Postcards from The Hedge - Dispatch 1
“ The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight.
These old storytellers were the true magicians. They were the living libraries, the keepers of legends and lore. They were humanity’s truest friends and most reliable guides. They had to go down deep into the seeds of time, into the dreams of their people, into the unconscious, into the uncharted fears, and bring shapes and moods back up into the light.
And I think that now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing around us, and with no beliefs by which to steer our way through the dark descending nights ahead. I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love, and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawoken sense of wonder. We need them to be whole again."
From A Way of Being Free by Ben Okri
Dear Friends,
As I sit with Ben Okri's powerful words and contemplate ways of being free I am reminded of what has been emerging over this past year at our Hedge School. Born at a crucible moment - this Scoil Scairte is a place of shelter and belonging that supports a community of global citizens ‘to live, with eyes wide open and heart set alight ’.
We have witnessed many moments of mystery and wonder at the Hedge School so we have decided to gather some of the golden threads woven here for you in the form of Postcards from the Hedge - a regular newsletter with recommended resources and rabbit holes. We want to share what we are learning and unlearning at the Hedge School about being human. We want to introduce all of you to the incredible guides and torchbearers who together, are bringing ‘shapes and moods back up into the light.’
We live in deep time at The Hedge School. What the late great John Moriarty called ‘Once-upon-a time-Time’. Our curricula is guided by the cycles of our natural world and rooted in the ancient touch points of the Celtic Wheel of the Year and other indigenous ways of knowing.
In the old days Hedge School's emerged at secret places in Ireland. These were places at the edge where the codes of indigenous wisdom were kept alive. They were spontaneous places of learning and unlearning in the wilds of nature. Oliver Cromwell called them trainings in ‘superstition, idolatory and the evill customs of this Nacion’ in 1655. Hedge School's were real places of refuge and belonging for a people struggling to find sovereignty in the midst of overwhelming oppression.
Our Hedge School offers an invitation to decolonize our imagination by exploring the structures of power and privilege that are part of our own lives and the systems we live in. We walk with the questions that exist at the cultural intersection of being, belonging, place, interconnection, activism, imagination, wellbeing, indigenous wisdom and the living world.
Hedge School has a participatory ethos that includes a beginners mind. If you resonate or are simply curious, we invite you to feel welcome in this like-hearted community. We have gathered a global family of kindred spirits who care about the future. We know that we were made for these times and as one of our Hedge School guides Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) shares
“In order for the new to come the old has to be unmade and we have to trust that we were made to walk that transition”
At the Hedge School we are ancestors-in-training curious about other ways of being and becoming, knowing and living. We draw on many intelligences that range from mythic to magic and mycelium. We are interested in building new competences and capacities for the future of this place we call home. Our very first Hedge School guide futurist, Mark Gonzales shares
“Human beings have the talent power and resource potential to rapidly build things that can bring us together like we have never seen before in human history..”
Now as we approach Rising up Rooted our Imbolc Spiral which begins tomorrow on February 01 my heart warms at the magic, courage, love and fire that our guides are bringing to the Hedge School. I am looking forward to welcoming Pádraig Ó Tuama, Emma Langford, Áine Tyrrell, Auntie Delta Kay, Manish Jain and Zeenie Summers Sá Rú Mí to the fold. I hope that you can join us.
Hedge School has a participatory ethos that includes a beginners mind and is stewarded by our faculty which includes myself, Maria Scordialos and Vanessa Reid (from the Living Wholeness Institute).
If you resonate or are simply curious, we invite you to feel welcome in this like-hearted community. I am delighted to curate the first of these Hedge School care packages for you. We will continue to make these with guest contributors as we go, so watch this space...
beannachtaí
Kathy and all at the Hedge School
Imbolc Spiral at the Hedge School
Meet our Guides
Hedge School Highlights
Watch some golden moments from our Hedge School guides who remind us to mind ourselves, each other and this place we call home.
Recommended Resources
Dreamtime by John Moriarty
Dreamtime ReVisited Anu Pictures
Hedge Schools National Folklore Collection of Ireland
Pat McCabe Woman Stands Shining
Mark Gonzales Wage Beauty
Carol Black Schooling the World
The Living Wholeness Institute Maria Scordialos and Vanessa Reid
Here are a few listening pieces to mind you this week:
Listen | Unlearning, Sutainable Living and Gift Culture with Manish Jain and Rob Hopkins. Manish is a guest at our forthcoming Imbolc Spiral at the Hedge School
Listen | Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments
Bluiríní Béaloidis is the podcast from The National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, and is a platform to explore Irish and wider European folk tradition across an array of subject areas and topics. Host Jonny Dillon hopes this tour through the folklore furrow will appeal to those who wish to learn about the richness and depth of their traditional cultural inheritance; that a knowledge and understanding of our past might inform our present and guide our future
Listen | CTZN Podcast with Mark Gonzales
CTZN is having conversations at the intersection of wellbeing and justice. We’re not afraid to ask hard questions and have radical dialogue about politics and patriarchy, white supremacy and worthiness. And we’re serious about showing up for one another and taking action for the wellbeing of everyone.