generosity, wonder and appreciation. We have witnessed that nothing comes into harvest overnight as every ripened ear of corn and blossoming flower journeyed through darkness, rupture, rain, sunshine and expansion. What was once only a tiny seed now blooms as nourishment and beauty, both in the world around us and within our own hearts. We need to pause, reflect and witness these everyday miracles for them to truly touch us and expand our potential for a generosity of spirit that gives, without expectation or agenda.

On Dartmoor at this time of year, the land is covered in ripe bilberries. Walking amongst their low-growing shrubs, stopping to enjoy their sweetness and gathering some in my basket to share, I feel humbled by the grace with which the Earth shares her gifts. Everywhere I look, life is participating in an endless cycle of giving and receiving where everything is in relationship with each other.

It was while gathering bilberries a few years ago that I realised something simple: abundance is relational. All life flourishes through relationship, and so do we.

The trees and hedgerows don’t bear fruit for themselves or hold on to their bounty for fear of not having enough. They offer it freely to the birds, insects, mammals and for future generations; as seeds are scattered and new forests are born. True abundance is expressed by how freely we are willing to share what has ripened within us so we can scatter the seeds far and wide. Nature understands that fruitfulness reaches its fullest expression when it nourishes something beyond itself.

Like the mycorrhizal fungi that exchange nutrients with plant roots and redistribute carbon and minerals among neighbouring plants, we align with our true nature when we allow what has grown within us to become good food for others. The gifts we have cultivated through experience, challenges, creativity and presence were never meant to be hidden for fear that they might run out. They become gifts when they are shared with our kin and our hearts keep overflowing like a bubbling spring the more generously we give.

This can feel challenging in a world that perpetuates narratives of scarcity, encouraging us to believe we must always do more, achieve more and produce more, leaving many people feeling burnt out. I have found myself caught in that mindset too, feeling deeply depleted and believing there wasn't enough time, enough energy, or enough of myself to offer beyond caring for my son.

It’s easy to compare our life to another’s, overlooking the abundance already present in our own lives. What I find helps me in these moments of feeling limited is to slow down, pay attention and give thanks for what IS right here that is sustaining me. I am not alone, and Life is constantly inviting me into an active relationship where I feel how supported, cared for and truly wealthy I am. The Earth’s generosity is woven into the very fabric of creation and so it is in our own lives.

When I consciously choose to appreciate the generosity of Nature and soften into presence, I notice the bee gathering nectar and spreading pollen from flower to flower; I see the way the house martins endlessly dance and share their delight of having wings; I appreciate the swelling acorns on the Oak tree that will become food for squirrels, deer, birds, insects, and countless other animals. River shows me it never holds back sharing their water with the land it nourishes, because Nature is always circulating energy so abundance is flowing, never static or hoarded.

The more we witness this generosity, the more gratitude flows and we begin to discover abundance everywhere. Gratitude trains our eyes to recognise the miracles that were always present but overlooked, which helps us to loosen our grip on the fear that giving will leave us empty. Drawing nourishment from the beauty and plenitude of our lives, what we offer flows from fullness rather than obligation so we don’t deplete ourselves or give until we are empty. As we shift from scarcity to abundance, we are no longer concerned about not having enough and we begin to ask, “What is already here that longs to be shared?”

When we see the world through this lens, our own lives come into focus and we notice the abundance that is blooming within and around us in the countless offerings that sustain the Web of Life every day. Just today I have felt gratitude for the hug my son gave me before school, for the cool shade of the Apple tree, for my friend who showed up with cake and listening ears, for my washing machine and the sun and wind that is drying the clean clothes, for the fresh salad leaves I picked for lunch.

At this time of Lughnasadh, the invitation is to notice and appreciate your own harvest - to feel the fullness of your basket and what naturally wants to be shared. I find it helpful to spend an evening creating something like a mind-map by way of an inventory of the different areas of my life - home, relationships, creativity, work, spiritual, health, dreams - as I reflect on what has grown and is flourishing in each area, and notice where I might feel out of balance. I also acknowledge the ‘invisible harvest’ of that which cannot be seen, such as the qualities of patience, self-trust and setting boundaries. Taking stock of my harvest makes it more tangible so I can share from this place of fullness and genuinely offer my praises to the Lughnasadh fire.

Lughnasadh, or Lammas, is the first of the three harvest festivals and one of the great seasonal thresholds of the year, when the exuberance of Summer begins its gradual turning towards Autumn. The long days of high Summer are still warm, yet something subtle has changed with the solar energy slowly contracting since Litha. The shifting colours of the landscape and growing berries on the hedgerows reflect this precious time between fulfilment and release.

My son was born at Lughnasadh and I remember this feeling deep within my body memory. In the final weeks of pregnancy there is an unmistakable sense of ripening as everything begins to point towards birth. There is a fullness that cannot be held indefinitely and as my belly grew bigger than I thought possible, I remember feeling a yearning to release and surrender all I had known, to become a vessel for life to be born. But there was no rushing the intelligence of nature and I had to allow the one had been growing within me to emerge into the world in their own time. The waiting was as much a part of the birth as the labour itself. As with every harvest, we put our trust in Nature and hope for the best.

I often think this is the deeper invitation of Lughnasadh: to notice what is ready to be born through us. Perhaps it is a creative project, a new way of being, a long-held dream finally taking shape, or an inner harvest of wisdom gathered through life’s joys and challenges. Whatever has been gestating within us reaches its fulfilment by entering into relationship with the world and becoming known.

Something else is asked of us at Lughnasadh: what is ready to be released? Every harvest requires an act of surrender because, much like birth, every true harvest changes us and we cannot return to who we were before. Grain cannot remain standing if it is to become bread and so they are cut for the wellbeing of the community. Crossing a threshold asks something of us, yet it also reveals the exquisite beauty that has been growing all along, preparing us for the season ahead.

Lammas has deep roots across Britain and Ireland with the Old English name Hlāfmæsse or “Loaf Mass” referring to the baking of the first loaf from the year’s grain. The older Celtic festival of Lughnasadh honoured the beginning of the harvest with gatherings, games, feasting and pilgrimage that celebrated the harvest as a communal act of thanksgiving. The fruits of the Earth are received with gratitude, blessed through ritual and shared amongst the people, strengthening the bonds between land, community and spirit.

Many customs surround the first and last sheaves of grain as a symbol of the harvest. The first corn is cut with great reverence at dawn, milled into flour and baked into a loaf to be shared by the whole community. Across many traditions there is also the practice of offering the first fruits before consuming them, so the first apples, berries or ale might be blessed, offered to God, shared with neighbours or left for wildlife. As we acknowledge that what sustains us is ultimately a gift, gratitude comes before consumption.

The final sheaf is woven into a corn dolly, thought to hold the spirit of the grain until it can be returned to the fields the following Spring. Whether woven as a maiden, a hare, a spiral or my personal favourite, a depiction of the Cailleach, these beautiful creations carry the hope that the life of the harvest would continue into another year and that every ending also contains the seeds of renewal.

One of the oldest Lughnasadh customs is climbing sacred hills at dawn in way of a seasonal pilgrimage. In Ireland, people ascended places such as Croagh Patrick, Slieve Donard and Mount Brandon, carrying prayers of gratitude and asking for blessings on the harvest. Ahead of my son’s birthday, we’ve made it a tradition to climb nearby Cley Hill and create a threshold with flowers and grasses that we both jump over to mark the threshold of him being born and my becoming a mother. We share a picnic with the Wild Gods and weave offerings for the Earth and Sun. As well as these pilgrimages being acts of devotion, they also provide the opportunity to witness the changing landscape from above and remember our place within the larger whole.

Lughnasadh takes its name from Lugh, the Bright or Shining One of Irish mythology, remembered as a master of many arts. He is the patron of craftspeople, musicians, poets, healers and skilled hands of every kind. One beloved tale tells how Lugh sought entrance to the hall of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and as each skill he offered was already represented, he finally asked, “Do you have one who is master of them all?” The answer was no, and so his unique combination of gifts earned him a place among them. His story speaks to the way our deepest offering is rarely a single talent but the distinctive way our experiences, skills and wisdom weave together in service of the whole.

Lugh is said to have founded funeral games in honour of his foster mother, Tailtiu, who died after clearing the forests so that Ireland could be cultivated. These gatherings included athletic contests, horse racing, music, poetry and feats of skill. Across Ireland (and elsewhere in the Celtic world), many communities still hold Lughnasadh celebrations with music, craft demonstrations, storytelling, dancing and traditional games that acknowledge the human skills we can cultivate and share, such as strength, artistry, endurance, craftsmanship, and eloquence.

As the first harvest ripens, take time to pause and acknowledge all that has grown within and around you. Wander out into the fields, woods or your favourite sanctuary space with a journal and reflect upon the dreams and intentions you were nurturing through Winter and Spring. Write about what has flourished, what has surprised you, what has required perseverance, and what no longer serves your journey so you can assimilate the gifts from your inner harvest.

You might choose to create a mind-map reflecting the different aspects of your life, make a piece of artwork inspired by your harvest, or weave together nature’s gifts into an offering that celebrates your generosity of spirit. I love to craft a simple basket from reeds or hazel and ivy and fill it with beauty and offer it to the river or place it on the roots of the apple tree in my garden as I praise all that has inspired and nourished me towards this phase of fulfilment.

Inspired by Lugh, the master craftsman whose many gifts remind us that our creativity is itself a sacred offering, you might begin Lughnasadh day by greeting the rising Sun with words of gratitude, welcoming their warmth and life-giving energy into your body. Then allow yourself time to create without expectation or judgement. Paint, write, weave, carve, cook, sing, dance, tend your garden - making something beautiful with your hands or body. Rather than focusing on any outcome, honour the joy of creating itself and give thanks for the teachers, ancestors and experiences that have shaped your own unique gifts.

Gather the abundance of the season to prepare and share food with love. Bake a loaf of bread, blessing each ingredient as you remember the soil, rain, sunshine, pollinating insects and countless hands that have brought nourishment to your table. Share your bread with family and friends, or invite your community to a seasonal feast outdoors, inviting everyone to being a dish inspired by their harvest, and leave some generous crumbs for the birds as an act of reciprocity with the wider community of life.

Bring the spirit of the harvest into your home by weaving a Corn Goddess from wheat, grasses, corn husks or raffia, allowing your hands to move intuitively as you infuse the weaving with gratitude and blessings for the seasons to come. Create a Lammas altar adorned with ripened grains, sunflowers, apples, blackberries, candles and the rich golds, ambers and russets of early harvest. Let it become a place to return to and tend to throughout the coming weeks as Summer begins to soften towards Autumn.

Lughnasadh is also a beautiful time to gather the healing gifts of the season. Carefully harvest Calendula, St John’s Wort, Yarrow, Meadowsweet and other Summer herbs to make into infused oils, teas, balm or tinctures that capture the warmth and vitality of the Sun to sustain you through the darker months ahead. As you prepare your remedies, offer songs, blessings or simple words of gratitude to the plants, acknowledging the generosity with which they continue to support both people and the wider web of life.

As evening approaches, ignite a ritual fire or light a candle and allow yourself to sit in silence with the changing light. Consider all of those beings who have taught, guided or challenged you these past six months, offering thanks for the wisdom they have gifted along your path. Write their names on dried Bay leaves or state their name and blow over the leaf before offering them to the flames. Lift up your gratitude with songs, drumming or embodied prayer as you invoke the fire to be a place of thanksgiving for all that has been created, learnt and shared this growing season.

Finally, consider an act of generosity in honour of Lammas. Share vegetables from your garden, bake a cake for a neighbour, teach someone a skill, donate food, or give your presence where it is needed. The first harvest has always been a communal celebration, reminding us that abundance finds its deepest meaning when it is shared.

May Lughnasadh’s golden light illuminate the harvest within you, revealing all that has ripened through seasons of darkness, growth and transformation. May you honour the wisdom gathered, the resilience cultivated and the gifts that have blossomed within you.

May you gather the fruits of your own becoming with tenderness, honouring the visible and invisible harvest that fills your basket. May you offer these gifts freely, trusting that what flows from the heart returns in ways unseen.

As you cross this threshold between Summer’s fullness and Autumn’s descent, may you trust what is ready to be gathered and what is ready to be released. May you surrender with grace to the rhythms of becoming, knowing that every ending carries the seeds of renewal and every season has its own wisdom to offer.

May your harvest be blessed, your offerings be received with love, and the seeds you carry forward be planted with hope for seasons yet to come.

Subscribe now

In collaboration with the Rooted Healing podcast, this post has been read aloud by me and woven with sounds for a soothing sonic experience. Listen in on Spotify HERE or find your streaming platform on the Rooted Healing website.

After a morning of gathering elderflowers and wild roses, stroking swathes of wild grasses and hearing the hum of bees amongst the hedgerows, I am feeling the thrum of Summer swirling around and within. As my garden blooms, and I’ve been enjoying the first crunchy lettuce leaves from seeds sown in Spring, there is a constant reminder from Nature to bathe in her beauty and imbibe her wild medicines.

Cleavers, nettle, fennel and dandelion are finding their way to my water every day, alongside elderflower, rose and honeysuckle decoctions. I’ve been delighting in finding wild strawberries hidden in unexpected places and adorning salads with daisies and the first nasturtiums; replenishing my body with vital, seasonal food and feeding the senses with beauty and flavour.

