Urraim Snaidhmthe (knotted Reverence)

Derreenataggart Stone Circle, Beara Peninsula, West Cork.

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

Ancient Site Activation/ Temporary Art Intervention, September-October 2022.

Installation 1

To braid is to create relationship. To strengthen bonds between beings and fibers. In sisterhood, I braided Maria’s hair into the landscape of our elder sister, the Cailleach. An entwining of the fibrous strands of physical being with the mythical strands of lore.

From Maria:

‘On the last misty morning of September, I made tracks from my home in Co. Waterford toward the Beara Peninsula. Traveling deeper into Co. Cork along its south westerly edge, the landscape began to change its robes, a vivid richness of autumnal umbers and ochres, lilacs and the red of berries created the sense of having entered a wild and ancient dreamscape.

The landscape of the Beara is a living archetype soaked through with power and mystical secrets of prehistoric Ireland. An Chailleach Bheara, the great elder woman reigns there. Her rivers and streams keen the song lines and stories from the gnarled, knuckled mountains of Miskish and Knockgour and whisper them into the mouth of Bantry Bay.

The landscape is a rolling theater of ancestral dreams and it's there I spent three days with artist and friend Cynthia O'Hern creating at the Derreenataggart stone circle.

Working with ancient sites on the land is undertaken in the spirit of utmost respect. We leverage the soft expressive power of sheep's wool as a medium to tell a visionary story.

With our hands poised for countless hours in Anjali Mudra, praying hands, wool was rolled between palms and felted into a pure soft cord, umbilical in its likeness.

With the stones we bound our wild prayer and we braided her hair, Maiden Mother, Crone a ritual passage into our own mystical unknown.’ - Maria Tanner Cohen

Installation 2

Snaidhm- knot; bind, tie, entwine; join, unite

‘With intention, we bound our bodies to stone. A bodyfasting, (akin to the ‘handfasting’ between couples)- a symbolic betrothal of sensory body to sensual land. An act of resurrecting the latent energy held within the stoic remnants of ritual rock and a reviving of the relationship and lore between earth, body, and cosmos.

A surface reading of place- a stone circle situated on a plateau outside Castletownbere with a 360 degree view made dramatic by the rising Caha Mountains in the North to the great expanse of Bantry Bay to the South.

An energetic reading of place- monolithic stones intentionally set within the Cailleach Beara’s fecund soil organized in circular geometry that are in equinoctial alignment with the Sun and mirror the landscape marking the cardinal directions. Masculine stones set within the feminine earth. An arrangement in stone that allows the Sun’s Productive Rays of Summer (masculine) to penetrate, if you will, the Circular Space of Winter’s Restful Darkness (feminine) on the Equinox- the time of year that illuminates the necessary balance of energy, the shift from light to dark and dark to light. This held within a landscape that is rife with legends of the Cailleach Beara- the wise woman, divine hag, sovereignty goddess of the land, bringer of Winter’s darkness. She, herself, is said to be a great equalizing force- conjuring the winds and sea when life becomes stagnant and cursing the man who overexploits nature’s balance. She is an archetype of a cultural worldview that held nature and the power of the elder feminine sacred.

This is the energy of interconnectivity that we bind our heart’s center to. Bound in softness to stone with Urraim (reverence/respect) to earth, body, cosmos, and an Cailleach.’ -Cynthia O’Hern

Installation 3

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