The One Who Never Left and the One Who Came Home

A Tale of Celtic Magic Across the Ocean of Time

A Woven Story, of two souls. The one who never left, and the one who came home.

The One Who Came Home:

I always felt different, especially as I reached teenage years.

By 13 I knew there was something that would never fit into American culture, something deep within. I always felt the whales swimming next to me in dreams, I always felt the animals so strongly.

I wandered the forest to hear the trees speaking.

I was always seeking something, something that wanted to emerge from deep within, but I never quite knew what that was.

The One Who Never Left:

I grew up feeling like an outsider, in my own home country.

I always felt a little different, I couldn’t readily accept the stories I was told in school and at home. I always just felt like we had forgotten something. It was on the tip of my tongue, in the back of my mind. I felt it when my grandmother would take me to visit the Holy Wells and places, but my mother didn’t.

I sensed that there was much more than just a change in tradition from one generation to the next.

I sensed, so deeply, that something was being lost.

The One Who Came Home:

As I grew into a young woman, I lost myself in art, in writing, in imagination. Nature, and classical music were my refuges. I was longing for something both refined but also simple. I knew that I was being over-educated, stretched into an overly rational, logical way of being. As a teenage girl, trying to become the woman I was meant to be, my heart longed for a feeling of belonging. I could still hear the animals. I could receive inspiration from the beauty around me, and the creativity boiling in my blood, but I’m still seeking, seeking, and also being bullied.

You’re a witch. They say.

I never fit in.

The One Who Never Left:

I didn’t quite fit into my Irish family.

As I grew up, I went through a period of being an outsider in my own country, in my own family. I never quite knew why. I never lost a deep and wholesome internal connection I knew I had been born with, that I knew was from the blood of my ancestors. I saw those around me lose this connection, and accept willingly the conditioning, in order to fit in. Early on in childhood I found the courage within me to risk not fitting in.

I unchoose conformity.

I didn’t want to lose that simple, but profound connection.

The One Who Came Home:

Over the years, as I entered my twenties, the call became too strong.

It reverberated in me like a bell, echoing each year stronger and louder. I knew I had to go to Ireland, I knew this was where my place was. As my grandfather sang Irish songs while mowing the lawn, speaking of the dairy farm in Mayo, I knew I’d go one day.

When my great-grandmother told me, as she lay dying in the last few days of life before she passed, to go back to Ireland, that misty, faraway look in her eyes as Spirit took her away from us, I knew I’d go.

I knew.

I knew that I would find what I was looking for. When I landed for the first time I knew this place. I remembered. I found what I was looking for in the trees and wells and land.

It was all in the land.

The One Who Never Left:

On reflection as an adult, I see that growing up in the Irish countryside was a privilege; the rich damp soil, soft dewy grass, the wind, the variety of clouds, the renewal of an Irish Blessing.

As I began entering adulthood, I kept my vast inner world and connection to the land mostly to myself. Though I stayed behind the veil, I knew that I had to find a way to share what was within, to share this magical way of the Celtic Woman that had been lost through the generations of oppression.

I finally found a spiritual practice, a way to share my magic. Although funnily enough it is now mostly with non-Irish people that are drawn to me. I find it so amusing and curious, but mostly saddening, that the newer Irish generations of modernity are lost to technology, furthering the disconnect from their true natures.

The One Who Came Home:

Well, I’ve found magic in the land, but I can’t seem to find the right people. I can’t seem to find an acceptance. Go home, foreigner, they tell me on the sacred hills. All find is nationalism and racism and tight ownership of the green land. But my great-grandmothers childhood home is still in the bog in Mayo, and I can’t go ‘home’. This land IS my home. Why don’t they see that?

This land is portrayed as a shining emerald, but there is much buried darkness. I still don’t have my place.

Still bullied. Still looking for my tribe.

So I sing to the land, with my oak and deer drum, and I put out a call into the waters and the wells and the stars. For my sisters, for the Celtic priestesses.

The One Who Never Left:

I saw her drumming and singing online. Something resonated within, I immediately recognised the energy. I reached out, and offered a session, and we so we met.

The one who never left, and the one who came home.

Across an ocean of time and space, there is the Celtic Female spirit. It lives and lingers through the generations, through the diaspora. It knows no borders, no divisions, no limitations. It is a flame. Call it the flame of Bridget, call it the truth of Danu. Call it the spirit of the ancient Celtic Woman.

In both of us, the one whose ancestors left oppression but forever longed for home, and the one who stayed, toughened through the dark times, but were always longing for a forgotten way- the same oppression affected us. We were both longing for our inner truths to have a home.

We were longing be true Celtic magic women. To be seen, to be known, in our deep seeing and knowing. As true feminine women with the magical second sight.

The One Who Never Left:

Yes, I appeared to be a rebel. I became labelled as ‘wild’ ‘mad’ ‘weird’ ‘lost’, endless names, by my own people, in my own country. I was silenced, ‘not a nice girl’, so many intrusions on my feminine wisdom. But I understood that I must continue staying connected to my truth, as unwelcome as it was by those around me. As a result of this choice, Spirit gifted me with much insight, initiated me many times. I have walked the path of the High Priestess, the lone female shaman, until I returned home to the cave.

The One Who Came Home:

So why are you so unique, why do you feel so feel so familiar to me? And why does it feel so rare in a country I thought had a flame of Bridget, in a land where I feel the Goddess so deeply? Where are the priestesses and female shamans?

The One Who Never Left:

We as a nation we are deeply spiritually oppressed generationally. I know I’m different to what the ‘norm’ collective is, but I don’t think I’m unique. I understand myself deeply and this reflects externally when I’m in the company of others. I deeply see others, their inner ‘selves’. We all have a frequency. This current of energy is tangible.

I stayed in a place of Grace while experiencing much toxicity from this vulnerable position. I learned to choose, walking away from toxic environments, always learning to discern despite the rejection endured by choosing what wasn’t approved by others. In a state of Grace, it’s possible to hold witness to your environment and hold a strong position of truth even when it is a very solitary and vastly misunderstood stance by the people around you.

The One Who Came Home:

Wow, your path has not been easy, and you’re making me understand how I’ve experienced privilege. My great grandmother left the bog of Mayo poverty. She looked at the Magdalene convent they were going to force her into and said no, I’m getting on a boat. She may have saved us from the trauma of female oppression, but her great-granddaughter lost her connection with her ancestral land.

The One Who Never Left:

Well, I’ve lost connection too, and I never left. The ones who stayed, we hardened, we toughened, we had to survive. We too have lost connection to our true ancestral land, even though we never left.

We have two different perspectives, across oceans through time. There are ways we are different, but there are more ways that we are similar. We are both affected by the tides of history in different ways, and both are valid. To speak about how we an have a Celtic soul no matter where we are in the world is beautiful, and that is our task.

So the questions we must ask ourselves:

How do we come home to our instinctual connection with Celtic magic? With the soul beauty of Celtic woman and all she stands for?

How do we meet halfway, the ones who left, and ones who stayed, and come together with our complementary experiences to heal each other, like true lost sisters?

All I know for sure, is that forgiveness is the weapon, the only tool of justice. Burying the hatchet is the only way to win a spiritual war.

Story to be continued…