There is something about the hum of Summer: the exquisite symphony of life in constant dialogue through song and rhythm. I feel a heady pulse to these bright, longer days that can be intoxicating. We are outwardly buzzing with more opportunities for being together, outside, dancing at festivals, camping under the stars, swimming in wild waters. Inwardly we feel invigorated, our spirit revived, but the body may feel overlooked. Late nights, over-indulging the senses, being on-the-go constantly… I find deep nourishment in turning towards the plants to replenish my physical body as they so generously offer up their medicine and invite us into deeper presence and conscious relationship.

For this phase of the creative life cycle is all about collaboration. When I look to the meadow beyond my garden, I am aware of the countless relationships weaving together - the bee and blossom, root and mycelium, bird and hedgerow, soil and water. Our own creative flowering is dependent on how we nurture our relationships and Summer shows us how abundance is born through connection and the exchange of gifts, ideas, energy and care.

At this point in the cycle, creativity longs to move beyond the self and into conversation with others. We gather, share, co-create and cross-pollinate, each bringing our unique medicine to the collective whole. There is a particular magic in allowing our ideas to intermingle with those of others, trusting that something richer, more diverse and more alive can emerge. Nature reflects the way that collaboration enables a weaving together of many voices into a thriving ecosystem of creation.

With the warmth and longer days I feel drawn to becoming more intimate with the natural world and soften my edges so I become more sensitive to this invitation for collaboration. I hear the invitation of Summer as a sexy song, beckoning me to ‘Come, play and let loose’. To unwind as the spiral expands and let go of some of the structure to daily rhythms and be more spontaneous, free and receptive to the impulse to create, dance and be wild.

In doing so, I notice how inspiration arrives through presence and curiosity rather than striving. I find whispers of beauty on the scent of honeysuckle carried on the evening air from my sweet spot in the garden, and hear soft lullabies as I sit with the River Allum and watch the dance of light upon the ripples of water. Summer teaches me that creativity is a living current that I can choose to attune to. The more I loosen my grip and allow space for wonder, delight and serendipity, the more readily creative sparks find me and potential collaborations come towards me.

To collaborate with life requires a willingness to be surprised and say ‘yes’ to invitations that were not part of the plan, recognising them as divine intervention. We are asked to welcome whatever arises in the field of our awareness and let go of our resistance to What Is. When there is an unexpected meeting or email, a chance encounter, or a melody that keeps playing in your head, are you willing to change direction and trust in what life is offering up?

Nature is constantly improvising, responding and creating in relationship, and at the height of her abundance she reminds me that I am part of this great web of co-creation. My role and my service is to listen, respond and participate wholeheartedly in the dance.

When we view the Wheel of the Year as a map of the creative life cycle, we can attune to the different elements that preside over each of the eight festivals to gain a deeper understanding of the energies at play at the seasonal thresholds. Summer Solstice is in the South of the Wheel, aligned with the element of Fire and the phase of the Full Moon. This reflects the expansiveness and intensity we feel during the Summer months; a time of ripening and fullness when we need to be proactive at gathering the fruits and flowers before they turn, and stay attentive to our inner fire so it doesn’t burn out or get out of control.

Fire is the great animator of life and reminds us of the animate spirit within all beings. Fire is felt in the spark of inspiration that quickens the imagination and the courage that compels us to bring our visions into form. They also provide the warmth and heart of community that draws us into relationship with one another.

Whilst Winter asks us to tend the solitary flame within, Summer invites that flame to meet the fire of others so that we can dance together. As we gather around the hearth, the campfire or the festival bonfire, we remember that creativity is a communal act of weaving our gifts together and celebrating the fertility and diversity of life.

As we arrive at the apex of the solar year here in the Northern Hemisphere, we stand at a luminous threshold, through which the currents of Nature shift and reorient. At these sacred turning points, we are invited to recalibrate to consciously align with the deeper earth and solar rhythms. They offer a time to pause, reflect, create ritual, walk a pilgrimage, gather in community and celebrate the journey you are on.

Everywhere we look, Nature reminds us that growth is a miracle, as what once existed only as potential takes visible form. Yet because this process surrounds us, we often overlook its mystery and the subtle ways we ourselves have changed and evolved.

The Summer Solstice provides an opportunity to become conscious participants in this miracle through gratitude, celebration and reciprocity. When we pause to praise what is blooming and honour what has inspired and nourished us, we complete a sacred cycle of exchange that feeds the more-than-human world as we acknowledge our dependency on the web of relationships we are part of.

Take a few moments to reflect upon the past six months. What has shifted, emerged or strengthened within you? What challenges have shaped your path and revealed hidden reserves of resilience? Which seeds have begun to flower, and which remain rooted beneath the surface?

I find it helpful to remind myself that not all growth is visible and some dreams require years of tending before they bear fruit. Some transformations happen deep beneath the soil of consciousness long before they are seen in the outer world and these are important to honour too. Notice what has asked for your devotion, your patience and your trust. What deserves your gratitude? What longs to be celebrated? How might you mark this moment of ripening and acknowledge the journey that has brought you here?

The seasonal thresholds also invite us to consider what we are cultivating with our lives. Our choices, relationships, attention and devotion all shape the future that is slowly emerging through us. When we are receptive to the creative life-force and willing to dance with it, be changed and inspired by it, we discover the harmony and coherence available to us at this Solstice threshold as we align with the Way of Nature.

There is no certainty of what is to come but we can choose to surrender to the Mystery with open hearts, trusting that the same intelligence that unfurls the rose or ripens the berry is also moving through our lives. When we listen deeply and follow its subtle currents, we find ourselves carried into a more intimate relationship with the sacred unfolding of Life.

Summer Solstice, or Litha, marks the longest day of the year, when the Sun reaches the height of their power and vitality. Midsummer is a celebration of abundance and life’s blooming beauty; a time for gathering together to honour the generosity of Nature and share in joy, music and feasting before the gradual waning of the light begins.

Across Britain and Europe, the Sun is revered for their life-giving energy and Midsummer Eve is often celebrated with great bonfires lit upon hilltops and village greens. People dance around the flames, leap over the embers for luck, purification and fertility, and remain awake through the shortest night to greet the dawn. In Wales, Devon and many parts of Europe, flaming wheels were rolled down hillsides and into rivers, symbolising the Sun’s journey across the heavens and blessing the land with vitality and abundance.

Midsummer is also believed to be a magical threshold when the veil between worlds grows thin and Nature’s enchantment is at its strongest. Wells, springs and sacred waters are visited for healing and blessing rituals, and divination practices are common, especially amongst young people seeking insight into love, destiny and the future. It is said that fern seed, gathered at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve, bestows wisdom and second sight upon those fortunate enough to find it.

Through a more mythical lens, Litha is associated with the Oak King, ruler of the waxing half of the year, whose strength, courage and vitality bring the land into full bloom. The Celtic name for Oak, ‘Duir’, translates as ‘doorway’, reflecting the tree’s association with thresholds, initiation and passage between worlds. At Summer Solstice, the Oak King reaches the height of his reign before yielding to the Holly King, guardian of the waning year. This myth is evocative of the way every culmination contains the seed of decline and every ending the promise of renewal.

With Nature overflowing in her abundance, Litha is also associated with the Great Mother in her aspect of fertility and fruition. Goddesses such as Ceres, Demeter and Ceridwen embody this generous force of nourishment, creativity and harvest. In agricultural communities, farmers process around their fields carrying lighted torches, blessing the crops and giving thanks for the promise of the coming harvest. Flowers, greenery and garlands are gathered and woven to adorn homes and animals alike, celebrating the sacred relationship between people and the land that sustains them.

Midsummer is considered one of the most potent times for gathering medicinal and magical herbs and has become a seasonal ritual I find most fulfilling and evocative of the invitation of Litha. Plants such as St John’s Wort, vervain, yarrow and chamomile are harvested at dawn or dusk, when their healing virtues are believed to be at their strongest. Mugwort is gathered under the Full Moon nearest the Solstice when their energy reaches their peak. These herbs can be woven into garlands, hung above doorways for protection, added to ritual fires or carried as charms throughout the year.

As with each seasonal festival, it is a time for giving thanks, nurturing connection and integrating the journey. We are celebrating all that has grown during the outward cycle of the Sun, the swelling grain and the seeds within. We are also reminded at the Summer Solstice that nothing lasts forever, that the light will fade once more, so appreciate each moment and cultivate a deeper trust in the rhythms and cycles of life to become more adaptable and responsive to change. With this awareness we can meet life as it is unfolding, expressing our gratitude for What Is, as we learn the beauty of both blooming and releasing and the impermanence that weaves through everything.

This Solstice tide, attune to the natural energies by spending more time outside as you allow your wilder, sensual nature to explore, feel, play and delight in your physical form. Seek out what brings you pleasure and vitality and allow yourself to be nourished by the world in bloom. Let music move through you and allow the vitality of Summer to awaken joy, gratitude, and freedom within your body.

Dedicate a ceremonial fire to the Sun, feeding it with herbs, gratitude and prayers for Life that acknowledge all that has enabled the flourishing within and around you. Share stories, songs and poetry around the fire, into the night, honouring the oral traditions that helped communities remember their connection to place and one another.

You could also create a torchlit procession and include effigies of the Sun, Earth Mother, Green Man, dragons or other symbols of fertility that can be carried through the landscape as songs and prayers are offered to the land. Through dancing, feasting, ritual and celebration, we share in the collaborative energy of Summer; reinforcing our sense of kinship and the joy of co-creation.

Bring the spirit of Summer into your home by adorning your spaces with bouquets of wildflowers, roses, and grasses gathered from hedgerows and gardens. You might also create a Summer altar to express your gratitude; celebrating the season’s abundance with flowers, grains, candles, and the vibrant colours of red, gold, yellow, and orange. Allow these simple acts of beauty to remind you of the fullness and generosity of this time of year and create a sense of anchoring amidst the swirling energy of Summer.

Gather seasonal herbs and healing plants to create tinctures, flower essences, teas and remedies. Collect elderflowers for cordials, champagne, or fritters, and infuse honey with aromatic herbs such as sage, thyme, and rosemary to create nourishing medicine for the colder months ahead. Weave together flowers and herbs into wreaths or crowns for Solstice celebrations.

Sit quietly with the plants that surround you, observing their forms, colours, and movements. Summer is the season of their fullest expression, making it an especially potent time to listen, communicate, and learn from their wisdom. Ask questions, seek guidance, and record your reflections in a journal.

As daylight lingers long into the evening, seek opportunities to deepen your relationship with the natural world. Spend a night beneath the stars in a hammock or bivvy bag, listening to the sounds of the night and marvelling at the vastness above. Feel your skin tickled by the breeze and your bare feet grounded upon the earth as you open your senses to receive the subtle gestures from the world around you.

Wake early and witness the Sun rising in all their gracious glory and collect the dew of Midsummer morning to wash your face or add to magical concoctions to promote vitality, healing and abundance.

How are you being invited to participate in life’s unfolding and become more consciously intimate with Creation?

As we stand at the luminous threshold of Summer Solstice, may the blessings of Fire awaken your courage, creativity and devotion to what you love. May wonder remain close to your heart as you express the gratitude upon your lips and the joy within your body.

May you taste the sweetness of this season and recognise the countless relationships that sustain your life; the plants that nourish you, the Sun that revives your spirt, the creatures that pollinate the flowers, and the people who walk beside you on the path.

May the Sun warm the seeds you have tended since Winter, bringing them into bloom with clarity, vitality and purpose as you celebrate all that is growing and ripening in your life.

May you trust the mysterious intelligence that moves through all living things, celebrate the abundance that surrounds you, and offer your unique gifts to the great web of Life with generosity and joy.

Blessed be this season of ripening, and blessed be you as you dance with its flames.

For anyone venturing to Garden of Tomorrow festival this weekend, one of the film projects I’ve been involved with the past year, ‘The Magic in the Mundane’ is going to premiere on Sunday 16:00-18:00 in the Drawing Room.

More screenings coming soon…

Subscribe now

In collaboration with the Rooted Healing podcast, this post has been read aloud by me and woven with sounds for a soothing sonic experience. Listen in on Spotify HERE or find your streaming platform on the Rooted Healing website (available from May 1st).

On bright, sunny days like these, when I can feel the throbbing pulse of life all around and within me, I notice my edges softening as the essential hum that infuses all Creation dissolves this illusion of separation. Cultivating this awareness involves slowing down, listening, sensing, imagining and feeling the aliveness in my body so that when I hear the wren sing, feel the sunshine on my skin or the grass between my toes, I know they are all part of the unfolding expression of life, happening in this field of experience. What seems apart, is actually woven together, with love.

There is a deeply felt sense of union; of the merging of form and spirit, inner and outer, past and future - and so it is, this threshold of the year marks the time of the ‘Greenwood Marriage’, when the masculine and feminine life force energies make love and ensure the ongoing fertility of the land. This time of union marks the zenith of the creative life cycle when Nature is calling for you to dance, play and get amongst it!

As the scent of hawthorn flowers fills the air and the bluebells shimmer their magical carpet in the oak woods, my body knows Beltane is nigh. These natural cues help orientate us to the ways we are a part of these creative rhythms and signal to our psyche that we are in a phase of outward expression, blooming and expansion. After the exhalation of Winter, the months of Spring and Summer fill us up with vital life force energy so that we can birth our dream-seeds into being. From the fertile womb of Winter, come the offspring of your deepest longing.

