MAY WE RETURN TO OUR ROOTS, IRELAND
May we return to what is ours,
To what works because it is of Éire.
Because we carry it in our bones and in our hearts.
May we return to Dian Cécht’s porridge, to our community gardens
and unlimited celery and wild garlic once guaranteed under Brehon Law,
To our Bean Feasa and our Bone-setter.
May we return to our Aos Sí,
To our Fairy Doctors, our Handywomen and our funeral rites.
May we return to the healing heat and sweat of our Tigh ‘N Alluis.
May we return to Uisneach, to Tlacghta and to Tara,
To our sacred sites and our monuments that reflect the cosmos.
May we return to purifying and revitalising ourselves in our sacred wells and our ice-cold waters,
To our Wheel of the Year, to Samhain, Imbolg, Bealtaine and
Lughnasadh, to the Equinoxes and Solstices.
May we return to the plants and simple herbal infusions of Airmid,
to the medicinal use of our uisce beatha and our poitín.
May we return to what is ours.
To what works because it is of Éire.
Because we carry it in our bones and in our hearts.
May we return to our ancestors, to the warm lap
of the wise grandmothers and grandfathers of our Earth.
May we return to our Gaelige.
May we return to ÉRIU.
May we return home.
May we return.
Original poem written in Spanish by Mayella Almazán Arreola about Mexico,
in the aftermath of the 2018 earthquake in Mexico City.
Translated and edited by Claire McGrath.
If you are interested in deepening your relationship with the plants around you,
I invite you to participate in this online workshop,
where we will journey together along the Irish Wheel of the Year
following the path of the Bean Feasa (Irish Wise Woman),
rediscovering the ancestral wisdom that all of us carry within,
and remembering our role as guardians of the Earth,
by way of physical and energetic work.
As well as communicating and connecting deeply with the plants,
you will learn how to care for them from seed to harvest,
and how to regenerate the soil, taking example from Mother Earth herself,
to grow and harvest healthy and organic medicinal plants,
preserving the majority of therapeutic principles possible,
so that you can add them to your own medicinal remedies,
that will form part of your personal Crane bag.
The fact that our tradition in Ireland was an oral one,
can sometimes leave us feeling that the knowledge has been lost,
but our ancestors left us a detailed map in the form of our wheel of the year.
By walking and honouring the wheel, season upon season, festival upon festival,
we realise that there is no need for written guides,
the medicine lies in harmonising ourselves and our lives
with the spiralling cycles of the earth and the cosmos.
What a gift and privilege we have inherited.
Go raibh maith agat
If you would like to be notified when the details of this workshop are finalised, please leave your name and email on the waiting list below. In the meantime, you can access some of my blog posts and tutorials either in English or with English subtitles by clicking the links below
