ANNOUNCEMENT | Doors now OPEN for Hedge School Bealtaine Spiral 🌀 🌸
Bealtaine Spiral | Returning to our Senses
29 April - 20 May 2021
Thursday and Monday Global Gatherings
7pm Ireland Time
Summer is coming and our next Hedge School Spiral responds to Bealtaine - the cross-quarter celebration of the Celtic Wisdom Tradition.
Bel-taine or bright fire celebrates the God Belous (Bright one) and welcomes the “rekindling” of the sun. This Celtic fire festival is a high holiday, a liminal time when the barriers between our world and the otherworld were thin. We mark the transition from winter to summer, from the dark to the bright half of the year. In many traditions and cultures it is a time of divine union and fertility.
This portal ushers in the sensorial season of blossoming, aliveness, fullness, risk and opening. We welcome the masculine energy as necessary to ensure the flowering, ripening and harvesting of the seeds sown in the darker times of winter and spring.
At the Hedge School we will celebrate this point of seasonal and psychic transformation and explore the potency of expansion, risk and opening. As the great wheel turns we are invited to return to our senses and meet the invitation to be fully ALIVE within us and the natural world. As we cross this threshold we will explore what wants to blossom and open for us at The Hedge School as ancestors-in-training.
Our inspiration for the Bealtaine Hedge School Spiral weaves the cultural threads of belonging, place, activism, creative imagination, indigenous wisdom and the living world. We will explore these themes from Irish and global perspectives as some of the burning issues on our world stage right now.
Our Bealtaine Spiral opens with David Whyte {internationally renowned poet, author and speaker}. He will be joined from Ireland by his great friend and collaborator Rev. NĂłirĂn NĂ Riain {Singer, Theologian and Author}. Together they will invite us into the territory of risk and revelation.
"David Whyte’s “Blessing” poems are interpreted through a visual journey across the Irish landscape in this short film by Emmy-winning filmmaker Andrew Hinton. Musician and composer Owen Ó Súilleabháin, who has collaborated with David Whyte for over a decade, offers a reflection on the music that inspired the creation of this short film."
Then we travel to Canada to meet founder of The Mythic Masculine Ian McKenzie {artist, filmmaker, writer} who will be joined by the acclaimed, acoustic troubadour, Damien Dempsey { Singer, Songwriter,} Together they will weave stories and songs of mythos, wildness and emerging masculinities.
Our final destination is Brooklyn, New York where we will meet Columbian trailblazer Alixa GarcĂa {multi disciplinary artist, activist, educator and poet}. She has infused our movements for justice with healing and imagination, inspiring thousands through her award-winning multimedia theater, visual art, world music,sustainable touring, and community organising.
She will be joined by Lyla June Johnston {Indigenous musician artist, scholar and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages from Taos, New Mexico. Together they will weave a tapestry of art, activism and aliveness that supports the healing and restoration of inter-generational and inter-cultural trauma on our planet.
We look forward to welcoming you all to Hedge School for this Bealtaine Spiral.
With heart,
Kathy, and all at The Trailblazery.