Last night I gathered the dreaming boards I have made each Winter into a semi-circle in my yurt and danced, drummed and sung amongst them as I invited the images and words to fill me with inspiration for what is longing to be birthed through me. ‘What you are seeking is seeking you’ is a quote I often return to when I explore my creative and soul yearnings. We are in a mysterious relationship with the sacred forces of creation, but what I find helpful is to court my inner muse - to entice her to whisper ideas and infuse me with inspiration, so I can be a more receptive vessel for the Holy to move through me.

One way I have found that instantly brings my muse to the fore, is to consciously look for beauty in the natural world. To get up close to the Oak and examine his wrinkly bark and feel the deep grooves that show his ripe old age, to pick up a pinecone and slowly spiral it round to wonder in awe at the fractals, to lay in my hammock under a clear sky and wonder at the twinkling stars and the radiance of the moon, and to listen to the exquisite symphony of birdsong that serenade my home at dawn and dusk. When we witness beauty, our natural response is to create beauty in return. By creating beauty, we are expressing our love for life, and gratitude for all the beauty that inspires us.

With the surging energy of Beltane busting through blooms and leaves, the creative energy of Nature is at her most fecund, and so it is within us. These early days of Summer are the perfect time to explore your creativity and what turns you on. How do you get your creative juices flowing? What space or structure is required for you feel free to express yourself and reveal more of what is seeking you? What emboldens you to be fearless in your expression and experiment with different forms?

We are all innately creative beings. It is literally in our blood, bones and DNA, so there’s no getting around it. YOU ARE AN ARTIST. You may not feel skilled at any one craft or produce works of art, but the way you think, imagine and act is all an expression of your artistry. It took me a long while to really understand this, and to appreciate the way my life is my art.

The quality of attention I bring to my days, of what I perceive and the ways I communicate, act, dress, adorn, make and bless, are all opportunities for my inner artist to play. Approaching life with this intention ensures we are in harmony and reciprocity with Creation. We are not merely consumers - we are collaborators and co-creators of life unfolding. In this way, we are guided by the question' ‘What can I give?’ rather than ‘What can I gain?’.

Our inner artist needs to be seduced, revered, inspired and definitely not rushed. They feel diminished by timeframes, expectations or perfectionism. Making a canvas of your life, they seek to continually embellish the world with more beauty, through you. They are sensual beings and give close attention to their body signals and the way textures, sounds, images and tastes effect them. All these signals provide the information and material for the artist to create from and with.

The energy of Beltane invites us to get intimate with ourselves, to explore not just our mental and emotional spheres, but our physical body and spiritual being. What does it feel like to inhabit a body on this earth? To be entangled with all life and infused with a sacred animacy that pulses through all Creation?

We are so often distracted by our thoughts, but our bodies are constantly communicating with us and revealing more of this mystery of being alive. As we listen more carefully to our body we strengthen our intuitive and telepathic capabilities and cultivate more loving kindness towards ourselves. Just offering our presence is enough to live with wonder about the miracle of your body; this ecosystem of life where the energies of sky and earth meet and make love, bringing forth creation. When I sit quietly with a hand on my heart and the other on my belly and take in some deeper breaths and listen, my first response is usually ‘Wow’, followed swiftly by ‘thank you’.

Honouring our body as a sacred vessel, we can expand and open to receive the creative life-force energy our artist needs to thrive. Allowing our senses to guide us, so that we become more embodied and connected with nature through our body, is a way of feeding the muse so that our artist is turned on. It’s rather like making love with Creation, and this is what the energy of Beltane is all about!

The dance of masculine and feminine energies at Beltane is about the meeting of complementary forces within all things. The masculine current moves as presence, direction, and attentive awareness - the steady witnessing that creates a container. The feminine flows as sensation, intuition, and creative unfolding - the wild, fertile pulse of life itself. When these energies meet in harmony within us, there is a sense of wholeness: a grounded aliveness where doing and being, listening and expressing, holding and surrendering become one continuous movement.

At Beltane, this union is often symbolised in the embrace of earth and sky, the sacred marriage that births abundance in the natural world. We can feel this within our own bodies as a subtle interplay experienced by the breath entering and leaving, heart expanding and softening, desire rising and being received. To consciously welcome both energies is to step into a deeper creative power that allows life to move through us as an act of co-creation. In this way, pleasure becomes prayer, and the body becomes a living altar where this sacred union is witnessed and embodied.

The origins of the word Beltane are often traced to the ancient Celtic deity called ‘Bel’ or ‘Belenus’, meaning ‘the bright one’, and the Gaelic word teine, meaning fire. Together they evoke the image of the ‘Bright Fire’ or ‘Goodly Fire’, an expression that captures the essence of Beltane as one of the cross-quarter fire festivals, poised between spring and summer. It is a threshold moment, where life surges forward in full vitality and the earth bursts into bloom, carrying an energy of expansion, sensuality, and radiant aliveness.

Traditionally, great bonfires were lit on Beltane Eve upon hilltops and within village boundaries. These fires were both symbolic and deeply participatory, as cattle were driven between twin flames for purification and protection, and people would leap the fires or pass close to the embers to invite blessing, fertility, and renewal. Ash from the fires was scattered across fields to ensure a fertile harvest, and hearth fires were ritually relit from the communal blaze, reinforcing the sense of shared life-force within the community. Fire here is both literal and archetypal: the element of passion, desire, and transformation, the spark of creation itself.

This generative moment is echoed in the mythic stories of the ‘greenwood marriage’, though these tales take many forms across Celtic traditions. Rather than belonging to a single fixed narrative, they speak to a wider motif: the union of the Sovereignty Goddess of the land with a virile, often wild or horned consort such as Herne the Hunter or the Green Man. Their meeting in the forest, amidst the burgeoning green, symbolises the sacred coupling of Earth and Sky, matter and spirit, instinct and awareness. Through their union, the land is blessed with fertility and abundance, and the cycles of growth are set into motion.

In this telling, we are invited to feel into the deeper currents beneath the imagery - the wild potency of life force moving through all beings. The Sacred Marriage speaks to an inner alchemy, where masculine and feminine energies meet and transform one another. It is the balance of giving and receiving, of presence and surrender, of direction and flow. At Beltane, this balance becomes especially vivid, as the natural world itself embodies this union in every blossom and every birdsong.

This interplay is beautifully reflected in the tradition of the Maypole. Dancers weave ribbons around the upright pole in intricate patterns, symbolising the interlacing of masculine and feminine energies, as well as the weaving together of community. The pole itself, often seen as a phallic symbol, is crowned with flowers representing the fertile, receptive aspect of the Goddess and her rhythmic cycles. As the ribbons intertwine, so too do the forces of creation, binding heaven and earth in a living tapestry of movement and colour.

For a long while now, I have enacted a rite I call ‘Courting the Stag’ at Beltane. It started when I lived in the woods, and discovered that holding my Stag skull and antlers, felt rather like holding the arms of a dance partner! Under the moon’s rays I delighted in the strange shadows that the antlers would make and felt the Stag come alive. And so, on the full moon nearest Beltane I go to the woods or the moors, and I seduce the spirit of the Stag; invoking the wild masculine and Sovereign protector through song, dance, rituals with hawthorn and usually some generous libations of whisky! It’s a playful, creative and mysterious seasonal rite that truly evokes the spirit of Beltane for me.

Beltane was also a traditional time for hand-fasting ceremonies when ritual unions were held for couples to pledge themselves to one another, often for ‘a year and a day’. These rites honoured both commitment and impermanence, reflecting the cycles of nature itself. Alongside this, the custom of ‘going a-Maying’ saw people venture into woods and fields on Beltane Eve, gathering flowers, making garlands, and celebrating sensuality and connection with the land. Hawthorn, in particular, was revered at this time with their blossom being brought into the home as symbols of fertility, protection, and heart-opening energy. Long associated with the fae and the liminal spaces between worlds, hawthorn embodies deep magic, inviting both reverence and care in its presence.

Dew gathered on Beltane morning was also considered sacred. It can be washed over the face or body to bring beauty, vitality, and blessing for the year ahead. In these simple, embodied rituals, we see how Beltane invites us to participate in nature’s fertility and collaborate with it, to become part of the living, breathing expression of renewal and cultivate a living relationship with our own creative fire.

You might begin each morning around Beltane by lighting a dedicated candle, taking a few quiet moments to gaze into the flame and feel its warmth awaken something within you. Let your breath drop into your belly, gently stoking this inner fire, and offer a simple intention for your creativity, a commitment to your inner artist, that feels alive, exciting, and true. In the evenings or at quieter moments, you could create a small ritual space to call forth your inner artist and allow them to play as you connect with your longing and life-force. Does your body want to move and dance? Do your hands want to paint, weave or whittle? Is your voice yearning to be heard, for you to sing your joy or your sorrow?

You may also feel drawn to bring Beltane into the physical world around you. Gather greenery or blossom with care and gratitude, adorning your home and altar as a reflection of nature’s fertility and abundance. Create something with your hands - a simple ribbon-wrapped stick to symbolise the union of masculine and feminine energies, a flower crown to represent your Sovereignty, or a small “dream box” filled with symbols of what you wish to grow - infusing each piece with intention and imagination.

Spend time outdoors if you can, perhaps sitting with a tree, offering a song, or whispering your desires into the earth. At the heart of it all, Beltane is an invitation into sensual aliveness: to honour your body, your pleasure, and your capacity to receive and express love. Whether through self-touch, movement or reverence, allow yourself to soften into the experience of being alive, and to celebrate the union of energies within you as a sacred, creative force.

The fires of Beltane call us to move, to dance, to awaken what has been stirring since the dark of Winter. There is a playfulness here, a sense of permission to step more fully into our desires and creative longings. With the sun’s strengthening light - the outward, activating current - and the earth’s deep, fertile responsiveness, we are held in a powerful convergence of energies. This is a time to tend the sparks within us, to nourish what wants to grow, and to trust in the generative dance of life itself.

May Beltane’s bright fire awaken the pulse of life within you, dissolving the illusion of separation so you may feel deeply woven into the great tapestry of Creation. May you know, in your bones, that you are not apart from this aliveness, but an intimate expression of its unfolding.

May the sacred union of earth and sky, of presence and surrender, come alive within you -guiding you into a deeper wholeness where your inner and outer worlds meet, and your life becomes a living act of co-creation. May your desires be honoured as holy, your pleasure as prayer, and your body as a vessel through which the mystery of life delights in its own becoming.

May the beauty that surrounds you call forth the beauty within you, inspiring your inner artist to play, to wonder, and to create without fear or constraint. May you trust the longings that stir in your heart and belly, knowing they are the very seeds of life seeking expression through you.

And as the world bursts into bloom, may you remember: you are both the spark and the flame, the lover and the beloved, the dream and its unfolding - held in the radiant, fertile dance of life itself.

Subscribe now

As we gather at this fertile threshold of Beltane, we are met by the powerful presence of the Scorpio Full Moon this May 1st. What an intriguing alignment!

While Beltane calls us outward into celebration, sensuality, and creative expression, Scorpio draws us inward, into the hidden waters of our emotional and intuitive depths. Together, they create a potent field of transformation, where what has been stirring beneath the surface is invited into the light of awareness.

Read more

Subscribe now

It was a midsummer’s day in 2012 when my yurt was first erected amongst Ash, Hazel and Chestnut on a wooden platform I had affectionately called the ‘Badger’s dancefloor’. I had been living in a tent in the meadow next to the woods for a few months, preparing the ground for the yurt’s arrival and deepening my intimacy with this place that was becoming my home. There was a large set of badger’s that lived on an Oak-covered mound, who I liked to imagine snuck out under the moon to dance in her sliver light - the keeper’s of the medicine roots, invoking the moon.

Before the platform was built, I made a bundle of prayers that I buried in the fertile soil at the centre of where the yurt was to stand. There were herbs, ash, seeds and small pieces of ancient yew I had gathered from various elders I was befriending at the time. I invited them to form a council here and bless this site as holy ground.

For my first proper home was also to be my first temple. A place of sanctuary and refuge to attend the Sacred and a space to facilitate my own transformation and evolution. What I didn’t know then was that this temple would also become my son’s first home, and later, a space where I would facilitate numerous ceremonies and midwife many souls across thresholds.

When I lived in Japan as a teenager, I was often drawn to the Shinto temples that stood in Tokyo’s parks or the wild shrines on mountain paths. These ‘Homes for the Holy’ were generous reminders of the ways humans can interact and commune with the spirit realm; to feed that which feeds us. When crossing the threshold in to a temple, I remember feeling time fall away and the qualities of presence, reverence and awe being invoked.

A temple is defined by purpose and intention, as a place where we remember how to relate to the unseen forces that animate life and cultivate the awareness that we are participating in something larger than our own narrative. This awareness fosters a sense of devotion - not necessarily to a doctrine or a named deity, but to the act of tending. Tending the fire. Tending the silence. Tending beauty. Tending the quality of presence we bring into the space.

It was by visiting temples that I witnessed how others tended the Sacred through their acts of devotion - lighting incense, kneeling before an altar, quietening and becoming still, listening, praying, weeping. The swirling smoke and candle flames saturated my soul like nectar to a bee. I felt drunk on the holy and it was intoxicating.

Read more

Subscribe now

This Thursday 2nd March (3:12am GMT) the Moon is swelling to fullness in the sign of Libra, bringing our relationships and the dynamic of self and other into focus.

