Category: Uncategorized

mathan-at-sea:

domhnall-na-feannaig:

Seall an naidheachd fior mhath a’ tighinn a-mach a Alba an t-seachdainn seo. Tha mi gad chreidsinn chan urrainn duine sam bith an aghaidh seo. Dè bha sin? Tha na daoine-uaisle fhathast againn? Ah…

Good news story!

Immediately followed by the gentry explaining why the land their ancestors cleared should be empty for them to go deer stalking.

Nice to know they’ll never change.

If the Highland Clearances are ever reversed then I expect to see full institutional support for restoring Gaelic as the primary language of these Highland townships. Hell, perhaps even invite Gaelic speaking folk in the diaspora to immigrate home to aid in the reconstruction.

I will pluck the Yarrow fair,
That more benign shall be my face.
That more chaste shall be my speech.
That more sweet shall be my lips.
Be my face the beams of the sun,
And my lips as sweet as the strawberry.

May I be an isle in the sea,
May I be a hill on the shore.
May I be a star in the waning moon,
May I be a staff to the weak.
Wound can I every man,
But no man can wound me.

A song to pick Yarrow from the Carmina Gadelica a compendium of Scottish Gaelic charms, hymns, and folk songs collected by folklorist Alexander Carmichael in the late 19th Century.

In flower remedies, yarrow is very protective, used to heal and
strengthen the aura. This song has a similar sense of both strength and
vulnerability.

(via thegreenwoodtree)

Being better

coldalbion:

A friend of mine wrote the following, on FB, and I feel it’s worth sharing:

“1. You are your ancestors, and every strength, weakness, advantage or disadvantage you have in life is put there by the chain of lives behind you – genetically, socially, emotionally, financially.

2. That does not mean you have to drown in some incapacitating “white guilt” as some sort of punishment, but it *does* imply that the present is wholly determined by the past. That shouldn’t be a tough idea to get. And if that’s the case, I would say it does incur some responsibility to *see it*. Own it. Transform it. Write your bit of that narrative.

3. Don’t make excuses for the actions of your dead who shaped the world we inherit. I’m not even American. It’s not even directly my dead, or at least not as acutely as some people, but my ancestors are still bound up in it. I still take responsibility for the tracks of it, and that’s not any “liberal” self-flagellation shit. It’s fight an uncomfortable, difficult, challenging battle for a better future shit, and you’re either in that game or you’re not.

4. There’s no such thing as the “white race”. My people would fight you for confusing them with people from south of the river Tyne, never mind the complex cultural drift that shaped the US. It’s not a thing. The idea of “whiteness” was constructed specifically as a divide and conquer strategy for preventing enslaved Africans from forming alliances with “lower order” Europeans to start rebellions in the early colonies. Which happened a fair bit, and was a real threat to the entrenched European powers who were ultimately behind colonization. You can read up on that history easily enough. It worked and is still working. Don’t buy into that slave master bullshit.

5. BUT, don’t try and flip that into any false equivalency shite about “Irish slaves” or whatever. It’s not hard to read up on any of this history, and the differences between forced labour and chattel slavery are not difficult to grasp. The impact of chattel slavery can clearly be traced to present day social and economic realities – and that’s the thing to remain focused upon in these sorts of discussions.

6. Take one on the fucking chin. Don’t be so precious about Wypepo memes. Don’t be that fucking guy. Own it. Be better.“

This is the key to Jareth the Goblin King’s character. He is Sarah’s inner fantasy, a figure made up of her daydreams and nightmares. I strove to reflect this in Jareth’s costume. He is seen, through her eyes, as part dangerous goblin, part glamorous rock star. I designed him a riding-crop sceptre, a visual echo of a microphone. Look closely and you will see references to the romantic figure of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and a brooding Rochester from Jane Eyre. He is also a transfiguring Scarlet Pimpernel. Jareth is the proud lord of the manor, lord of his goblin domain, with his hounds at his feet, ready to go hunting for human souls. His leather jacket indicates that he is a rebel, an outsider, and dangerous. He is Brando in The Wild Ones. He is a knight from Grimm’s fairy tales, with the worms of death eating through his armour. In short, Jareth needed to be a mercurial figure who would continually throw Sarah off balance emotionally.
When I first met David Bowie, it was in his dressing room. The workshop had made him a little flute out of bone. His immediate response was delight, and he leaped up onto the dressing table, crouched down, and played some notes. It was an astonishing transformation. Before me hunkered an evocation of Pan.

from Goblins of Labyrinth, by Brian Froud (via theumbrellaseller)

Tales of the Taibhsear-spoken word album of Scottish charms

thehornedwitch:

hagothehills:

“Taibhhsear”  (pronounced tive’sher) is the title given to one who can see spirits of the dead – literally ghost seer. Capturing the essence of this  spoken word album project.

Scotland has many traditions such as this veiled within Gaelic charms, language and memories shared in metaphor and song.

With your support, we will be able to rediscover, reinvigorate, record and share a collection of these folk magic traditions in Gaelic and English, reclaiming them helping us share the knowledge with you and others.

My friend Scott of The Cailleach’s Herbarium blog is raising money to help share and preserve Scottish folk magic traditions. Please share and donate if you can 🙂

FUND IT FUND IT FUND IT FUND IT!!!!!!

Tales of the Taibhsear-spoken word album of Scottish charms

phle-botomy:

one of the houses on the end of my street is home to the members of a local irish folk band so some mornings i’ll be walking out to my bus stop to a rollicking accordion and mandolin like i’m finally setting out to seek my fortune on the high seas or some days i’ll come home to a weary aching lament that is so sweet and so yearning that i’ll miss the drowned lover i never had 

songbonestar:

Silence is a practice in many spiritual traditions. In animism, silence works to increase awareness, connection and knowledge of our relationships.

Practicing silence is such a common and important tool because it
allows us the space to get to know ourselves, to experience our inner
worlds and at the same time become aware of the more subtle aspects of
our relationships with everything around us.

Silence can be an act of power that develops our warriorship, and can
strengthen our imaginations by getting rid of distractions and giving
us a space to work within creatively.

And combining silence with the natural world can by particularly powerful;
by allowing our human words and concepts to fall away for a time, we
get to experience how nature communicates, and how that relates to our
own inner natures.

Silence is a perfect tool for when:

  • We’re feeling overwhelmed by our day to day lives and need some space to let everyone unwind before we can work with it.
  • We’re working with a deeply held or complex pattern of feeling and
    energy within us, one that needs to be coaxed into a form we can work
    with.
  • We’re open to establishing a more conscious relationship with a
    space, element or spirit of nature, where language and symbolism isn’t
    as useful.
  • We’re looking to increase the power of another practice, such as ceremony or altar work.
  • We need a socially acceptable act of power to work with throughout the day.
  • We’re exhausted and depleted energetically and need to spend some time recovering ourselves and our energy.
  • We need to truly see a situation so that we can accept it.

To use silence as a practice, we simply need to be silent.
This practice doesn’t require that our environment is silent, although
that can sometimes help, but rather that we ourselves become comfortable
not talking.

This is easier at first when we’re alone, especially out in the
wilds. But as we strengthen this practice, we can practice silence
around other people, either privately or in community.