Tell me,  what is it you plan to do with one and wild and precious life?

 Have you asked yourself this lately? Actually, have you ever asked yourself this?

It’s a loaded question, isn’t it?

I mean you could live a truly wild and beautiful life just as you are right now. Just as you are.

 

What does it mean to truly live?

 

I have been mulling over these questions for as long as I can remember, it is the underpinning of everything I do. My life, my family, my work, it all boils down to that question.

I have a journal that I read each morning (well, most mornings) it’s an inevitability journal that my friend introduced me to at a time in my life when I needed it most.

Everything that goes into it is inevitable to happen. It has blown me away so many times that the things I wrote in there have come to fruition over and over.

 

In it there are 2 questions on the first page.

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

 

What is it you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?

 

Both questions remind me daily that this life is finite. Having lost both parents young, I know how true this really is and how you really can be here today and gone tomorrow.

I want to squeeze every ounce of love, happiness and joy into every day.

This has been my mission in life, regardless of what work I have done, I am multi passionate so I can put my hand to anything and do it well.

No matter if I am treating a client with acupuncture, supporting a woman in sacred circle or guiding someone with their spiritual business or even just talking to a friend.

The goal is the same, to help them see that they can have a uniquely beautiful, wild and precious life.

It’s been a rough year on many levels for everyone, no one has been untouched by what is happening in the world right now.

I have been lucky enough to be able to team up with an amazing friend and colleague to create the Journey with an Cailleach – Dream a new world.

It is a 5-month journey starting on Nov 7^th, we will be bringing in the energy of the Cailleach, the archetype of the wise woman, the crone, the grandmother.

She is Wise beyond words, older than the world itself. She will bring us her wisdom, hold us safely like a grandmother.

She will gently nudge us to reclaim parts of ourselves that we had forgottenor hidden, so we can emerge with more of who we are in the spring time.

Already the women who have signed up are feeling the changes.

Our goal with the journey is to hold you in a safe and sacred space through the winter, in Celtic spirituality this is the time of rest, a time to lay down your burdens, reassess, press the reset button and look at your life with those questions in mind.

What do you need to let go of?

What do you need to leave behind?

What do you need to lay down?

And then we start to dream, dreaming of a new world for ourselves.

This will look different for everyone. It may be that you learn to slow down the pace of your life and just smell the roses a little more.

It may be that you have a job you are not satisfied with and you feel like now is the time to focus on changing that.

Maybe you are in a relationship that is not fulfilling, and you need to let it go?

Whatever it is that you need to change this year, this journey will facilitate you in going inwards, tuning into your own needs, your own feelings.

 

You will be held safely as you navigate your inner terrain and you will be supported by a group of fierce, strong, empowering and uplifting women as you plant the seeds of a new future and dream a new world for yourself.

 

Are you hearing the call of The Cailleach?

 

If you resonate with this, please reach out Michelle or Caitriona and we can answer any questions you might have.

We have been mindful of the financial implications this year has brought to many so we have chosen to make the investment low so it can be accessible to as many women as it can right now.

The entire 5 months costs €250 that can be paid in full or in 5 monthly payments of €50.

What you will get - 

Support from Caitriona and Michelle in a private facebook group with the other Women. 

Flower essence blends posted to you anywhere in the world to support you throughout. 

Bi weekly calls online, on Zoom, where we will hold sacred circle, ritual, ceremony and more! 

www.caitrionahicks.com/journeywithancailleach

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

By Mary Oliver. 

An Cailleach - The Wise Woman

As we prepare to journey with an Cailleach this Samhain, I wanted to write a bit about who she is an why we should emabark on such a journey with her. 

“The Cailleach has universal qualities. She is not a goddess of “fertility or death” or of any single thing. She is a primordial being who is both transcendent and immanent.”

The Cailleach has been associated with Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. These places are covered in shrines, sacred sites and natural landscapes named after her.

Stories tell of how the Cailleach constructed cairns, and megalithic tombs all in one night. In Ireland the most famous of these is Sliabh na Caillighe, at Loughcrew in County West Meath, Ireland. 

They are also known as the old Woman’s mountains or the hill of the Witch. On top of these 3 hills are Cairns or Passage graves, and they are also known as “womb tombs”. At the hilltop surrounded by the Cairns sits the Hag’s chair. Local lore says that one who sits on this chair will be granted one wish.

An Cailleach has many stories written about her, that of an amazing powerful woman who leaped from hill to hill to magically create Cairns and monuments. She is associated with longevity, strength and wisdom.

Later stories depict her as a hag, a witch.

There is an old Irish proverb where a boy asks “ how do you know if it’s going to rain?”, “ because the scald crow screamed it and the deer spoke it”, this proverb then evolves into “ heed not the scald crow nor the deer and heed not a woman’s words, whether its early or late the sun rises, the day will be as God wills it”.

The efforts of those to drown out the stories of an Cailleach and to demonise her have not succeeded. She is ever present and ready to guide us within to reclaim the Wise Woman that resides within all of us. 

There is a story about an Cailleach when she met St Patrick and he asked her how did she manage to live so long, she replied “ I didn’t ever carry the muddy dirt of one place beyond that of another place without washing my feet first”.

So on this Samhain journey to the womb tomb of an Cailleach it is time for us Women to follow in the footsteps of an Cailleach, it’s time to wash our feet and let go of all that has gone by and dream a new world.