As we still bathe in the Equinox energy, how can we find more balance in our inner and outer worlds and cultivate harmony within our relationships?

Under the gaze of the Full Moon, we are gifted the opportunity to see more deeply into the darkness and what has been hidden from sight, to bring to light and make conscious those patterns, beliefs, stories that guide us - whether helpful or not.

Reviewing our relationships is a helpful way to acknowledge all that supports and nourishes us; who and what we are grateful for. And it also reveals those connections which may be draining or imbalanced, or where there is charge that requires some resolution or understanding to glean the lessons that this relationship if offering us.

This Full Moon meditation is inspired by the Buddhist Metta practice, which I have been returning to recently and finding an incredible resource for these times of fragmentation and recalibration.

Below is a suggested ritual space you can craft around the meditatation if it feels supportive.

With love xx

Read more

Subscribe now

Marking the rhythms of the solar year with ceremony and pilgrimage is a wonderful way for us humans to attune to the Way of Nature and the invitations of each threshold of the Wheel of the Year.

At Spring Equinox, with the sap rising, nest-building and first blossoming, the invitation of Nature is to unfurl, sow seeds and draw strength and courage from the underworld journey that has been preparing us for this time of rebirth and renewal.

Rising up rooted, we are ready to meet the expansive energy that more sunlight brings, and the ways the creative life-force is moving us towards new modes of expression and action.

Enacting a Spring rite is a powerful way to harmonise the inner and outer worlds so we feel a greater sense of coherence with this phase of emergence and new beginnings; to shake off the cloak of Winter and step intentionally into this creative cycle.

For a number of years at the Spring Equinox I have walked a pilgrimage within landscapes that speak to me of dragons. Where ridgeways feel like spines, curving valleys the tail, and caves - the belly of these ancient creatures. What is possible when we see the world as animate, with childlike wonder and curiosity? Nature becomes imbued with magic and story as we open to a wider field of perception that includes more than just what the eyes can see. We open to the invisible dimensions, and incorporate the magnificent worlds of imagination, dreaming, Soul and sound.

In my imagination and dreaming, dragons are not merely creatures of legend but ancient embodiments of the primordial feminine earth energy. They are the pulse beneath stone, the molten memory of creation, the serpentine currents that bind water, root, and bone. I see them slumbering and dreaming in the green landscapes of the British Isles, guarding the shorelines with their spiky tails, breathing life into my prayer fire, and occasionally soaring through the skies. I came eye to eye with one once, in a cave in the Peak District.

They are vast, powerful, and fierce beings, but the image of them in legends, such as “George and the Dragon”, feels like a profound misremembering. They are not monsters, but wild protectors: primordial Earth mothers who will go to great lengths to care for their kin and uphold what is Sacred. The old stories have teeth, but they have been turned against the very forces they once sought to honour. We do not need to destroy the dragon - we need to re-sacralise her, to revere her, to enter back into right relationship through care, respect, and reciprocity.

At the Spring Equinox the earth energies stir and shift, ascending from deep within the dreaming body of the land, as though she herself is awakening after the long exhale of winter. This is when the dragons begin to rouse from their deep dreaming. They stretch, they rise - and they are hungry!

To meet them in this season is to remember our role in the exchange. Dragons are fed through acts of devotion and attention: through seeds pressed into dark soil, through good food shared with the land, through prayer-infused water poured as libation, through invocations whispered into wind and root. Offerings need not be grand to be meaningful; it is the quality of presence that nourishes. In tending the Earth with care, gratitude, and intention, we feed the dragons as they rise - and in turn, they feed the great unfolding of life that carries us all.

Read more

Subscribe now

In collaboration with the Rooted Healing podcast, this post has been read aloud by me and woven with sounds for a soothing sonic experience. Listen in on Spotify HERE or find your streaming platform on the Rooted Healing website.

We gather here again, at the threshold of a new beginning, as we unfurl from our winter den carrying our bundle of seeds from last year’s harvest, that are now ready to sow beneath the warming sun. Life is pregnant with possibility at this time of Spring Equinox, Ostara. The daffodils are trumpeting, blackthorn bushes twinkling, catkins swinging and birds serenading the dawn once again. Has it ever felt so sweet to greet the return of the creative life force that has been feeding our roots and insides, tempering our longing for the light, for warmth, sunshine and growth? I find myself constantly whispering 'thank you' when I witness another Spring delight - the fluffy clouds of cherry blossom, magnolia buds opening their petals and the first ramson leaves appearing on the forest floor; beckoning me to come in closer and enjoy a nibble.

Spring is the season of renewal, fertility and hope, when the earth awakens from her dreaming to create anew. As the sun shines warmer and brighter, the protective shell that surrounds the seed starts to crack - no longer able to contain the impulse to be born and grow. Much like the seeds, we humans too need to rupture and break free from our sanctuary of hibernation - the womb-tomb of Winter - and prepare to fledge the nest, unsure of where our new wings might take us. Can you feel this inner stirring? The longing to become more; expanding and exploring new landscapes, ideas and possibilities?

There is something familiar about this process of initiation and rebirth, although taking the leap of faith into the unknown can bring understandable trepidation. Our animal body remembers the rhythms and cycles of creation. So too does the moon, the trees and the hearth.

Nature so elegantly shows us how to let go and surrender to the process of decay and death; how to grow strong roots that withstand the winds of change; and how to regenerate when the conditions are just right to bring forth new life. If we open our senses and we give our attention to the ever-changing reflection Nature offers us, there is always a reminder and gentle invitation to trust the wild intelligence that imbues every cell in our body, and to participate in this ancient rhythm of life unfolding and becoming through us.

Imagine what it takes for a young bird to make its first flight from the comfort of their nest. They must trust the strength they have been slowly building, and the wisdom written into their bones from their lineage of sky-fliers, as their instinct edges them forward. With a leap that may be clumsy and uncertain, the fledging leaves the nest and meets the vast expanse of air as their fall becomes a lift. In that courageous crossing from safety into the unknown, the young bird trusts the strength that has been growing inside it all along. It makes me think of these words by the mystic, Rumi:

"Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they're given wings"

Elsewhere in the natural world, others are also showing their bravery as they emerge from the cocoon of Winter. In the hedgerows, hibernating creatures such as hedgehogs stir from their long sleep, cautiously emerging to test the air and search for food. In ponds and ditches, frogs return to the water where they were born to breed, filling the water with frogspawn that will likely make their way into many a curious child’s bucket, as they watch these jelly-like eyes transform into tadpoles. Trees that have spent months in quiet dormancy begin to feel the pull of light again, drawing sap up their trunks through their branches and their tight buds begin to soften and swell.

As well as these gestures of boldness and bravery, there is a tenderness to these first movements of Spring that I have been noticing in my body as a curiosity and yearning for gentleness. I’ve been watching the ways life does not burst forth all at once in the natural world; it stretches, listens, softens and emerges. This is where the balancing energy of Spring Equinox can be so supportive: we are reminded of the need for containment before expansion - for there to be harmony between the inner and outer worlds, so we can come into coherence with the forces of nature, that are our true nature.

With each breath we are breathed alive by a mysterious and vital current that is constantly inviting this movement of expansion and contraction. This movement that guides the cosmos and all of Creation. We cannot see this invisible current, but when we acknowledge it, we feel it, and something of us must trust in this force that animates us because our body breathes so effortlessly. Until we attempt to control it that is!

Air is the element that presides over the Spring Equinox, the East of the medicine wheel, for at this gateway of the Wheel of the Year we begin a new creative cycle. The sun rises in the east and stirs life into being but it is air, in the form of breath and vibration that creates form from the void. It is the breath that awakens us to life.

The invisible landscape of our mind is also connected with the air element for it is within our thoughts, imagination, intuition and intention that we sow the seeds of creation. As the Buddha discovered, our thoughts create our reality.

After a recent meditation retreat I’ve been wondering how can we be more intentional with steering the mind towards greater compassion, peacefulness and wakefulness. When I feel a deep sense of trust in the way life is unfolding, I notice my mind is much calmer and able to be in a state of flow, rather that striving to plan, control, worry or procrastinate. What are you setting in motion with your thoughts at this threshold of Spring? Will they steer you towards more or less freedom?

When I think of that young bird standing at the edge of the nest, I wonder about the impulse that compels them to spread their wings and take flight. Yes, they have been watching their mama fluttering and swooping by, and many other of their winged kin dancing nearby, but they still show a remarkable trust that they too can fly.

As we meet the Spring Equinox we can find great strength, courage and inspiration from rooting into what we trust as we prepare to expand beyond our former limits. When our thoughts veer towards overwhelm, fear or the attempt to control, what can we lean into and feel a soft surrendering into the flow of life? What is it that encourages us to lean into the unknown and take the small but significant leaps that change the course of our lives?

Perhaps it is our trust in Nature herself. The steady rhythm of the seasons shows us again and again that life knows how to renew itself and does so without striving or resistance, but with perfect and elegant timing. When we witness these natural cycles of renewal, something within us remembers that we too belong to this same living intelligence and are a part of this divine dance of creation.

For some, this trust may rest in something more ineffable - a sacred mystery that moves through all things. The creative force that shapes the spiralling galaxies, guides the flow of water and can be heard through the sweet melodies of birdsong. Different traditions give this force many names: Spirit, Source, God, Awen, the Great Mystery, Creation or Life itself. Whatever language we use, there is a sense that life is not unfolding randomly but through a deeper pattern of becoming. Spring reminds us that we are participants in that unfolding, not separate from it.

And then there is the trust we place in the wisdom within ourselves, with our Soul essence. Beneath the noise of doubt and the conditioning of the mind, there exists a deeper knowing that recognises who you truly are. This inner-tuition knows when it is time to remain still and when it is time to move forward - when it is time to emerge from our wintering places, to stretch toward the light and risk a new beginning. We may not see the full shape of what we are becoming, but still, something in us leans forward.

This curiosity, the movement of life itself, and the spark of possibility is what nudges the young bird to the edge of the nest. At the Spring Equinox we are invited to stand, like that young bird, at the threshold between what has been and what is waiting to unfold, without any certainty what the future might reveal. And to trust that the same current of life that carries the seasons forward is also carrying us into the next expression of who we are becoming.

The energy of the Spring Equinox supports this awakening, as the traditionally observed first day of Spring, when the planting season begins.

As the balance of light and dark gently tips toward the growing light, the Spring Equinox invites us to refresh both our inner and outer worlds. Day and night stand in perfect balance, offering us a moment of equilibrium between the inner and outer worlds. From this place of balance we are better able to sense the dreams and visions that wish to emerge through us in the months ahead. The air element encourages us to listen closely to the currents of inspiration moving through the mind and imagination. To notice the ideas that keep returning and the longings that whisper quietly at the edge of awareness.

Around this time of year I like to venture for a medicine walk or hold a day of silence - turning off devices, stepping away from distractions, and creating a simple circle of intention either outdoors or in a space in my home. Within that space, I lie or sit in stillness, tune in to my body, and ask for guidance, clarity, or inspiration for the season ahead. I simply listen and meet what unfolds, paying attention to any subtle messages that may surface from within. Afterwards, writing in a journal can help capture the insights that appeared or a poem may come with a more mystical message from my soul. The same applies for a medicine walk, but I am in motion and listening to the messages I receive from the natural world.

When light and dark are equal it is an opportunity for us to consider balance in our lives and what we might need to address to ensure that we are tending equally to all aspects of our life - physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. If your mind is feeling crowded with worries, overthinking, or constant busyness, leaving little room for clarity, creativity, or quiet reflection, do you need to connect more with your emotional landscape and create space to feel and express yourself? If you are struggling with your immunity do you need to bring more awareness to your body’s needs - to slow down, rest, eat nourishing food and cleansing herbs?

Spring offers a supportive time to nurture new beginnings within yourself and usher some fresh energy into your home and body. There is an invitation to explore expression and expansion which could take the form of a new hairstyle, a change of style, or the beginning of a class, hobby, or daily practice that feels enlivening. You may feel called to adjust your diet, perhaps through lighter, nourishing foods, or by incorporating wild seasonal greens that support a sense of cleansing and vitality. Or you feel inspired to open cupboards and drawers, clearing away what is no longer needed, dusting out forgotten corners, and rearranging your surroundings to reflect a sense of renewal.

As you do, you can also tend to the unseen energy of your space, using sacred herbs to cleanse your home. Moving between rooms, with the windows open, you can waft the smoke into the corners as you imagine clearing out any stagnant or wintry energy to welcome spring into your home. With your intention you can use sound to activate you space and sprinkle water with fingers or feather around each room as you bless your home so it feels light, welcoming, and alive.

Bringing spring indoors with simple touches like fresh flowers, sprouting seeds, fresh bedsheets or diffusing an uplifting blend of citrus scents, can further anchor this sense of vitality and rebirth. I love combining lemon, orange and grapefruit into a mist spray that I spritz about me before meditation, in the air above my desk when I begin work, or generously about the home on cleaning days, to shift the atmosphere and signal to the body that a new cycle has begun.

Sowing seeds can become a meaningful ritual each spring tide, symbolising what you wish to cultivate in the months ahead. Whether in a garden bed, a window box, or a small pot on the kitchen sill, placing seeds into the earth can become a gesture of prayer. Hold the seed to your heart and visualise what you hope to give life to before breathing your hopes or dreams into it and place it in the soil. Creating a seasonal altar with some of these seeds, and adorning the space with colours, textures, and symbols of spring growth and fertility can serve as a daily reminder of this unfolding energy.

