Pathways Back to Her
How we can shift perceptions through earth connection
“The world is just too much.” We hear this and feel this with greater frequency and greater depth with each passing day. Let’s get curious about that feeling together.
Is the world too much, or is the way we have evolved (devolved) to perceive the world making it seem too much?
Without giving you even more data to clog your neural pathways, I will point out that we are processing as much information in a day than someone in the 15th century did in their lifetime.
Our biology has not changed to accommodate this exponentially larger load. No wonder we feel overwhelmed.
The good news? Beneath the data and the pixels and the AI-generated images, the earth beneath our feet remains unchanged. It will bring us back to ourselves if we stay consciously connected to it.
And what does this have to do with our feminine spiritual lineage? Everything.
In the earth-based Celtic realm, we are now gathered ‘round a spiritual hearth of Yuletide tended by the Cailleach (ka-lee-ahk), the goddess who presides from Samhain to Winter Solstice. After the solstice, Brigid takes over, leading us through the waning of winter and into the spring.
In Gaelic lore, both the Cailleach and Brigid are intimately connected to the land. The Cailleach—the wise and wild hag of winter—is often seen in the mountains, hills and valleys of the Scottish Isles and Highlands. While at the Calanais (Callinish) standing stones on the Isle of Lewis earlier this year, I was able to peer between two of the giant megaliths to see her silhouette in the distant hills, the reclining goddess of the land.
Similarly, Brigid is the Gaelic goddess associated with spring’s rebirth, as Cailleach is associated with death and the sacred pause of winter. On the Isle of Iona, I climbed the highest mountain on the island, Dun I, to find a sacred well known as Brigid’s Well, tucked into the folds of the mountain. Splashing my face with its sacred waters, I went beyond observer to participant in the land’s sacred story.
These interactions with stones and water, of ancient origins, are the path away from overwhelm to integration. And they simply require our presence.
Cultivating a worldview where holiness is inseparable from the land bring us into closer communion with it.
While we can and should absolutely nurture our connection to the earth’s stabilizing magic in our own backyards or in the wild spaces nearby, there is a broader liminal space we enter when we set off on pilgrimage to part of the world that holds deep ancient connections that we have forgotten.
More than bucket lists or sites to see, pilgrimages are journeys in which we consciously bring our body into ritual space for an extended journey. Does this mean we are chanting and drumming the whole time? No.
The magic of pilgrimage lies in stepping into a portal—alone or with others who share the intention—in which every movement, laugh, animal spotted, hag stone found, stranger-turned-friend—becomes imbued with meaning.
The natural world and its inhabitants become an experiential liturgy.
And the thing is, that, somehow—though the liturgy looks the same on the outside—it brings to each person a unique message, knowing, slowing or hastening that is medicine meant just for each of us.
I will likely write more about pilgrimaging and its sister process that I call portalling, which is when time feels different in your body—stretching and contracting to suit the magic afoot. I am particularly fond of this aspect of sacred travel and may have been dubbed the time alchemist on a trip or two!
To help you step into both pilgrimaging and portalling as a path to experiencing the world is a less overwhelming way, I’m including a link below to a presentation I created for my paid subscribers. It connects the six principles of pilgrimaging and portalling to the embodied practice of breaking common patterns like people pleasing, perfectionism, productivity addiction and more. This is one of the many ways I thank those who support me work. I would love to have you join me on this quest to Excavate Her!
If you are interested in an immersive experience of pilgriming with me, please consider applying of one of the two intimate trips for women I’m leading to Scotland in May. There is one spot left for the West Coast pilgrimage to the Isles of Mull and Iona (Her Wild Ways: May 16-26) and four spots left for our East Coast pilgrimage to Rosslyn, Edinburgh & Pittenweem (She Who Came Before: May 1-11). You can read about the magic of both—staying in a castle, visiting a cave only accessible at low tide, dancing in a remote stone circle, and learning from two experts on Scottish witchery and the esoteric wisdom encoded in Rosslyn Chapel and its surrounding glen. And, bonus, we arrive for our She Who Came Before pilgrimage on Beltane (May 1)! Apply and read more here!
And subscribe for instant access to the Pilgrimaging & Portalling presentation below!
