Solstice on the Sacred Hill of Tara

Solstice Sunrise at Tara - Me at the Lia Fáil

All that we are awakening to across the world came together for me this morning in a dawn pilgrimage (3.00 am) to the Hill of Tara for the Summer Solstice sunrise. Tara is the oldest site of spiritual worship in Europe, the place where the major Celtic festivals were celebrated by the druids. It’s also where the High King of Ireland was confirmed in his sovereignty at the Lia Fáil - the Stone of Destiny - by an oracular stone that either shouted the approval of the goddess of the land of the choice of king or her rejection of him by remaining silent.

The spiritual, mystical, visionary, energetic, consciousness-expanding, natural, earth-based and embodied elements of what we are living through seemed to coalesce as I held my oak wand and stood with the small community gathered on this site of ancient worship. I felt the convergence of these energies, feeling them coming together in the cosmos as much as in me. I felt that I was merging into mother earth - becoming earth, that the energies of the sun, of life, of light were pouring into the chalice of my body and running like an energetic river through my vulva into the sacred ground. All this I offered to Tara as a blessing and a prayer.

My prayer was one of gratitude to Tara for holding these sacred energies in her belly despite her long displacement, and also one of hope that enough of us are returning to right relationship with our mother earth, with nature, with each other and with the Spirit of Life.

I saw and sensed that I was an earth being of light, then I was a swan-girl and now a swan; now a golden butterfly — shape shifting between human, animal, nature and spirit. As someone drummed a bodhrán to honour the sun rising in the sky I felt myself become an oak tree, my roots planted deep in this ancient and sacred ground. Now I am the daughter of Danú, the Mother goddess of all Ireland. Now I am a daughter of the Christ. Now I move between ages, between forms and between worlds. My body is a cup being filled with the light of the sun, the Light of mother Danú, the light of mother Magdalene and the light of Christ. One light. One life. All one.

Now I am my mother and my daughter, my grandmother and my granddaughter — my people spiral around me — the ancestors and descendants in a living line of energetic connection. I am nature, I am spirit, I am human, I am light, I am earth. I know the sovereignty of the earth, of the divine feminine, and I reclaim my own sovereignty.

I feel the healing power of nature pour into me as light and as energy. I say in my mind, ‘I am healing in nature’ and then I hear Mother Earth say, ‘I am healing in you’. Yes, this is the circularity of our co-creation of life — everything deeply interconnected. Then I pray worlds of healing to Danú, that she be restored and her rightful essence as the sovereignty of the land of Ireland and be recognised and revered as such. Then I know that I am healing in the Divine Feminine, and in awe, I realise that the Divine Feminine is also healing in me.

We are all each other — human, nature, spirit. We are all light in different forms. We shift between forms without ever unbecoming the light that we are. I am you, you are me, we are One. I am the swan and the oak tree. You are the earth and the light. I am human, I am spirit. And I know you are human, spirit and light. You are the butterfly and sun rising in the sky. The energies stir in the ground and in the air and I know that each of us shapeshifts just as the quarks jump from place to place and from being to being.

On this holy Solstice day, the light of the sun pours into us all revivifying us in body, mind, spirit and soul. May I offer you the energies of Tara, of Danú, of the divine Mother, of the Christ Light, of the Light of Life. May I become you and may you become me and may we live in sacred reverence with each other, nature, life and Spirit, and may our footsteps fall as gently as a blessing on our beautiful mother, Earth.