Earth Priestess

Since 2022, when I circumambulated the Poulnabrone Dolmen on the windswept Burren of County Clare, Ireland, I knew a seed had been planted in the marrow of my bones. The cloachan huts and ring forts and ancient yew trees and Tau crosses and ogham engraved living stones all sang awake something that had thrummed silently in the iron of my blood. A song that flowed like a river through all things, pulsing and effervescing as it coiled around and through the living breath of the world. I followed this song into the monastery of the Gnostic Celtic Church, and into the initiatory tradition of the Black Forest. For the past three and a half years, this living song has shaped, tested, challenged, tempered and eroded my life, and my understanding of myself.

The Poulnabrone Dolmen, County Clare, Ireland

The Poulnabrone Dolmen is a neolithic burial mound, called a portal tomb, and was likely constructed around 3800 BCE. When originally constructed, this portal tomb would have been covered by earth and capped with a cairn. Within the tomb, were the remains of 33 human beings from age 6 months to 40 years old. The 6 month old child buried here is the earliest known case of Down Syndrome ever discovered, and this child was nursed and cared for prior to their ritual burial. The Irish Poulnabrone is sometimes translated to "Hole of Sorrows," and the desolate landscape that surrounds this tomb adds to the sense of sorrow that naturally emanates from this place.

From deep beneath the limestone of this landscape a communication reached the bone matrix of the Dolmen of my Body. My Dolmen is also covered with Earth, my living flesh, but will one day be exposed stone, and haunted by the stories that still echo within. In a way, my life is a tomb for the deaths of the plants and animals that sustain me, the versions of myself that have fallen away, the relationships that have nourished and challenged me. The sacredness and preciousness of life shook me awake here on the Burren, and I haven't gone back to sleep since.

In November, I made the difficult decision to leave the Gnostic Celctic Church Monastery. The small community of contemplative druids deserved more from me, and I felt my path becoming more and more solitary. I had mostly stopped attending the weekly contemplative practices, and though I continued to cherish the community as a sanctuary of goodness in the world, I am learning the reality of what relationships require to be healthy, and I was not doing my part. In the lexicon of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, I was becoming a Taker, and I desperately want to be a Leaver.

In my relationship with the land we live with here in the Sacred Grove, I have learned the value of simple gestures of steady presence. I used to think that relationships were sustained with grand acts of help or generosity, but that is not the only way. The simple everyday acts of belonging have far greater cumulative effects than grand gestures that can be unpredictable and out of touch. I was showing up for the monastery's big events and community inflection points, but I was out of touch, not sustaining the steady pulse of the living group, and that made my presence and efforts poorly aligned with a group life that I was no longer plugged into.

I can see this with my kids, close friends and family, too. It is not the holiday gifts or the birthday parties or the trip to the beach that create a healthy relationship. It is cooking dinner, keeping the home as a sanctuary of love and support, teaching the mundane tasks of life, noticing the signals of stress or illness and responding, sharing joys and sorrows together. This is how we become generous, through attuned rhythms of belonging. My human and more-than-human family have taught me this truth, and I was finally wise enough to admit to myself that my capacity for real relationship is actually quite small.

To be a plugged in, attuned, generous member of a community, I can only sustain a handful of human connections and a handful of more-than-human connections. More than that, and I go on auto pilot, show up sporadically, miss the mark on things I think I understand but don't, and end up feeling burned out and unplugged. I want my life to add to the health and harmony of the world, not the cacophany and chaos of modern life. The druids of the Gnostic Celtic Church generously accepted my decision, and I have remained in the Church on the solitary path of the Earth Priestess. On this path, I am devoted to a healing relationship with the land and the more-than-human beings of this world and the Otherworlds. I make regular offerings to this landscape, tend the land lovingly, offer energy work and ritual healing to the landscape, and deepen my understanding of relationship between a human and the world we belong to.

I have continued to feel nurtured and "plugged in" to the community of the Black Forest Clan, and the small group of local people I practice with have been a deeply nourishing place of belonging. In my seminary work with the Black Forest, I am learning even more about healthy relationships with humans and beings of the Otherworlds. Through ritual, divination, studying the ancient stories and languages of trees and stones and stars, I am finding my place as a modern human who is woven into a young species on an ancient world. I am finding my way as an Earth Priestess, a mediator between the human being and the vastness of the web of life that we are born from and belong to. This is the greatest joy of my life so far, and it is the fruiting of the seed planted in me at the Poulnabrone Dolmen. Living a life that honors all of the other lives that are woven into mine, and is accountable to them in joyful and generous ways, gives me a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose in a world that offers little of both.

Even though I am no longer a religious sister, my days have not changed much. My life is still slow, simple, quiet, disciplined, and based in devotional reverence for the Pulse of Life that moves like a great river through all things. I belong deeply to the beings I am in relationship with, and I am more and more honest about how and who I can be in relationship. I am becoming real, becoming whole, and becoming an Earth Priestess.

Many blessings to you in this year of the Fire Horse.

In Love,

Eryn

P.S. You have my word that I will never present you with writing or images that are generated by machines. All images and words on my website, in my writing, or in my social media content, are made by me or other real people. Let's stand together to keep the human soul at the center of creativity.