Another Spiral of Rebirth - a threshold initiation in Ireland

There is something about the light in October, the way its soft glow creates long shadows and makes golden leaves shimmer while falling. I always thought I loved October because it was my birthday month, filled with excitement and renewal. Though it wasn’t until I traveled to Ireland on a vision quest exactly 10 years ago in October of 2011 that I came to realize its deep significance on the Celtic medicine wheel as a portal to the sacred.

I spent three weeks traveling to sacred sites and places of magnificent beauty. My first night I slept on the shores of Lough Leane in Killarney where I was awakened in the dark by an otherworldly primeval roar. I went to my balcony and saw a great red deer stag bellowing into the night. The rutting season was underway and the energy was electric.  As I listened and watched the crescent moon setting over the mountains, the sky sparkling with stars and mist glowing over the lake, I shuttered from head to toe and knew I had entered a dreamtime, another mystical reality of Ireland.

On my journey I visited many ancient places that stirred an echo through my bones and sang a song I knew from long ago. A memory was permeating through to my conscious awareness that I couldn’t describe, only feel. It left me emotionally raw and deeply moved. Somehow I could hear the stones speaking to me, the portals opening and the ancient ones voices echoing through time. Something sacred awakened in me and the Goddesses of Ireland called me home to a deep belonging. My vision quest was complete and I followed guidance to move to Ireland within the year. 

Ireland called me to kindle a relationship to the Ancestors and cultivate my higher soul purpose as a shamanic healer. The voices in the land awakened my senses to a belonging I had never felt before. I came to understand that I could hear, see and feel the energies of earth and spirit. I spent four years walking the land, deeply listening to the winds, sea and stones, studying in the halls of universities and at the sides of many great learned and wise teachers of the old ways. I shed my skin to be reborn as a woman who belongs to the echo of time and walks hand in hand with the Goddess and Shining Ones. 

I have grown to understand that the month of October is a portal, a threshold, a liminal time where the veils that separate the living and dead are thinner. That in the fading light, the seed of life is planted deep in the darkness of mother earth and Samhain begins a new year, another spiral of rebirth of the seasons. I know now why it’s my favorite month - a sacred time where we can see beyond the physical to the spiritual realm of our beloved ancestors and commune with them. They breathe the spirit of life into our spiral of death/rebirth through the softening golden light. 

The Ancestors live on in spirit and have great love for us. We can listen and hear their voices on the wind, in the stones, in the temples, in the trees and in the light of darkness. They have much wisdom for us. The full moon in October is the Hunters Moon, a time to track and hunt on our vision quest through the liminal light to hear the voice of Ancient Ones.  With them we follow the golden path of belonging into the magic of sacred earth. 

Written for the Moon Mna Diary Journal 2021