9.23.18 We arrived at our last B&B on the 22nd.  Early on the 23rd, we headed out to Loughcrew to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox.  The hill that we had to climb seemed to go up and up and up forever.  At its top is a melalithic cairn T in which the rising sun on the Autumnal Equinox illuminates the passage and the chamber.  But I get ahead of myself.  All I experienced was cold, whipping wind and a climb at 7am that my lungs and legs were not pleased with. I had thought that we had to be at the top by 7am so I persisted walking up the mountain as did everyone else!  It was windy and cold…Brrrrrrrr.  How often can I say cold and windy???  There we reunited with Tantra and Anne, then we saw Ronna, Toni and Janice.  We were complete.  All of finally together coming together to create new life for us all.

While we waited for the sun to rise above the clouds at the horizon, we were witness to a group of female shamans chanting and drumming while we shivered in the cold.   I remembered the years when I was with women in ceremony of the eight hinges in my UU church in Northern Virginia.  The honoring of the sun, the elements and our connection to them was a memory rising out of my heart as I witnessed these women standing in robes and calling the primal forces and the sun into our circle.  This group effort brought me back to these connections in this lifetime and past lifetimes. There were clouds covering the horizon and in about an hour the sun finally showed itself.  Anne said that this was rare to actually see the sun.  Then I stood in line to see the sun reflect itself in the cairn.  Ancient symbols were highlighted by the sun when the rest of the year they sit in absolute darkness.

9.24.18 We had one last ancient site to visit in Ireland – Uisneach which is not to far from Anne’s home.  So on the 24th, we called in the final circle of our viaggio of Ireland. While the Hill of Tara was the political center of Ireland, Uisneach is the spiritual center.   Anne had arranged that we had a private tour with a guide who regaled us with both history and irish storytelling.  From the top of the highest hill which is the center of Ireland,  the Guide showed us the alignment with all the major sacred sites of Ireland.  If you ever get to Ireland, this tour is a must.  Lots of good walking up and down and around.  Energy centers everywhere on that land.  What is the most famous feature on Uisneach is undoubtedly Ail na Mireann (the stone of divisions), known as The Catstone. It is also known as Umbilicus Hinerniae, Axis Mundi and the navel of Ireland. This huge glacial erratic symbolises Ireland, united in its divisions and it marks the centre of Ireland where the provinces came together.   More importantly to us is its connection to the divine feminine.  We laid on the rock and the ground around it for a wonderful delicious time, probably a half an hour at least.  First I laid back against the stone and then on the ground near it.  I felt and saw the earth open up below me and all this heavy black energy poured out of me.  I can still feel the flow out of me.  It was a cleansing by the Divine Mother and I can still feel how my old energies fed the Mother, as they left me ready to receive so much of new energies that I received there and in Glastonbury.

I consider this to be our Irish viaggio’s final blessing before we left for Glastonbury.  Thank you Ireland for sharing yourself with us.  In gratitude to Celine for planning the trip, for reminding us that this was sacred time for us to know our Sovereign Natures and for your intrepid driving over those ten days.  Thanks to all the B&B owners who housed us and fed us those great Irish breakfasts.  Thanks to my four companions who stood in the integrity of their Sovereign Natures as we all negotiated our personalities’ various needs.  Love you all!

And so our viaggio of Ireland came to an end as we returned to Anne’s home and prepared for our trip to Glastonbury, England with Kea as our leader.  We all walked Anne’s spiral one more time, knowing that we were now intertwined with it and the spiral that we would be building in Glastonbury.