The Hedge School presents
Beyond the veil
An online trilogy of Samhain-inspired experiences
Sunday, Oct 22 | Oct 29 | Nov 5
7pm Irish | 2pm ET | 11am PT
The veils are thin.
The Crone is calling us to cross over into the darkness.
A rite of passage awaits.
Are you ready?
Winter is coming and as we slip into darkness in the northern hemisphere The Hedge School presents Beyond the Veil - a trilogy of online experiences in response to Samhain, the season of Death and Renewal. This ancient pagan fire festival has its roots in Ireland and shares similarities with the indigenous Mexican festival Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and went on to inspire Halloween and All Hallows Eve.
You are invited to join us for a deep journey of exploration through story, song, music and communal ritual. Beyond The Veil is a call to dive into the creative cycle of life, death and rebirth - the great trifecta at the source of all existence.
Join us over three consecutive Sundays, when we will gather at the place between worlds, where the Crone tends to her cauldron, stirring her sacred alchemical brew.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
— Carl Jung
This three-part alchemical journey is led by three carriers of Crone wisdom; Marian Dunlea (Jungian Analyst, Somatics Practitioner & Author of BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma), Riane Eisler (Systems Scientist, Cultural Historian, Futurist & Author of The Chalice and the Blade) and Vandana Shiva (Environmental Activist, Food Sovereignty Advocate & Author of Ecofeminism). We will also receive the musical gifts of Ceara Conway (Vocal & Visual Artist), Leah Song (Singer-songwriter, Poet, Activist) and Julianna Bloodgood (Theatre-maker, Vocalist, Performer).
Sunday, 22nd October
with Marian Dunlea; Jungian Analyst &
Somatics Practitioner
Sunday, 29th October
with Riane Eisler; Systems Scientist, Cultural Historian, Futurist & Author of The Chalice and the Blade
Sunday, 5th November
with Vandana Shiva; Environmental Activist, Food Sovereignty Advocate, Eco-feminist
In Ireland, the ancients were rooted in the seasons of the Earth and aligned with the cycles of the Cosmos. They marked these gateways with ritual and ceremony and bequeathed us with a calander map - the Wheel of the Year. The cycle starts at Samhain - the festival of the Dead. This is a time of hibernation and rest, reflecting the cues and clues of the natural world which draws deep within. The season of Samhain offers us a powerful initiation into a deeper mythic relationship with life and death, the cycle of Creation - the womb and tomb. This is a liminal time when the veils between this world and the Otherworld are thin.
You are invited to drop into the fertile darkness of Samhain with us and surrender to the spectral realms of Scorpio season. The Crone is the great gatekeeper of this portal and guardian of the threshold. She is the Grandmother, the Old One, the Earth Mother, the Wise One and the Mother of Bones. In Ireland she is known as the Cailleach, the divine hag. She is the Regeneratrix who ushers in the death medicine necessary for new life. This is a time of cathartic initation. As Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes in Women who run with the Wolves, the Death Mother or Cailleach teaches us the wisdom of the bones.
"Crone... the most dangerous, the most radical, the most revolutionary woman in existence. This old woman stands between the worlds of rationality and mythos. She is the knucklebone on which these two worlds turn"
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Witch’s New Year is a magical time where we are called to enter the cave deep within to purge and release all that rots and no longer serves us. It’s a time to tend to the cauldrons of incubation so that when the time is right we can regenerate and rise together.
At Samhain we remember the departed and honour those from whom we are descended - our ancestors. It is also a time that invites us to lay our burdens down and explore our shared future as ancestors-in-training.
this is for you if you are ready to
Connect with Samhain as an alchemical force of empowerment
Receive the wisdom of the Crone transmission for these times
Attune to the seasons and rhythms of the natural world
Embody the power of cyclical living and weave it out into our world
Experience the transformative power of darkness
Shed and release old patterns and programmes, like the Witch Wound
Dismantle oppressive systems and structures, within and without
Remember our ancestors and honour our descendants
Find encouragement and kinship in our global Hedge School community
Meet your guides
Kathy Scott | Host
Kathy is a cultural activist and creative entrepreneur dedicated to creating provocative experiences that animate the spirit of our times. Her greatest mission in this life is to nudge humanity forward by inspiring people to rise and lift each other up along the way. She is the creative director of The Trailblazery which was founded as a response to a need for deeper human connection and belonging in our world.
