As mentioned before on just about every social media site we are on, we were at the Lammas Fayre on Arran at the weekend. As you can see from the picture above we were making ceremony – a water ritual to be exact. Though ‘exact’ is not really the word to use…In the way of being open to saying yes to opportunities afforded us, we accepted this one happily. We have known one of the organisers for so long, and in fact she was responsible for my first speaking gig! So I know that when she asks me to be part of something it’s very likely going to be a wonderfully expansive experience.
It’s something we rarely think about – how the things we are offered may expand our horizons, stretch us, make us remember what we are all about in so many different ways. Also who may be the catalysts to take us toward those horizons.
From the time of the invitation, which was to celebrate the element of water, my mind had raced with ideas. Water does that – it flows and when you let it the stream of consciousness that springs forth can take you to so many familiar strange spaces. Water makes it’s own place and finds it’s own space.
There are some great Siberian and Mongolian water rituals, also some closer to home too, so taking the Spirit of these rites we adapted and like water carved out from that space an honouring for the element of water… but of course this was not all… as the resident storyteller of Spiral Heart all it required to make it complete was a story. And oh what stories there are in our culture for Kelpies and Sprites, Undines and Merfolk. Our folklore is saturated with them.
We wove the story of Bradan (Bratan) with that of Boann the milk white cow who arrived on the shores of Eire from the western seas with her two sisters Bo Ruadh and Bo Dhu.
Thinking about all that bounty which comes from the sea, we took Boann’s story of her trying to steal the hazelnuts from the grove and her causing the well to become the source of the river Boyne and of course thereby releasing Bradan out into the world to take all that wisdom and knowledge with him.
I suggest you read the very numerous and varied legends of this, and those associated. Find the fun in there as well as the wisdom. When you get to know the story of one culture’s water deities it may inspire you to learn more.
We took water from all the participants who had brought a wee drop from where they lived. Then within the ceremony we honoured that then processed to the shoreline, a tween place. There on a very windy day the white horses rode the waves as the sea was whipped up, the sea was present with us. There we were in the moment, in the tween space. Entranced, open and accepting of all that was there with us we gave thanks to the sea and to all those who lived in, upon and off of it. We returned the water from our participants in the Spirit of gratitude and we apologised for the injury we as beings cause daily to the entity from which we first emerged as amphibians.
With thanks to PhotoGnick-Arran
Shamanism Scotland 