Beyond the home, the season invites you to emerge from your dreaming den and reconnect with the living world, in awe and wonder at all that is bestowed upon our senses. Go outside at dawn and dusk and listen to birdsong as it returns in full chorus. Walk slowly and with intention, as you notice the subtle signs of rebirth all around you - the buds forming on branches, blossoms unfurling, and the vibrant greens pushing through the earth. These small moments of attention can gently root you in the rhythm of the season and awaken your heart to beauty and new possibilities.

May you meet this threshold of Spring with a soft and trusting heart, honouring both the stillness you have known and the life that now begins to stir within you.

May the seeds you carry find fertile ground to take root and grow in their own perfect timing. May you have the courage of the fledgling bird, to lean into the unknown, trusting that the same breath that moves the seasons also moves through you.

May you walk gently with this season of becoming, listening closely to the quiet wisdom within and around you, and remembering that you are not separate from this great unfolding, but an essential part of its beauty.

And may this turning of the wheel bring you renewal, balance, and a deep sense of belonging in the ever-unfolding dance of life.

For more details about the Equinox sauna ritual, held at the beautiful Wild Shed space in Bruton, read to the bottom of this post, or CLICK HERE.

Subscribe now

The first time I entered a sweatlodge, crawling on my knees into this dark womb, I felt my body exhale and soften as I found my place to sit on the cool soil. I felt at home here. Close to earth, bare skinned and in the embrace of the darkness. My body remembering this ancient way of ceremony, of tending fire and rock, shedding sweat and tears and sharing songs.

It also felt like such sweet relief - to be in a communal space of ritual purification where we come together to meet ourselves and our edges, expanding our capacity as humans to feel it all and recognise our courage, resilience and togetherness. We need these spaces more than ever, as a place to gather in community and attend to the sacred fire, and as a training ground for being with intensity and discomfort.

With each round in the Inípi sweatlodge the heat of the glowing rocks swells and the body starts to adapt to the heat, as it experiences hormesis - beneficial stress: a small, controlled dose of difficulty that strengthens the organism. A whole range of physiological responses occur as the heat dilates the blood vessels and the heart rate rises. Circulation quickens, muscles soften, fascia unwinds, sweat pours, carrying electrolytes and metabolic waste to the surface and the immune system stirs.

Meanwhile the discerning mind can be insisting the heat is ‘too much’ and you need to get out! As the intensity builds, you meet your edges and are asked to surrender control and connect with something greater than yourself. For me, it is the elements I turn to - the fire at the heart of all creation, the earth that holds us all, the breath that keeps flowing and the waters pumping through my heart and body with this constant rhythm, and the sweat pouring from my skin offering release.

The experience is deeply elemental and alchemical. The lodge is place of death and rebirth, which we emerge from changed in some way. In meeting the discomfort with breath and presence, something recalibrates as the body remembers it knows how to regulate, and the stress transforms into resilience.

In a culture obsessed with comfort, staying with discomfort offers something quietly radical. It reveals the way heat and discomfort is not the enemy; avoidance is. When we practice meeting voluntary intensity, we are better equipped to meet involuntary intensity such as grief, rage, chaos, uncertainty. In this way, the lodge becomes a rehearsal for life as we build our emotional, physical and spiritual capacity to bear witness and feel what is unfolding, without turning away.

In the communal space we also co-regulate and witness one another’s courage, deepening our trust in and compassion towards one another. Our nervous systems were shaped around firelight and song, and it is here we remember more of what makes us human. As our resistance softens, the body remembers that it knows how to endure and that fire does not only consume - it purifies and regenerates.

An integral part of what ensures a lodge is a safe and held space to feel discomfort is the ritual that surrounds it. Within the container of ritual we have our intention that helps us commit to the process, the elements to support and inspire our transformation, and the weaving of spirit through prayers and songs that invoke our connection with something greater than ourselves that is also present within us. This ineffable force of creation moves through us and reminds us we are more than our body, our feelings, our thoughts. There is a current within us that is indestructible and timeless, that we can always tap into.

The Inípi sweatlodge is one form of a purification ritual involving heat, but this practice of ceremony is found across cultures from the Mesoamerican Temazcal to the Russian Banya, fire-walking ceremonies and the more familiar Finish sauna. For the past two years I have been regularly sweating in saunas as a spiritual practice and to receive the physical benefits that support my overall wellbeing. The sauna has become a temple for me - a place I feel deeply present, connected and a space for embodied prayer. A few rounds in the sauna and cold plunge and I feel renewed, fortified and clear-headed.

I have experienced some beautiful and powerful sauna rituals involving birch whisking, guided visualisations, body scrubs, chanting and breathwork and felt so inspired by the potential for ritual in this sacred space. I have been dreaming into elemental rituals that can support the cleansing and rebirth process of the sauna and experimenting with plant allies, songs and breathing techniques that enhance the effects of purification. I am delighted to share I will be offering my first sauna ritual this Spring Equinox, and I hope some of you wonderful folk here are able to join me!

Equinox Sauna Ritual at the Wild Shed

Ahead of the Spring Equinox, I will be offering a New Moon ritual sauna at the gorgeous Wild Shed in Bruton, Somerset.

I was so excited when the Wild Shed launched in my local town of Bruton last year. The space has been lovingly curated to offer a community hub, for people to gather together to connect in a more meaningful way, and it is a gorgeous sauna that smells so good!

Together we will gather round the fire, soften into song, and enter the warmth of the sauna to cleanse, release, and renew. With elemental ritual, sensory herbs, breath and movement, we will honour what is ending, welcome what is awakening, and listen for the quiet stirrings of the season within us.

When: Thursday 19th March, 6:15 - 8:15pm

Where: Wild Shed, Dropping Lane, Bruton, BA10 0ED

Contribution: £ 50 pounds

Reserve your place HERE.

This Tuesday 3rd March marks the culmination of the eclipse portal we have been in these past two weeks, as we welcome a Full Moon solar eclipse in Virgo.

The intensity of an eclipse season - with ruptures, radical shifts and activations happening on an individual and collective level - can be very disruptive for our nervous systems and a strain on the physical body as they recalibrate.

The earthy Virgo archetype reminds us to tune in to our bodies and connect with the natural intelligence that flows through us. Being present with our body and breath is a way of resourcing ourselves as we feel what is moving through us and connect with the natural energies that are available to support us through times of transformation.

To invite a space for you to attune these energies and take care of your body this Full Moon, I am sharing a guided meditation for you to deepen into presence and open to receive the nourishment of earth.

Read more

Subscribe now

From always being fascinated by History, I often felt drawn to researching those charged moments of rebellion and revolution that became turning points, when something deep was shifting in the collective psyche and led to the fall of empires or birth of movements. These are the thresholds that captivate me because they signify a turning point when humans are confronted with a choice: to cling to what was, or to imagine what could be and believe another way is possible. It is in these pivotal moments, we humans choose whether we want to repeat inherited patterns and perpetuate cycles of harm and narratives of separation, or we choose to break the cycle and become architects of something new.

When the systems we were taught to rely on begin to crack, when institutions lose their sheen of certainty, and when the narratives we once trusted dissolve into noise, where can we put our trust? In defending our freedom, we are confronted with all the ways we are not free. As old structures are falling away and power dynamics are shifting it is vital that we cultivate pathways for our individual and collective liberation - through our body and out into the world. We must choose freedom.

In this landscape of collapsing paradigms and constant information streams, it is easy to feel pulled away from our inner compass, untethered from the quiet wisdom that lives in the body and the earth. When the world feels like fragmented, volatile, and uncertain, our nervous systems respond as we go into fight or flight mode. With old wounds stirring, the tender parts of us, formed in earlier moments of fear or separation, begin to tremble. The child within who once felt abandoned, powerless, or alone may feel very close to the surface, or indeed, in the driver’s seat.

Our nervous systems need conscious tending in these charged and uncertain times so that we can increase our capacity to stay present without fragmenting, and remember that beneath the fear, there is a deeper holding we can lean into. Being truly present with yourself is the highest degree of self love, and just taking a few minutes to say hello to your inner self and make this connection as you greet your parts with love, care and compassion can create an embodied sense of safety and acceptance.

Read more

Subscribe now

The past year has been a spiral dance of shedding, composting, recalibration and deepening into a more embodied and awakened state of consciousness. With the influence of the Wood Snake, we have been releasing our old skin, rubbing up against our edges, creating friction and transmuting denser energies into vital life force. Much of what has fallen away has been necessary, even if painful, clearing the way for a potent time of renewal - on both an individual and collective level.

As humans, we tend to find the processes of letting go, decay and death far more uncomfortable than emergence, growth and expansion. We celebrate birth, the return of spring, and the electric excitement of new ideas, projects and collaborations. Youth, fertility and productivity are upheld as cultural ideals; even our economic systems are built on the assumption that endless growth is both possible and desirable.

Yet something turns at midlife - or mid-cycle - when we feel the approaching descent, the long exhalation. The body slows. Certainties loosen. What once worked no longer fits. As I support people to honour life’s transitions and thresholds I am aware of the vast majority of them being within this shifting chapter of their lives. The questions that have been guiding their life thus far no longer feel relevant, and as the tide turns there is a shift in emphasis from ‘What can I become or acquire?’ to ‘What must I release in order to become true?’

Read more

Now, as I devote more time to nurturing this space and deepening our community of earth-protectors and soul-tenders, I am asking for your support.

I invite those who feel called to accompany me on this journey of remembrance to become subscribers, to help sustain the unfolding of this work, and to invest not only in my creative practice, but in your own soul’s longing for beauty, connection, and meaning.

There will continue to be free offerings, aligned with the rhythm of the seasons - bright beacons for those passing through. Yet, for those who wish to walk a little further with me, subscribing opens access to more intimate reflections, creative offerings, and shared rituals that spring from the heart. I will be sharing more film clips and photographs as we move through the year and soon I will begin offering new moon meditations and online gatherings to honour the seasonal thresholds.

Your support is gratefully received and represents a gesture of belonging, an affirmation that the sacred and the soulful matter. Together, we can tend to what is most alive within and around us.

Subscribe here to join the circle and help grow this living, breathing space of artistry and remembrance.

Being devoted to the Way of Nature requires an ongoing practice of attuning to the rhythms and cycles of the natural world and the cosmos; through ritual, pilgrimage, gardening, foraging, crafting, observation, embodiment and deep listening.

Becoming more intimate with the natural world and tracking the changes within and without, we notice the subtle cues that inspire rebirth, stretching, growth, shedding and ultimately death. Yes, we can be inspired to die. Again and again as the seasons turn, we are shown the necessity of decay and death to enable the regeneration of life.

I want to share a tale with you - of how I was inspired to die. And how this invitation to surrender it all has led to a deeper understanding and trust in the creative process and natural cycles, of divine timing, and a realignment with my Soul’s deeper longing.

It was Samhain 2024, and I was called to attend to the ancestors at Wayland’s Smithy long barrow in Oxfordshire. I gathered my baskets of offerings and bones, my drum and staff, and made my way through the beech woods to the entrance of this ancient site. I circled the barrow three times and sang to the roots of trees, before making my way to the altar stone where I laid out the wild kin that had come with me.

I sang to the stones and bones, invoking the spirit of the land and the ancestors buried there, inviting their guidance and inspiration as I opened ritual space. Descending into the womb tomb and the small chamber covered in coppery beech leaves, I took with me a cauldron of seeds. With the embrace of the earth and ancestors I felt the river swelling in me and as my heart beat pounded, the banks burst and the way opened for a deep release of grief. As my tears touched the earth, I heard the question ‘What is ready to die’?

One by one, I held a seed from my dreaming cauldron and attributed each one to long-held dreams that had not come to fruition. Some of these dreams have been guiding my life for nearly 20 years. There were tender longings for love and partnership, others were kindled in childhood and still stirring - feeling evermore like innocent fantasies that were never meant to be realised.

I lamented as each of these dreams I have been quietly tending these long years were offered up, surrendered and buried in the soil of this graveyard and left to die. Was I ready to give up on these dreams?

Beneath the tears, a flame flickered that reassured me of the creative spark that dwells within and the potential for new life, fresh dreams and a different story of who I am and what I am here for.

Soon after this ceremony I was applying for an Arts Council grant and tentatively pulled on threads I has been weaving, of longings that felt far away, but something in me spurred me on towards imagining a creative project that honoured these threads and might guide my way forwards after surrendering my old road map to the ancestors. I didn’t get the grant…

The void that followed took me deep into the underworld that Winter. It was my 40th birthday and I laid in bed with Covid, feeling torn apart at the seams. No longer sure of my North Star and what was guiding me, I felt lost and abandoned. Most of last year, except for a few moments above ground drawing breath, I was in the embrace of the Callieach - confronting death and the shedding of identities, stories I’d outgrown and old masks that no longer fit.

And yet, as Imbolc approached last year, new life and dreams were already stirring. Off the back of the Arts Council grant application I had contacted a few people I was hoping to collaborate with or learn from. One of these people, Leigh, had been a client, who I knew was also an extraordinary film-maker and storyteller (Firebelly Films). To my delight, he ran away with the idea of collaborating because he had felt this dream kindled the morning after his ceremony with me several years earlier! He proposed us filming over the course of a full year, following the seasons of ritual and documenting my journey through this time of transition.