Marian Dunlea | 22nd October
Marian Dunlea M.Sc., IAAP, ICP, is a Jungian analyst and Somatics practitioner who has been teaching and leading workshops internationally for the past 30 years integrating body and soul. She is creator of BodyDreaming®, an embodied Jungian practice and is director and teacher of the BodyDreaming Training Programme. She is head of the BodySoul Europe training programme, sister organization of the Marion Woodman Foundation, where she is core faculty.
Riane Eisler | 29th October
Riane Eisler, JD, PhD(h), is the recipient of many honours, such as the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award earlier given to the Dalai Lama, and is internationally known for her groundbreaking contributions as a systems scientist, futurist, and cultural historian. She is the author of many books, including The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th US printing and 27 foreign editions, and The Real Wealth of Nations, hailed by Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu as "a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking," and Nurturing Our Humanity, Oxford University Press, 2019, co-authored with Douglas P. Fry. Eisler’s innovative whole-systems research offers new perspectives and practical tools for constructing a less violent, more egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable future. Eisler is President of the Center for Partnership Systems, which provides practical applications of her work.
Dr. Vandana Shiva | 5th November
Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist from the University of Western Ontario. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. Dr. Shiva combines the sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism. Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia. Forbes magazine has identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Dr. Shiva has received honorary Doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo and others.
what people are saying about hedge school
With live music performances by
Leah Song | 29th October
Leah Song (born Leah Smith) is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, and activist known for her role as front woman in Rising Appalachia, with her sister Chloe Smith, incorporating sultry vocals, rhythm, banjo, guitar, ballads, dance, spoken-word and storytelling into her work. Her music is based in the traditions of Southern soul and international roots music. Song engages in social activism and is involved with environment, food justice, human rights and prison reform. She has been a speaker at TEDx in Asheville, North Carolina.
Ceara Conway | 22nd October
Ceara Conway is an independent, award-winning contemporary vocal and visual artist. She creates experiential compositions and performance works that utilise song, testimonies, texts and forms of visual art (photography, sculpture and video) to explore social issues such as migration, the ecological crisis and feminist concerns. She has a specific interest in the conceptual use of traditional and contemporary lament as a way to explore how we, as individuals, communities and societies express and experience loss and grief in response to social and humanistic issues.
Julianna Bloodgood | 5th November
Julianna Bloodgood (USA/Poland) is a vocalist, movement artist, performer and teacher whose work includes anthropological performance research and she has traveled the globe in search of different cultural perspectives on the body, voice and the ritual of performance. Many of the performances she creates are made as rituals, meant to be shared experiences of transformation and healing. The core of her work is a detailed practice in the relationship between body and voice and how this can be brought to performance and composition. She calls this research Embodied Voice Practices which utilizes somatic therapy techniques and focuses the output in vocal expression, which is a deeply healing and transformative process. Julianna specializes in the research and practice of vocal lamentation, giving shape and voice to our pain and loss, which has become a through line in all of her work. She continues to research the technical, historical and contemporary aspects of lamentation in different European countries, performing and teaching internationally. Julianna was a leading actress and singer in the award winning and critically acclaimed Polish theatre company Song of the Goat Theatre from 2009-2019. She is an associate artist with Bru Theatre of Ireland, Theatre MITU of New York City, and Honey and Dust of Slovakia.
We have newly commissioned a Samhain-inspired Immram Immersion {guided meditation} by Kathy Scott in collaboration with composer Brian Crosby. The immrama are infused with Irish cultural motifs, images, words and phrases with an immersive ambient soundtrack to enhance the experience of this ancient culture and language in a unique embodied way. These practices blend the realms of science and spirit and navigate the terrain of psyche and soma - mind, body and soul.
Check out the teaser below…
More About Hedge School
Hedge School is a virtual homeschool rooted in Ireland that invites people around the world on a collective learning experience to find our shared humanity and resource our possibility as global citizens. Hedge School is an Irish drum beat with a global resonance. Back in the 1700’s, Irish education was outlawed and the process of learning took to the land. Hedge Schools gathered wherever people could find shelter; along hedgerows, fields, mountains, by rivers and under the stars. Out at these wild edges, our culture was kept alive...
