This one again. This story won’t leave me alone. This is a re-telling of Merlin’s story as it comes through me often. We have little on record of this battle, the battle of Arfderydd recorded in the year 573. It’s location is thought to have been in what is now an old field just north of the Scottish- English border. And it is recorded as one of the three futile battles of Britain.

It is also recorded that this is the battle in which merlin went mad and spend 3 days and 3 nights without food, drink or sleep in the wildwood.

In this telling the story of the battle and what happened after is my imagining - having spend time up there on that land and time fasting out in the woods. the prophesy at the end of this telling has been recorded in multiple ways in multiple texts.

I recommend you give yourself some space to listen to this one. It’s not good driving material. It might require you to dig into your own loss, and what we’ve lost collectively. And from that the seeds of knowing push through the dark soil bringing new life. I invite you to reflect on what it might mean to turn yourself into soil.

To delve deeper into the images and archetypes that stand out for you in this story I invite you to subscribe to the free email course: Working with Archetypes here https://soul.kathoughton.com/working-with-archetypes

This story captured my heart when I first heard it. It comes from the Irish Travelers tradition and is recorded in a beautiful book called "Why the Moon Travels" by Oein BeBhairduin. These tales stand out to me as distinct from most other Celtic tales that I have come across, they explain the origins of things in a way I am used to coming across in Native American stories but not Celtic ones.

This story carries a world wide theme of women who work to spin and weave in addition to plant lore and magical instruction. All in a short little folktale!

I offer this as an honoring to all those who work for benefit of others and the ancestors who got us here.

I highly recommend Oein's book, there's a link here to purchase a copy. Enjoy.To delve deeper into the images and archetypes that stand out for you in this story I invite you to subscribe to the free email course: Working with Archetypes here https://soul.kathoughton.com/working-with-archetypes

Stories of the seal people are prevalent all along the west coast of Ireland and Scotland and up into the Faroe Islands. if you’ve spend any time wandering the shorelines of those places you’ll know why - the seals are very present, you can hear them breathing and see their big, brown eyes watching you as they hover on that threshold between sky and water. And if you’r lucky you might see them on that other threshold between water and land.

There’s a whole genre of folktales about the seal folk that were carried for countless generations by tellers in clans that claimed to be descended from them.

This is one take that has found it’s way around many storytelling circles and I read the bones of it in Sharon Blackie’s book, If Women Rose Rooted. It’s full of mythic themes of transformation and the power of experiencing loss, and what happens when we refuse to experience loss, which I won’t attempt to explain but instead let the story do it’s work with you.

To delve deeper into the images and archetypes that stand out for you in this story I invite you to subscribe to the free email course: Working with Archetypes here https://soul.kathoughton.com/working-with-archetypes