We agreed to let the project evolve without agenda or expectation, to reveal something of the mystery and just enjoy the process of creation and collaboration. And so, after 12 moons, we completed the filming in London a couple of weeks ago and what a magical, expansive and stretching journey it has been!

In the past few months, all the other people I had woven into that Arts Council have come into my life or swirled near enough that I have been agasp at the serendipity of it all. Even though the project itself has not come to pass, various threads of it have - and I stand at this Imbolc threshold in wonder about the power of intention, dreaming and manifestation in creating the life you long for. I feel reverence for the changing seasons and the essential cycles of life, death and rebirth that Nature continually mirrors back to us. I trust in the timing of things, and that every moment of my life has been essential to get me here, to who I am becoming now.

Through the willingness to come undone and let die, I was able to imagine new potential pathways for my life and how to best be of service in these times. It has required humility, trust, and the recalibration of my inner and outer world. I needed to become ash, to be fallow and embrace the unknown as though she were my muse. I kept asking myself, ‘What is the wild card for my life’? What glorious, courageous endeavours might I commit to if I let go of all sensibility and limitation?

Alongside the filming project, I have been collaborating with a dear photographer friend Aaron for the past year or so. He has accompanied me to various landscapes around the Wheel of the year thresholds to capture earth-honouring and soul-tending rituals on black and white film - some of which I share here from Wayland’s Smithy. Something about being witnessed by these two noble men has healed something in me: of the fear of being seen in my wilder, witchy ways and deep, embodied power; of learning that I don’t need to always go it alone and the masculine can uphold and protect the feminine; and that I carry a very particular medicine that is good food for the earth and her people.

So what felt like a fallow year of mostly feeling rather adrift and unclear, enabled the spaciousness for new dreams, collaborations and projects to form. From the ashes, I have risen and I feel like Burning Woman again!

Brighid has been a steady and generous ally, muse and midwife throughout this journey of awakening and rebirth. The Callieach was my destroyer and my maker. I have called upon them and the other midwifes of Yew, Mugwort, Artemis and Chariklo a great many times this past year. As I do so now. Feeling pregnant with possibility as I return from the Underworld with gifts, visions and dreams - that can only be forged from the meeting of death and darkness - I feel ready to birth new life. Not of the human form, but a menagerie of beauty and wonder that will feed hungry souls and restore them to Life.

Are you ready?

Subscribe now

Marking a new seasonal collaboration with the Rooted Healing podcast, this post has been read aloud by me and woven with sounds for a soothing sonic experience. Listen in on Spotify HERE or find your streaming platform on the Rooted Healing website.

As the winds roll in this January morning, I can feel nature’s soft invitation to prepare to emerge from my Winter cave, this ancient dreaming den, as I gather the stirring seeds from my descent into the darkness and ready myself for rebirth. I carry these seeds close to my heart - warming them with my love and faith in the promise of new life. They carry within them all that I long for: for myself, for my community, for the Earth, and for Life itself.

These seeds are symbols of hope - blueprints for a future where all life is held sacred, where we humans ripen into initiated elders, sharing our medicine and embodying our true potential. A future rooted in reverence, care, and deep belonging.

From within my dreaming cave there have been moments of clarity and inspiration, but mostly the journey has felt disorienting - like crawling through bogs, adrift at sea, shrouded in mist. Winter has a way of undoing us. In its cocoon, we soften back into something primal - a kind of fertile goo - within which the imaginal cells of our becoming quietly form.

This Winter descent has taken me back to the potter’s wheel. My perceptions, beliefs, and sense of purpose have all been reshaped in the shadows. I am not yet fully formed. My wings are not quite ready to spread. And that is as it should be, for we are still in Winter’s embrace.

Yet now, as we arrive at Imbolc, the subtle seasonal shift begins, as the snowdrops grace the bare earth with their bright white flowers and the buds swell on the trees, singing with the potential of Summer days.

Each Winter we undergo an initiation: a cycle of death and rebirth where the creative and destructive forces of life compost the past and make space for new growth. This descent into darkness is echoed in the ancient myths of Persephone and Inanna, and mirrored in the heavens as Venus disappears into the underworld before rising again as the Morning Star.

These journeys are both symbolic and soul-deep processes of transformation that enable the regeneration of life. In the underworld of Winter we retrieve lost and exiled parts of ourselves, integrate what has been apart, and return strengthened and renewed having been forged by the fires of our longing and becoming.

Over the years, my gratitude for Winter has deepened. I feel more clearly now how this dark portal supports our evolution and grows us up as human beings. When we consciously enter the darkness, death becomes a teacher rather than an enemy or something to fear. The more we surrender to the invitation of Winter to come undone and let the old skins shed, the more receptive we become to the quiet stirrings of what is seeking to be born through us.

As old systems crumble - within us and around us - the seeds we carry become the map for creating a new world. The codes for new ways of living, relating, and collaborating are already within us, waiting for the space and courage to emerge. When we attune to nature’s cycles of dreaming, birthing, blooming, harvesting, decay, death, and renewal, we remember the innate intelligence that animates all life and our trust is kindled in the changing cycles that guide us towards deeper attunement with who and what we are in relation to the whole.

What is required at this threshold of Imbolc is imagination. The seed first imagines the flower, and in so doing, ruptures its shell and bursts forth at the precise moment when the conditions are right for them to transform.

By engaging intentionally with dreaming, visualisation, and deep listening, we expand our sense of what is possible, and who we are. When we refine our attention to include the unseen, guidance arrives in many diverse forms.

Walking somewhere high with a view helps me to shift my perspective and feeling the fertile land beneath my bare feet (yes, even in January), connecting me with the ancient memory of earth and rock beneath me. Breath, movement, creativity and ritual remind me that I am not separate from the invisible forces at play; that I am intimately woven with all life and the rhythmic cycles of life, death and rebirth.

At this Imbolc threshold, we release what we have outgrown, composted and let die. We shed our old skin in the Underworld and begin the ascent towards the light and renewal of Spring, carrying the gifts forged in the womb-tomb of Winter.

We are pregnant with possibility as the promise of Spring returns. Imbolc invites us to clarify what we are preparing to birth, so these seeds can be activated by the awakening energies of the Earth that are rising up through the roots and and cooking the dreamseeds we’ve been tending.

What has been stirring in you these long nights?
What dreams have been quietly kindling?

Imbolc is a significant turning point in the Wheel of the Year as we transition from the earthy realms of Winter to the activating and awakening element of air. The shift in energy is palpable, especially if we attune to the seasonal shift and spend time outside to really FEEL the energy rising from the earth, like the sap in the trees. Sitting with your back to a tree and quietening inwardly, you might just sense this rising life force and you can imagine the same spiralling motion up your spinal column. The dreaming dragon or coiled serpent, this vital feminine earth energy, is unwinding and rising, connecting you with the sky above and opening you up to the flow of inspiration that will infuse and awaken your dreamseeds.

It is at this turning that we honour Brighid, “She Who Rises” - keeper of the sacred flame, midwife of transformation, muse of poetry and healing. Born at dawn, she is the heart of the sacred hearth and alchemical forge; the breath that stirs life back into Winter’s bones.

In olden times there would be feasting and fires, and Brighid would be welcomed in to people’s homes and a bed prepared for her to sleep in. Rags or shawls were hung up outside to be blessed by her on Imbolc eve and then cherished for their healing properties. Brighid crosses and dolls were made from rushes to adorn the home and be carried in procession as songs were sung in celebration of her.

It was understood that these rituals and celebrations brought them closer to the Goddess and acknowledged her presence and blessings in their lives. Brighid is a potent symbol of the feminine life-force and is a powerful ally to call upon during this turning in to Spring, for her gifts are numerous and her blessings inspire outpourings of creativity, deep healing and beauty. She is said to ‘breathe life in to the mouth of dead winter‘ and with her birch wand quickens the life and seeds lying within the earth.

Brighid invites us to walk through the flames of renewal to burn away the old skins and emerge more fully ourselves. To be courageous, creative and dedicated to protecting the sacred flame of life. To alchemise the base metal of our souls into something luminous and true. As Goddess of Smithcraft and the Holys Wells and Springs, Brighid knows how to midwife transformation and draw strength from the elements of Fire and Water. Beside her flame we are smelted and purified, kindled back to life with her activating breath, and revived and blessed by her cleansing, fertile waters.

At Imbolc, we can consciously invite Brighid into our lives through simple, heartfelt acts of devotion and presence. Lighting a candle at dawn or dusk in her honour, we acknowledge the returning light and tend the sacred flame within and without. Creating a small altar with symbols of her - a flame, water, birch, poetry, seeds, swan feather, smithcraft or healing herbs - offers a place to sit in quiet communion, to listen for inspiration and guidance. Writing prayers or poems, singing, crafting a Brighid’s cross or doll, or blessing water to anoint ourselves and our homes are all ways of weaving her essence into the everyday. We might also set intentions for what we wish to kindle in the coming season, asking Brighid to bless our creative sparks and tender beginnings. We express our devotion to the living flame of creativity, healing and renewal that she awakens within us.

As we stand at this liminal threshold, may Imbolc bless you with courage to trust the quiet stirrings within and patience to honour the tender timing of your becoming.

May Brighid’s flame warm the seeds you carry, illuminating your path with inspiration, clarity and creative fire. May her waters cleanse what no longer serves and soften the ground for new life to take root.

May you walk gently from the dreaming into the dawning, guided by imagination, devotion and deep listening. And as the light slowly returns, may you remember that what you are birthing is already wise, already worthy, and already held within the greater rhythm of Earth’s unfolding.

Blessed be this turning, and blessed be you as you rise with it.

Last week I had the opportunity to return to the village and landscapes I spent a great deal of my childhood. The journey became a became a pilgrimage of remembrance as I followed old footpaths and reflected on my younger self and the memories that were made within the embrace of this land. My family moved to Chiddingfold in Surrey when I was a toddler, being born in the Caribbean breeze of Barbados, it was where I first landed on the isles of my ancestors.

I visited our first home on a close that looked so much smaller than I remember. It was on the pavement I recalled being lured to drink ‘milk’ by sisters and neighbours - which was their concoction of ground chalk and water. I remembered the rose perfumes my sisters and I used to make in the Summer, bottling them up in the garage and delighting in their sweet scent. I remembered the night we were woken up by my dad and excitedly told to come to our neighbour’s garden where they had spotted a hedgehog. In nothing but my pants and childlike wonder, we were led by torchlight into the night to see Miss Tiggywingle snuffling about in the long grass. It was in this garden I buried pork ribs and held a funeral for the pig that I had been told I had just eaten - I was always destined for vegetarianism! I remembered having my photo taken on the doorstep dressed as Wonder Woman for a fancy dress party and Winter nights when we had power-cuts and played games by candlelight. Not far from the close was a footpath that led to a walk we called ‘round the back’, and it was where scallywags hung out smoking fags, and was always covered in dog poo!

I continued my journey to the primary school my sisters and I attended, where I made my first real friends and spent very cold PE lessons in the outdoor pool singing ‘Ring a ring of roses’. I saw the village shop where my dad would take us to buy sweets on Saturday morning when my mum was at work, the cosy pub that always felt so regal and old and full of interesting tales. This overlooked the green where we held our Summer fetes and epic bonfire nights, involving torchlight procession and merry-making that evolved into mischief-making as I moved towards adolescence.

Aged 7, my family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, but we kept our home in Chiddingfold until I was in my late twenties, so it was here - between boarding school and moving to various other countries for my dad’s work - that I connected with a sense of place, home and belonging.

The first place I went to visit was a bench beside a mighty Oak tree that overlooked some of the village and always provided a sweet spot for me to sit awhile. As I grew into a teenager I used to walk our dog Layla this way and I would always find solace from the company of this tree, when little else felt certain, I felt the rootedness and patience of this Oak and felt everything would be ok. I cried when I touched them last week. The memories of troubled times and deep-seated loneliness came flooding back, and how this Oak had always been there for me with their outstretched arms and companionship.

A short walk downhill from this Oak tree was the cemetery. In my twenties I found my way here in the darkness of night and for the first time, sang for the Dead. It started softly, but as I moved between gravestones and kneeled before them, the softness shifted to wild lament and so I began exploring the path of keening that continues to inspire my soul work and earth-tending to this day.

I had a clear map in my head of the landscape of my childhood before I arrived in Chiddingold and as I moved between these significant places, I remembered the ways my feet touched the ground here. The curving roads and lanes I used to cycle on when I did the newspaper run for my first job. I felt the contours of the land like echoes as I moved about them; how they shaped me and were still so familiar to me, all these years later.

Even though I travelled afar and was not in a conscious relationship with place in my younger years, the stories of belonging run deep like the waters weaving through the earth. They are what feed us and sustain us in a changeable world.

We are largely a nomadic species these days, often moving home many times in our lives, for work, family or because we feel called to. Without deepening our relationship with the land we live with, we can feel an outsider wherever we are. So how can we deepen our relationship with place and grow strong roots when we are forever blowing in the wind? How do we heal uprooted selves and societies amidst unravelling modernity?

A year-long spiral in embodied deep ecology

For the past 2 years I have been invited to contribute towards the Deepen Your Roots programme, and I can honestly say this is the most comprehensive, generous and embodied journey of rediscovering and nurturing your animate and reciprocal relationship with place that I have come across.

