Grandmother of the Deepest Soil

Something for these aching days Xx

The moon rose red last night. How could it not. The half-moon, waxing bloody. It is never a good omen. The fire wouldn’t light. I woke this morning in darkness, from nightmares, the stars still bright and the mist retreating to the river. To the bog.

My heart is shattered. It breaks again and again. A genocide streamed live into the palm of my hand. Nightly, after my boy is safely tucked up in his bed, when I can finally pull myself away from him, listening to his gentle breath in the low light, the tears come. On my knees, a desperate prayer to anything holy, any god, make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop. I have to plunge my hands into the earth to ground it. Ground a red rimmed grief, white hot rage, and a deep black pit of despair. At the silence. At the allowance of such a thing on our watch.

I talk to mother after mother who also cannot tear themselves away from their sleeping children. We are hugging them tighter, longer. Holding another mother’s grief in our arms. And we’re scared, what does it mean to live in such a world. A world where children are murdered in their beds and those in power do nothing to end it.

My dreams haunt me. I’ve dreamt too often true. I pray to my grandmothers, who I wrote of during the week, who dreamt true too. Whose bones are in this soil, all of them, back and back to the Cailleach who was a girl when the Atlantic was still green mossy woods.^[1]

I’ve been trying to write of her for you. The Cailleach. To craft the blackthorn lore from last weekend, finally into some fiction. We are at the threshold of her season, Oíche Shamhna (Halloween, Samhain eve) only days away. I’d argue we’re already through the gateway. We’re in her realm. Frosts and storms in turn. And the grief. The unbearable, powerless grief of it all.

I try to write of her, and she comes in her long black veil. She’s there in all her power. A force of nature, as all women in their true power are. This much we have forgotten. But we need to root down to be able to hold it. We cannot stand in the power of a wise woman, a sorceress^[2], when our nervous systems are activated. And if you’ve been connected at all in the last days it has been activating in the extreme.

Some of you may know that among the many hats I wear is one of yoga teacher. One of my specialisms is teaching safety in the body. Slowing down and dropping into the body, the breath, calming the nervous system and pulling it down from an activated reaction. All breathwork is somatic. I would like to offer a little of that here today. We can take a moment here together, in this space, on old Irish soil, to drop into the body, calm the breath and pay a visit to the Cailleach. You can read this as fiction from the folklore or as a kind of guided visualisation, a deep earthing as we attempt to find ways to move through these days and across the threshold of Samhain.

I invite you to light a candle if it safe to do so, make your favourite warm brew and join me here with the grandmother on the hill.

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^[1]  Cailleach Bheag an Fhásaich “The time when the great sea was a green mossy wood, I was a young girl”, See Women and Witches in Manchán Magan Thirty-Two Words for Field (Gill Books 2020) pg. 234

^[2] for these are other translations of the word Cailleach, who is sometimes not a grandmother of the deepest soil but simply a woman who lives outside the bonds of societies rules.

Straighten your spine. Roll your shoulders back, down away from your ears. Drop your tongue away from the top of your mouth. We hold tension this way. Release your jaw. If a yawn is there know that it is safe to take it. Bring your attention to your breath, if it is comfortable to do so you can place a hand on your chest and another on your belly. Feel your body expand and contract with each breath. Your breath may slow as you pay attention to it, this is normal, there is no need to change it in anyway.

When you are ready take a deep breath in and release it with a sigh. Again. And again. These deep sighing breaths are available to you at any moment in any day. You can use them to help release the tension you are holding. Let it go.

On an exhale drop your chin to your chest and on the inhale rise. Repeat as necessary. Release the tension in your neck. You can trace the collarbone with the chin from one side to the other, again following the breath. In as you move towards the shoulder and out as you return to the chest, in and up on the other side, out and down. Do as many as you need. Trust that you know your body, you know what it needs.

Return to the normal breath. Take a moment to pay attention to it again before settling in. Get as comfortable as possible, allow the furniture, the floor to hold your full weight. You are held, it is safe to let go.

And when you’re comfortable, we’ll begin.

You come to her ragged. World weary. 
You come to her burdened. 
Grief a black pit in your stomach. Heavier than the sky. Red raw with it you stagger to her door. 

Up past the ridgeline high above the bay. Through the boulders she has thrown asunder. Through her rain and battering winds. Past the blackthorn hedge. Bare and glinting sharp in the first creep of frost, as the dusk turns blue. 
Up to a cottage, old, whitewashed stone. Thatched and holding strong against the weather. Bramble stays, wound tight. 
You come to her door. Flaking red paint. It’s all you can do to knock. 

Here you must leave your burden. 
Set it down. Cast it to the wind. But leave it here. Outside her door. 
Whatever it is that is too heavy, to hard to carry into the winter realm, leave it down. 
She’ll see to it that it is buried deep, cast to the winds, tossed in the sea, burnt as kindling. You cannot cross with it. 
She’ll see to it. Just set it down. 

The door blows open. A flurry of snow. 
Inside a fire burns low and warm. Old wood burns slow. Wood from the bog. Great trees when she was a girl. 
Inside smells of fleece and woodsmoke, honey and beeswax. 
Inside is the whisper of stories as long as winter, and just as true. 
Inside is a grandmother of the deepest soil. 

She is dressed in black, a long mourning veil. 
She is a woman in white, washing bloody at the ford. 
She is dressed in red, swirling silks and the red eared cow. 
She is clad in feathers, black as the night that reigns outside. Blue eyed rook with winter on her wings. Truth teller in a forgotten tongue. 

Sloe wine and sweet meats. Colcannon and a haunch of ham. 
Berries spilling over. Fresh bread, golden as the fields just past. 
Apples and Báirín Breac, divinatory sweets of her night. 
The table is set. A feast for the best of them.
Ancestors all. 
In time you’ll sit with them, your place will be set, but tonight your place is by the fire. 

The fire burns red hot and bright white, black charcoal, and soot. 
The fire crackles, talking of frost. Of news on the wing. 
You must feed it. 
All you wish to burn away. All you would leave here. 
The smaller troubles you did not leave by the door. You must give them to the flames. 
The heart-sore ache. The bitter sting. The story that has run its course. Give them up to the flames. 

She stokes the fire with each one. 
You both watch them burn. 
Smoke and ash. Dust on tomorrow’s breeze. 

Her face is lined deep with kindness. As ancient as stone. 
She held you as a baby. And before that again. 
She’ll hold you in the deepest soil. As she holds the seeds of spring. 

Empty your pockets of the last of your niggles. Pin sharp and scratching. 
She’ll sink them into the bog. 
She’ll fill your pockets with seeds. 

Choose now what to tend to in the belly of the year.
What will you carry back down the hill?
What will you plant? 
Choose and she’ll fill your pockets. 
Seeds and ancient soil. 
Dark and fertile.

An ember too. For your travels.
A fresh fire for your hearth. 
A light in the darkness. 
And there is always light. There is always a light somewhere. 
Heart light and truth. 

Every star is overhead as she ushers you from her door. 
Do not look back. 
Down the hill.
Past the blackthorn and the boulders. 
Faster now. Unburdened.
The black of night gives way to a pale dawn rising. Know that it always will.

The light pours honeyed. And the meadow is clad in frost.