Oilithreacht Olann (WOOL Pilgrimage)

Oweynagat Cave (County Roscommon), Loughcrew (County Meath), Baurnadomeeny Tomb (County Tipperary)

Artistic Collaboration of Cynthia O’Hern and Maria Tanner Cohen.

A triptych journey through the medium of felted wool across sacred sites of Ireland.

Ginidiú Cruthú, Oweynagat Cave

(Germination Creation)

It is from the fecund, wet darkness that all things arise. The stuff of soil and womb. We are conditioned to think of darkness as folamh (empty). It is not. It is the necessary slow, nurture before the bursting forth.

And so, it was that we found ourselves called to the depths of the cave of Oweynagat as the place of genesis for our Oilithreacht Olann (Wool Pilgrimage).

We slid and crawled our way into the damp earth. Vulvic rock swallowing us in the wet folds of its undulating walls and sodden floor. Senses deprived of light and sound save for the squelch of our boots and rasp of our breath as the air thinned with descent. It is not only the air that is thin in Oweynagat, but also the veil to the Otherworld. A cave of transformation. A night spent inside was a warrior’s rite of passage. It is the birthplace of Queen Medb. Home of the fearsome Morrigan. Entrance to the underworld. A potent portal into the mythic imagination of our ancestors.

Within this tangible darkness of Oweynagat hovers Ginidiú Cruthú (Germination Creation). Hollow form within hallowed cavern holding the golden glow of germination as hairlike sperm emerge from the blackness and gather in the crevice of its woolen seed. It is a form of beginning, birth, becoming. The earth’s faighin (vagina) nourishing our imagination’s faighneog (pod/shell). Curious that vagina and pod as Gaeilge (in Irish) share the root word: Faigh. Two concepts that hold space for beginnings and the agency of creation. Such agency held within these words as ‘faigh’ is also the verb: to get, to find, to be able. To get, to find, to be able for the growth of the fertile darkness, sin é.

Ginidiú Cruthú, the germination of our creation.

Claochlú, Loughcrew Cairns

(Transformation)

From the deep dark earth of Oweynagat, we traveled eastward and skyward to the cairns of Sliabh na Caillí (Hill of the Cailleach) at Loughcrew in County Meath to activate the second vertex of our triangular Oilithreacht Olann (Wool Pilgrimage) across Ireland. East to County Meath. Contae na Mí, as Gaeilge (in Irish), with mí being the modern spelling of Midhe (‘middle’), the fifth province of Ireland. ‘Midhe was…the navel through which this reality was connected with the realms above, below, and beyond. It was as much an interdimensional province as a geographical one.’ (Magan, Listen to the Land Speak).

Thus it was to Midhe/Mí/Meath, to the ‘middle’, indeed, that we sought the Claochlú (transformation) of our form to embody the Mí aspects within the trios of our collective psyche: birthLIFEdeath/maidenMOTHERcrone/bodyMINDspirit. We envisioned our glowing woolen faighneog (pod) of Oweynagat burgeoning into a new life form. The pod divided and multiplied, twisted and unfurled to form an otherworldly animalistic creature, an ilchruthach (shapeshifter) to be offered to the ultimate mother goddess, the Cailleach, on the hill of her namesake. To shape and to shift, we did in material and mind.

Squint your eyes and you may see a raven’s skull, the Morrígan’s shapeshifting form. Fitting as this creature was born out of her cave in Oweynagat.
Cock your head and it becomes more bovine than bird. The bó (cow) sacred animal to this land and in the context of cosmically aligned Loughcrew draws associations between the earth, the otherworld, our galaxy as in Bealach na Bó Fionn (The Way of the White Cow aka The Milky Way) of which the goddess Boann of the River Boyne gave body and name to.
Ask your 4 year old nephew and he may say ‘a silly looking sheep.’ Spot on, mo bhuachaill, for it was from the hair on the sheep’s back that this creature came to be and this leg of the journey felt not unlike ram’s butting heads at times.

But to go east is to go the direction of Air, communication, and new growth. And the hurdles of this leg shapeshifted, themselves, into stepping stones, not unlike those that fell from the apron of the Cailleach as she created the earthen mounds that comprise hills of Loughcrew.

At the foot of the hill, we supped sweetly an initiatory breath from the blossoming hawthorn tree and began our ascent. Woolen work and gear piled on two wooden planks hoisted to our shoulders, we looked like servants carrying our queen through the streets. A ceremonial procession it became and the sanctity of the ascent was sensed in body, mind, and spirit.

At the summit, we positioned our woolen shapeshifter at Cairn S which is aligned with the setting Bealtaine sun and atop the Hag’s Chair kerb stone which is aligned to perfectly view the Pole Star in the North. This, of course, was not before the Cailleach stirred up the winds and knocked over any attempt we made to add extra dimension to the form. She is not known for making things easy. As if she were saying ‘keep it simple, my dears, or I’ll knock the whole thing back down the hill myself!’ Lesson learned and our persistent patience was rewarded with a magnificent sunset under which we could make our shape shifting woolen offering to her.

Scáil, Baurnadomeeny Tomb

(Shadow/Gleam)

In the cyclic triplet, we must inevitably return to the tomb and so it was to Baurnadomeeny we journeyed to complete our inverted triangle of the divine feminine womb.

Baurnadomeeny is the anglicized name of the Irish of Barr na dTuaimíní. Barr: top Tuaim: (grave-) mound/ burial place, so ‘top of the burial mounds.’

On the southern uplands of Mauherslieve (Mother Mountain), we laid our woolen form to rest at the mouth of the wedge tomb. A return to the ‘mother’ in a most literal and figurative sense.

From animalistic creature at Loughcrew to carcass at Baurnadomeeny. Our felted wool pod transformed into its final iteration of soft shroud. A hollow form, an exoskeleton shed for the final release of what was. With a strong, sacred bovine- like tail to swat away the residual energy that clings to the full release. The tertiary iteration in the cyclical nature of life: birthlifeDEATH maidenmotherCRONE bodymindSPIRIT pastpresentFUTURE
‘The Hag in our native traditions…upholds the seeming paradox that life can only be known in the context of death, and the death she brings is always in the service of life,’ (Sharon Blackie, Hagitude). With hawthorn at heart center, our woolen form pulsates with the light of potential that is yet to come from old ways of being having been put to rest.

As we documented the work with the setting sun emblazoned in the sky, a fitting motif for the conclusion of our endeavor, we were gifted with two gorgeous rays of light beaming down upon our woolen work forming an upright triangle, the symbol of the divine masculine. A most perfect balance to our journey with the inverted triangle of the divine feminine. Scáil in Irish means shadow, shade,darkness, obscurity. But it also holds the meaning of brilliant reflection, gleam or tint. And so we end our Oilithreacht Olann (Wool Pilgrimage) with Scáil, with soft, woolen shroud to hold space for the gleam within the shadow.