Although I am not teaching on this year’s programme, I am delighted to see some incredible elders will be sharing as part of this journey, and wish to share this invitation towards a more meaningful and sustainable way of building community and kinship, for those of my subscribers that feel the call to deepen their roots.

The programme weaves together deep ecology with animist practices, cyclical living and creative invitations, resonant community and self-study, with an awesome circle of humans guiding you back to your roots.

If you are hungry for kinship, inspiration, folklore, ancestral wisdom, community and soulful ways to explore your inner and outer landscapes, I wholeheartedly recommend this programme. I have experienced the breadth, depth and beauty of this offering and its calling for us to fully inhabit and belong to place. The journey has been exquisitely crafted and tended, and has opened up so many new pathways for me personally with the practical and creative invitations to enhance our relationship with the more-than-human world.

As a participant you gain automatic, lifetime status as a bioregional guardian; a keeper of the wisdom, knowledge and forgotten secrets of the land on which you live.

If you feel the call, you can use the code ISLA10 for a 10% discount to the course fee which also contributes towards their model of cross-pollination, to support the wider web of community.

You can view the full programme HERE.

Some words from their website:

Our goal is to help participants re-inhabit place
at a profound level of connection and
understanding, harvesting a sense of purpose and
belonging, whilst developing a desire and skillset
to live and work in alignment with thriving
ecosystems.

Through this, they develop their “ecological
niche” or mythopoetic calling.

"This course is like remembering—remembering what our ancient souls and bodies
already know but our modern minds have forgotten and have been taught
differently. It conveys a simple yet profound message: we need to change our
relationship with Mother Earth, with nature, with land, with water, with grief,
with other-than-human kin... If we remember how to live in reciprocity again,
most, if not all, of the crises we face would not exist. I love how Roni and Ben
guide participants, moon by moon, through different topics. It is a beautifully
designed course. I wholeheartedly recommend it." - Arina Anisie

In this magical and transformative portal of Winter, we are midwives to our own dying and birthing. Nature shows us the way of how to bridge this seeming paradox - with all the fallen leaves and dead wood decaying and composting with support of the mycelial webs, and at the same time, the hazel catkins dance in the wind and the first shoots of snowdrop appear above ground.

This is a liminal space, much like the caterpillar’s cocoon, where they are shedding and disintegrating their old form while the imaginal cells are starting to form and take shape, preparing to emerge as a whole new being.

I was always fascinated by this idea of imaginal cells. These discs of initially dormant DNA, are activated in the chrysalis when the caterpillar starts dissolving into a primeval ooze. At first these cells are attacked by the immune system of the caterpillar as a foreign body, until the imaginal cells combine and cooperate in this genetic soup and utilise it as nutrients, to transmute and form all the apparatus and organs required, to create a fully formed butterfly. The compost becomes the fertiliser. And this genetic blueprint contains the map for the future expression and embodiment of the butterfly. WOW!

We are much the same as this dissolving caterpillar at this phase of the year. We are shedding our old skin, letting die what we have outgrown and allowing the metabolisation of our past growth cycle to feed the seeds of our future growth. Although it can appear a fallow time outwardly during the Winter, there is powerful transformation taking place within and beneath us in the fertile soil, hidden from sight.

Within this process of disintegration and recalibration, we come closer to our true essence as we release the outer world of appearances and identity and are compelled inwards to the mysterious landscape of our Soul. It had been my experience that it is here that our own energetic blueprint and map for our soul’s evolution resides. Our original instructions, that carry the seeds of our life purpose and deepest longings.

During this liminal phase between Winter Solstice and Imbolc, our Soul is alive with dreaming. As the external noise quietens we can hear more clearly the voice of our Soul, and recognise the clues and inspiration that abound as envoys of our Soul’s dreaming. We are being shown what wants to be birthed through us, to come alive in this world. And it is up to us to kindle our inner fire to stir these dreamseeds in the cauldron of our longing, and ignite our commitment to bringing them to life.

Each Winter I am accompanied by dreaming kin that carry something of the essence that is wanting to manifest through me. I have two dreaming stones, Merlin and Callieach, who have been with me these past 5 years and I hold in each hand when I sleep to connect with the primordial creative forces of the ancient Grandfather and Grandmother. They also get tucked down my womb belt when I’m bleeding with my moontime, resting right above my ovaries, and come with me on pilgrimages to dream with the collective Soul of Earth. And I love them deeply and dearly!

At its core, dreaming is symbolic. These symbols aren’t fixed dictionaries so much as personal dialects, shaped by memory, culture, and mood. A snake in one dream may represent wisdom, in another a threat, in another pure transformation. Dreams compress meaning the way poetry does, as they are freed from social rules and rational causality. This can create a liberating wildness to our dreams as the sacred and absurd blend together, contradictions coexist, and we get to experience parts of ourselves that are otherwise unknown to us.

Myth is the older sibling of the dream. Across cultures, myths look uncannily dreamlike: gods that shift shape, descents into underworlds, prophetic visions, trials that feel arbitrary yet inevitable. Here, we tap in to the collective mythology of meaning and are shown what moves us. We don’t need to decode our dreams, but listen to their ancient, intimate and strange invitation to dance with the Mystery.

So when we are moving through this dreaming portal of Winter, we can observe both our sleeping and waking dreams to find a kind of psychic balance and reveal some of the seeds that are stirring in our unconscious that wish to be born through us. Paying attention to reappearing symbols; places, people, art and beings that inspire something in us; images and sounds that resonate deeply within - the map our Soul is offering us begins to take shape.

“When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.” Meister Eckhart

What are the images, symbols, myths and longings you are tending to at this time? Where are you feeling inspired in your life. What is kindling your inner fire?

The dreaming kin that is accompanying this Winter has been evolving these past few weeks, as I have been following trackways of heart and soul and listening evermore to the silence within. Some beings I have found in Nature at significant moments on a soul journey. Others have been serendipitously gifted at the perfect time, and felt like I was meeting a dear old friend. And there are those that I have made by firelight with my hands and tools, to create form from the darkness. They have become my dreaming clan, and are with me in bed each night I sleep and accompany me on the land when I curl up and dream with the Earth. I dance with them, touch them, and let them touch me.

Recognising their animacy and feeling them become increasingly alive the more I court them, this dreaming clan is revealing some of the magic being concocted within that is stirring and taking root as we move towards Imbolc. What is ‘in the belly’ at Imbolc is the result of what we have been gestating with over the Winter. What are the seeds swelling in your dreaming cauldron?

Remember, you become what you give your attention to. Gift yourself the time and space to connect more deeply with your dreams and follow the breadcrumbs towards your deepest longing. This is where you’ll meet the fire of inspiration and the courage to take action on realising your dreams. You do this not just for yourself, but for the whole Web of Life that is calling for you to share your authentic gifts and contribute towards restoring balance to this beautiful world.

Dreaming Incubation Ritual

Through the months of Winter as we are embraced by the darkness, we are incubating our dream-seeds – all our hopes and visions for the future.

This ritual is designed to help make your dreams conscious and infuse them with your life-force energy and intention, to support them to blossom in their perfect time.

• Preparation - Collect physical images from magazines, journals or Pinterest that inspire you and resonate with your vision of what you wish to create in this next phase of growth. What do you want to feel? What images awaken your longing or speak to some hidden dream? How do you want the wider world to look and feel?

• Create Sacred Space – Tidy and clear a space that has enough wriggle room for some crafting and dancing. Cleanse your room and body with some incense, herbs or water, as you invite your guides, well ancestors and Spirit helpers to be present, to witness and inspire you through this dreaming ritual.

• Speak your Intention – Light a candle as you speak aloud your intention, something along the lines of ‘As I welcome the Winter in my body, I look within and unearth the seeds of my dreams. I am a soul of infinite possibilities and I welcome the fullness of my potential in creating the world I long for.”

• Enter the Silence - Turn off the lights so all you can see is this candle flame. Sit in front of this candle, gazing in to the light as you welcome the silence like an old friend. There is nothing to do here. Let thoughts come and go, whilst staying curious to what arises. Spend 15-20 minutes here, imbibing the light of the flame and silence with a soft, curious heart.

• Make a Dreaming Board – gathering your images and a piece of card (A3 will do nicely) begin weaving this web of your dreams. You may want to add a bit more lighting to see what you’re doing! Stick the images down in whatever arrangement feels good and instinctual. Leave some gaps if you like, and add your own words, phrases, symbols or drawings to imbue it with your energy.

• Identifying Weeds – When your dreaming board feels complete, take some time drinking it all in, feeling the sensations in your body. Is there any contraction, resistance, holding? Can you sense any thoughts or beliefs that doubt your creative potential and ability to manifest these dreams in your life? Write down these weeds on a separate piece of paper, all of them!

• Turning Weeds into Compost – Using your candle, ignite a corner of this piece of paper as you watch these weeds being burnt away (hold over a saucepan, hearth or ceramic dish). Commit to yourself that you will not be bound be these limiting beliefs; that you will create new, loving pathways that support the embodiment of your fullest potential. Offer any remaining ashes to the earth, a house plant or your fireplace.

• Dancing your Dreams – Choose a song or playlist that compels your body to dance wildly! You might like to dress up for this, wearing your most fabulous finery. Placing your dreaming board on the floor, or somewhere in front of you, press play, and imagine you are courting your dreams, enticing them to life, luring them out of the darkness, as you dance them awake with your energy and intention. You may like to add your voice and drum here.

• Closing Sacred Space – When you feel you have given your full, embodied attention to your dream-seeds, take some deep breaths down in to your belly, filling yourself up with all this vital life-force energy, feeling the warmth in your body and the power in your heartbeat. Give thanks to your beautiful dreams and all that inspires you, and to your guides and Spirit helpers for their support. Make a pledge to protect and nurture these seeds as you blow out the candle.

• Tending your Dream-Seeds – Over the next few weeks, through these long nights towards Imbolc, spend time meditating with your dreaming board in front of you, drinking in the images and feeling gratitude for all that is becoming.

  

Subscribe now

After the past few weeks of existing in a kind of liminal space, betwixt and between the death and rebirth of the new year, alongside the school holidays and also my birthday, I have been delighting in days without clocks and the gentle stirring within of dreams quietly forming in the womb of Winter.

Without the usual daily rhythms and routines, when order gives way to a kind of creative chaos and organic unfolding, something deeply magical (and completely ordinary) occurs… We enter the Flow. The Flow that is moving through all life; this constant pulse of Creation. Deeds are done and time still passes, but there is an ease and fluidity that feels like the body dancing when nobody’s watching!

In these flow states I notice my tendency to spontaneously sing and make sounds, as I am more connected with this rhythm and the melody of life that is breathing through me. There is a sweet alchemy that takes place when a human being allows their voice to be expressed freely. Without trying to sound polished or perfect the raw, trembling, truth-carrying voice that rises straight from the soul can be heard and shared.

Our voices are more than just tools for communication - they’re also instruments for transformation and the rapturous expression of the Divine. They shift our energy, soften our hearts, release what’s stuck, and remind us who we are beneath the masks we’ve learned to wear.

Yet for so many of us, the voice is also the most guarded part of ourselves. We fear that if we open our mouths and let our real sound emerge, we’ll be seen too clearly, or not accepted at all. I know this intimately. For years, the idea of singing in front of anyone sent my nervous system into chaos. After performing in a musical at school, aged 13, I didn’t sing in public again until I was 27 - and that attempt of a revival had me close to a panic attack as I tentatively tried to offer a song in the final sharing circle after my year of volunteering at The Barn retreat at Sharpham in Devon. The song was Peggy Lee’s ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’, and I’m glad to say I now sing it without a care in the world about how I sound!

Some years later I came to understand that the voice is one of the most vulnerable extensions of the self. It carries emotional memory, childhood imprinting, cultural expectations, and the raw truth of our inner world. When we open our mouths, we reveal ourselves, and for many of us, this can feel terrifying. But the longing to sing never left me. It tugged on me gently, asking to be met, asking to be loved.

It was when I was living in the woods I began to softly sing to the trees and hoot along with the owls at night, feeling how my gratitude wanted to be expressed through song. Slowly and often uncomfortably, I learned to meet my voice with tenderness instead of judgment. It became more about the offering of my voice to the beings that I loved, than how I thought about I sounded. Those critical voices still pipe up from time to time, and sometimes I engage with them, reassure them it’s safe, I’m safe, and it’s ok to be perfectly imperfect. Other times, the Flow takes over and I am being breathed by something else and my body becomes the instrument and I just let go and ride the current.

Today, I have the privilege of guiding hundreds of people in song - people who arrive with their own fears, memories, and longing. And every time someone’s voice cracks open, even just a little, I feel the miracle of it. Because I know what it took for them to get there. Most people aren’t truly afraid of singing; they’re afraid of being seen. From a young age many of us are encouraged to be quiet, to be “good,” to be controlled. Perhaps we were judged or compared, told to mouth the words instead of sing them, or made to feel that expression required perfection. The voice learned to protect us by becoming small. But nothing about that means you are not a singer. It simply means your voice has been kindling a story, and whenever you choose, you can share your story with the world.

