Today is my celebration of being born into this world and in this life, there is only one thing we can be truly certain of, and that is death.
...Sisterhood of the Antlers
Stories of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland from folk magic and the wise women who honored them. Rooted in the Bean Feasa (Wise Woman) tradition.
Jude Lally
As an artist and Cultural Activist, Jude Lally is rooted in the inspiration of her Ancestral Mothers. All her work comes about through exploring her relationship with the land through art, ritual, imagination, and creativity.
She uses the inspiration of old traditions to meet modern needs. While keening, was traditionally a way to ament the death of someone in the community, Jude uses it today as a way to address modern needs in allowing an expression of grief we hold for all that is happening across the planet. In using keening in this cathartic way she then engages participants with gestures of ritual which help them deal with their grief and then inspires them to work in creative ways in acts of resistance, working towards a restorative culture.
She calls herself a Radical doll maker who views her art as part of a practice that stretches back to the first dolls fashioned from bones and stones – such as the Woman of Willendorf.
She gained her MSc Masters Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) in partnership with the Center for Human Ecology, with her thesis entitled ‘Fire in the Head, Heart, and Hand. A Study of the Goddess Brighid as Goddess Archetype and her Relevance to Cultural Activists in Contemporary Scotland’. She currently lives in Asheville, Western North Carolina but is moving back to Scotland this year.
Website: www.pathoftheancestralmothers.com
She uses the inspiration of old traditions to meet modern needs. While keening, was traditionally a way to ament the death of someone in the community, Jude uses it today as a way to address modern needs in allowing an expression of grief we hold for all that is happening across the planet. In using keening in this cathartic way she then engages participants with gestures of ritual which help them deal with their grief and then inspires them to work in creative ways in acts of resistance, working towards a restorative culture.
She calls herself a Radical doll maker who views her art as part of a practice that stretches back to the first dolls fashioned from bones and stones – such as the Woman of Willendorf.
She gained her MSc Masters Degree in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) in partnership with the Center for Human Ecology, with her thesis entitled ‘Fire in the Head, Heart, and Hand. A Study of the Goddess Brighid as Goddess Archetype and her Relevance to Cultural Activists in Contemporary Scotland’. She currently lives in Asheville, Western North Carolina but is moving back to Scotland this year.
Website: www.pathoftheancestralmothers.com
Felted Bear Hearth Altar by Jude Lally
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that just one more worry, just one more stress can tip me right over the edge and into free fall. As we move from Autumn Equinox and cycle towards Samhain what is is that keeps you balanced? What is it that you root yourself down into?
For me, it begins by trying to shut off my head, although silencing those chattering voices aren't always easy and so I try to let my feet or hands take over.
Feet take me a walk around the neighborhood and never too far afield these days but there is still lots of magic to be found in the hedgerows.
Hands perform rituals which have always been a focus to keep me sane, to make meaning when sometimes it feels that there is none. They keep me tethered to the land and the voices of the old ones. Small little gestures about how I'm feeling - needing an unravelling here and a weaving there.
Dzooqua (Doll), Tsagaglala Petroglyph and the Cauldron of the Cailleach
...
The Sisterhood of the Antlers
...
...
Beltane morning. I am in the foothills of the Appalachians yet there is a cool breeze blowing which transports me to the Isle of Oronsay, sitting on top of a Mesolithic shell midden - made by people who perhaps moved around their landscape in a great ritualistic gesture.
...