When we stop thinking of the voice as something to improve and begin relating to it as a source of energy, something shifts. Your voice becomes medicine. Humming soothes the nervous system. Toning opens the heart. Chanting quiets the mind and deepens the breath. A simple sigh can release layers of tension. Last year I delved deep into the world of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) with Briony Greenhill, and free singing - unstructured, unplanned, imperfect - moved more emotional energy through my body than years of therapy. Sound vibrates through your tissues; it literally reorganises your internal state. Even a cracked or trembling note can bring relief, clarity, or joy. The voice is our built-in healing technology. So let’s play with it!

To gently explore your voice with tenderness, you don’t need to start with songs. Begin with a simple sound like a hum or sigh. Let tones roll out quietly without aim or expectation. Let your body move as you do; a rigid body creates a rigid voice, while a swaying body creates flow. Breathe like you are safe, because your voice can only feel liberated in a breath that welcomes it. Give yourself permission to sound “ugly” on purpose - growls, whispers, cracks and all - because freedom often begins where perfection ends. And it’s fun to let your feral friend be heard! And when you’re ready, sing with others so you can feel the power of belonging in community, through resonance. There is a natural safety that emerges inside shared sound.

And for me what was most liberating was to sing from or for something or someone. It could be from your heart, your bones, your grief, your joy. You can sing for the Earth, the Moon, the Mystery, your Beloved, the waters or the rising Sun. When singing becomes devotion instead of performance, the ego relaxes and the soul steps forward.

We may need to kindle our courage to share our song more widely, or for me - it was with humans. Our more-than-human kin are excellent listeners and receive our songs with such grace and care. It was humans I was scared of! Over the years I have come to relish the moments of tenderness shared between humans when we offer up our soul’s song to one another. It is deeply healing and exquisitely beautiful to witness another let their voice be free.

I have been learning the guitar the past few months and am finding it a real challenge to sing at the same time as playing new chords. But last night - the final night of the holidays and this sweet cocoon of Yule before school rhythms returned - I started strumming in front of my altar and as a song began emerging on my lips I pressed record on my phone. I captured a song that was utterly of that moment, in the Flow, and an offering to someone that has cracked my heart open. After deliberating for some time whether to send the song to them, as my scared little parts crept in insisting this was a terrible idea, I put my hand on my heart and said “I trust in the Flow”, and pressed send! My soul wanted to be heard, and who am I to deny them this birthright?

Your voice, your soul, is not a talent you either have or don’t have. It is a birthright, a companion, a guide, a doorway. If you’ve known the trembling, the fear, or the urge to flee, know that I’ve lived that too. And know that on the other side is a power waiting patiently to be claimed: the power of your own voice moving through you like light. It can ever wake the dragons from their slumber!

A few Winters ago, we had a layering of snow fall overnight, and I wanted to take my drum and sing on the hills looking out across the blanketed landscape and praise the beauty of Winter. The rhythm came first and then this song came swiftly, word for word, as a gesture of my gratitude. Some of you may have heard a slightly adapted version of this song… Here is the original!

With love and bright wishes for your voice to feel the freedom of your untethered soul.

In the spirit of the season - because Winter would rather us curl up in soft fur like animals than be looking at a bright screen - I have recorded a meditation for you to listen to this Solstice tide. An invitation for you to be still, to come in and down and feel the natural energy of the earth through you as you soften into her dreaming sanctuary.

Get yourself comfortable, wrap a shawl around you, and press play on the voiceover above when you’re ready.

With love & warm wishes of mirth and magic xx

Subscribe now

Since ancient times the Winter Solstice has marked one of the most significant turning points of the year, when the Sun is reborn and light returns to the Earth. It is a time of transformation, of endings and beginnings - a time to contemplate our mortality and relationship with the darkness. A time to forgive and be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to dream and awaken. This dance between light and darkness, life and death, is at the heart of our human experience so we naturally wish to find meaning, create stories and ceremonies that explore this dance.

On the island of Orkney there is a chambered cairn called Maeshowe, also known as the ‘Tomb of Eagles’. I spent time here several years ago as part of a water-weaving pilgrimage and felt an extraordinary sense of how this site was an integral part of the wider ceremonial landscape, including the great stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. The tribal folk here were deeply attuned to their surroundings and the turning of the seasons, honouring the thresholds of the year with communal gatherings and ceremonies.

Built around 2,800BC, the exquisite burial chamber of Maeshowe was designed so that the rising sun on Winter Solstice would flood down the long, narrow entrance corridors, igniting the inner chambers with a bright, revivifying light. The same is true of the Newgrange burial chamber in Ireland and numerous others on Bride’s Isles, all aligned to the rising sun at Winter Solstice. Why is this threshold so significant in our collective psyche that it has inspired such extraordinary structures to be built to mark this pivotal moment?

Perhaps it is because the Winter Solstice speaks to something ancient within us - of this moment when a spark of light is born from the dark womb of the cosmos. The moment of Creation.

To build monuments aligned with the rebirth of the sun was to participate in this cosmic rhythm. These great stone structures that were so exact in their alignments and monumental in their effort, are testament to a profound desire to honour the moment when the world breathes in again. They are ritual technologies designed to mark the Solstice and anchor the turning of the year in place, stone, memory, and myth. Standing within these chambers as sunlight pierces the dark, one can almost feel the collective exhale of those who gathered thousands of years before us, witnessing the return of hope.

For the past few years I have awoken before dawn on Solstice morn and ventured to Stoney Littleton Long Barrow, a place steeped in the earth energy of Winter and alive with the prayers of the ancestors. I am often the only one there before the sun rises, curled up in the deepest chamber at the furthest point from the entrance, where the rising of the Solstice sun aligns perfectly, so you can feel the power of the returning light in the depths of the darkness.

In that quiet place before the sun rises, I pray. I give thanks for all that I am celebrating and integrating from the past year, for the challenges overcome and the projects I have birthed. In the darkest hour before dawn, I intentionally surrender into the crucible of Winter to be undone. I curl up on the cold, damp stones and let my old self die. It is from this fertile place where creation begins. Opening my pouch of seeds I have been tending since Autumn Equinox, I breathe life into what I seek to birth and grow in the coming cycle. I bless the seeds in the rising light and sing with them as I call them to Life.

At this deepest point of the year, when the world stands at the edge of the long night, something in the human spirit longs for reassurance that life will return. Our ancestors lived by the seasons and understood the cyclical nature of existence: crops failed or flourished by the light; herds survived or perished by the cold. Tracking the Sun was more than an act of reverence; it was an act of survival. This necessity inspired a rich tapestry of folklore and seasonal rites that celebrate this pivotal moment of the year with customs designed to protect, bless, and rekindle the vital spark of life during the darkest days of the year.

The story of the Holly King and the Oak King is one such myth, which tells of two brothers locked in an eternal dance, their powers waxing and waning with the seasons. At Winter Solstice, the Oak King rises victorious, symbolising the strengthening of the Sun and the gradual return of vitality to the land.

There were also midwinter fires lit on hilltops or hearths, said to support the Sun’s rebirth, as well as adorning the home with evergreens that remind us that life persists even in the darkest season. Feasting, storytelling, music, and communal gathering were all essential, to strengthen the spirit of community and bring good cheer to the long nights. In some regions, people kept silent vigils through Solstice night as they waited for the first light of dawn. For others, this portal is known as a powerful time for divination and receiving oracular wisdom, when practices such as dream incubation, scrying or rune casting, would reveal something of the mystery of this moment of transformation.

A celebration I only encountered a few years ago that is well worth mentioning here is Modraniht, Mother’s Night - an ancient celebration honouring the maternal ancestors and protective spirits who guided the renewal of life. Though its origins are Anglo-Saxon and Germanic, Modraniht’s themes resonate powerfully with Celtic cosmology, which also honours ancestral lines, mother goddesses, and the deep feminine forces that preside over creation and rebirth.

In both worlds, Winter is the womb of the year, and the Solstice is the moment of cosmic labour: the dark night out of which the light is born. In the old stories, darkness is seen as the place of gestation - the womb of creation. Light, in turn, is revelation, action, the moment of clarity after long searching. The Solstice teaches us that both are necessary. Without the descent into darkness, there can be no true awakening; without stillness, no renewal. In this way, the Winter Solstice becomes a mirror through which we see our own cycles of letting go, healing, and becoming.

Modraniht is a night of ancestral connection, protection, fertility, and the quiet, fierce power of women - both human and divine. It honours the invisible line that threads us back through generations, the women who carried us, the ones who dreamed us into being, and the primordial Mother who renews the land each year. In many cosmologies, the darkness represents the feminine principle and the light, the masculine, so honouring both aspects at this time of year restores balance to our psyche.

To stand at this threshold is to join an ancient lineage of human beings who have looked to the eastern sky on the darkest day of the year, waiting for the first spark of the returning sun. It is to remember that we, too, are part of the turning of the world, and that our own inner light, however faint, is destined to rise again.

Join John Hopkins ‘Dying to Live with Purpose’ and I this Tuesday 17th December at 4pm GMT for a live conversation on Substack (rescheduled).

Listen here: ‘Seasons of the Soul: How Life’s Cycles Help Us Live with Purpose’.

Ritual Invitations for this Yuletide:

• Kissing the Earth: Winter Solstice is the perfect day for a pilgrimage, setting off before dawn if you can to greet the returning Sun. Bring offerings with you, or have songs and prayers kindled in your heart, ready to give. Begin your journey with a moment of stillness to connect with your intention and share aloud. Imagine with each step and moment of contact, you are kissing the Earth. What quality does this bring to your walking? Take the time as you walk to give thanks for all you see and feel around you, for your growth this past year, for the challenges overcome, the creations born, and all that the ways you are nourished and held by the Earth. Gift offerings as you feel inspired along the way. Conclude your journey by stepping across a natural threshold - between trees or across a bridge, or make one for yourself with sticks or leaves - as you acknowledge the ending of this last chapter and the beginning of a new creative cycle.

• Spiral Dance - Prepare a room with some clear floorspace for ritual. Smudge the space and yourself, and set the intention to explore the darkness with your body. Turn the lights out start by lying down, listening in to your body, leaning in to your edges. Welcome the darkness around you and within you. Press play on this Spiral Dance playlist as you invite your body to move and express themself freely. Be aware of the sensations in your body, welcome any sounds that support you to relax and feel present, and serenade the darkness through the temple of your body. Imagine the darkness is your Beloved. This playlist will guide you on a journey from tender beginnings to a rowdy climax and then wind you back towards stillness. Let it work on you and allow your body to release, praise and integrate as you are prepared for this portal of rebirth.

• Dreaming Pillows: Using a small muslin drawstring bag or stitching together some 5x5inch fabric squares on three sides to make a pouch, create small pillows with dried herbs such as lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, hops, mugwort and rose petals or calendula. Add a bay leaf or two to inspire prophetic dreams. You can add use buckwheat hulls as a base for the herbs to give your pillow a pleasing texture and form. Tie the drawstring or stitch up the fourth side of the fabric to seal the herbs in place and adorn with a ribbon or amulet. Place on your pillow or hang from your bed-stand to infuse your Winter dreaming with these magical herbs. Keep a journal and pen beside your bed to record your dreams as you wake.

• Gratitude Tree: Is there a tree in your local area or garden that could be adorned this Yuletide? It doesn’t need to be evergreen because bare branches work just as well, and adorn with natural decorations. This is a wonderful family ritual that can also extend to your neighbours and community. Spend a morning making decorations (using pine cones, shells, ivy, dried oranges, clay, cinnamon sticks, wood, seeds) and then gather together to decorate the tree - singing carols and sharing good mirth and gratitude for the tree, for nature, the rhythms of life and community as you go.

• Celebrate Modraniht, Mothers’ Night: Celebrate your matrilineal ancestors as well as living mothers, grandmothers and the different faces of the Mother Goddess. Create an altar with photos and figures that inspire you to commune and praise the feminine in your life. Light a candle for them, raise a glass to them and send them love. Reflect on the ways these women and archetypes inspire you. Play some music and dance as you connect with your feminine essence and feel the power moving through your body, Or come together with your sisters, mother or grandmother and bake or craft as you make sweet memories of being together in wholesome, loving ways.

• Weave an Evergreen Wreath - To reflect the Wheel of Life and the rebirth of the Sun, gather evergreens such as pine, ivy, yew, holly, to adorn a wreath. You can either make a circle from willow or invest in a mossy base ring from your local florist. On a large table top, spread out the evergreens with some secateurs, string and some wire. Weave the evergreens on to the ring, securing in place with the metal wire as you wrap around the ring. Share your gratitude as you work your way around the circle - what are you thankful for about your life, the journey you’ve been on this year, the lessons you’ve learnt, the significant people that support you? Hang on your front door or in your home as a reminder of all you are grateful for and the wholeness that you are.

• Sitting with Stones: To deeply connect with the energy of Winter, make some time to spend with stones and rock. Their stillness, watchfulness and longevity are beautiful qualities to align with and bring instant grounding. You could make a pilgrimage to visit standing stones, head to the coast to the cliffs or pebble beaches, or seek out rocks in nearby places like your back garden, local park or riverbed. Connect with the rock by sitting with them or holding a stone in your hand. Introduce yourself and share your intention to be with them in a good way and learn from their example of how to find stillness, patience and balance in your life. Spend time in silence with them as you open to receive and listen. If there is a small stone you are drawn to, you can ask whether they would like to come home with you, and offer something in exchange to the spirit of this place. Commune with this stone as you will - holding them in meditation as you listen and ground, connect with as a gratitude stone or hold when you dream at night.

  Rituals For Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.