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Reweave Your Own Myths

Join us on August 1 for HARVEST: An Online Lughnasa Retreat for Writers and Creatives: marisagoudy.com/lughnasa-writers-retreat

OUR STORY

This tale of druidic magic and epic battle tells of how the Sons of Mil, the first of the Gaels, came to Ireland and divided the land with the race of the gods, the Tuatha Dé Dannan. At the geographical centers of Ireland’s spirit and power, Uisneach and Tara, you’ll meet the great poet Amergin, the three goddesses who gave Ireland its name, and the Good God Dagda.

OUR GUEST

Brian Walsh is a professional storyteller who specializes in Celtic Mythology and folk tales. He is also a clinician and educator in a hospital setting, where story listening is at the heart of his work.

Brian’s has told at diverse venues including the Toronto International Storytelling Festival, the Parliament of World Religions, Pubs, University settings, and around the campfire under the stars.

He lives and works in Toronto, Canada, on territory covered by the treaty 13 and the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant — an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy, the Ojibwe, and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Find Brian’s upcoming gigs at brianwalsh.ca and on instagram @brianwalsh.ca.

OUR CONVERSATION

• What it means to tell stories of Ireland here as members of the Irish diaspora on Turtle Island: If gods only had resonance on one island, they would not be gods, they would be genus loci (protective spirits of a place).
• There is time and place for specific stories, and then there is telling according to what the moment requires.
• This is a Bealtaine story: according to the Irish Annals the Sons of Mil arrive in Ireland on the eve of festival: Thursday, April 30 1699 BCE
• Elements of fairy lore come from this story - the balance and reciprocity required for co-existing with the Good People.
• Role of memorized poetry of Amergin in Brian’s telling of the story. The rosc pattern in poetry is a sort of circular sacred repetition.
• Stories can be used to raise people up or to weaponize. This story could be heard as a tale about the right of conquest, or as a caution about the power of keeping the balance between peoples, between the human and the divine, between the people of the earth.
• Asking audiences to sit with you in the ambiguities of these stories. We can’t make the gods into moral figures by contemporary standards.
• The trope of the worthy opponent enables both sides to ask when the work of a battle has been done and when it is time for reconciliation.
• Brian’s personal story of coming to this tale and to Irish mythology: a search for roots beginning as a young teen that led to a sense of home. How the Canadian wilderness of northern Alberta the landscape of ancient Ireland in a way that the current Irish flora and fauna do not.

Our Music

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy:

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Our Story

Meet Achtan, a druid’s daughter and mother of a future king, Cormac, son of Airt. This is a story of sovereignty, of spellwork, and of our deepest entanglement with nature. Bees, wolves, and horses also play a magical role in this tale.

Our Guest

Karina Tynan is a psychotherapist and the author of two collections of Retellings from Irish Mythology: TÁIN : The Women’s Stories offers a new lens on great Irish epic, Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), and SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology, which are linked through the presence of the goddess in her many manifestations.

Karina's interest in Irish mythology began almost 30 years ago through the Bard Summer School which commences each July on Clare Island, Co Mayo, Ireland. Each year the summer school explores an Irish myth for its contemporary relevance.

You can purchase Karina’s books at bookshops across Ireland. International readers can buy them directly from the author: https://karinatynan.com/

Find Karina on Instagram @irishmythsretold

Both books are illustrated by Karina’s daughter, artist Kathy Tynan, kathytynan.net & @kathy.tynan. The books are designs by Karina’s niece, Ruby Henderson Insta: @ruby.hndrsn

Our Conversation

• Our need for magic, and the way we know that magic when we meet it: magic wakes you up.
• Ultimately, this is a powerful conversation both about growing and about parenting - both in the ancient times we imagine and in this difficult contemporary moment.
• Sacrifice (whose roots mean “to make sacred”) particularly, when it comes to parenthood
• The five spells of druidic protection are inspired by the original sources and Karina's imagination
• Irish myth’s tradition of the geis (pl. geasa): a cross between a curse and a taboo. Modern examples of geasa: the ethics of psychotherapy; the way humans - or, the richest humans - are transgressing the limits of our planet’s ability to support life with the addiction to fossil fuels
• Our fear of our own children’s fragility, including fears of giving our kids an eating disorder or pushing them to suicide
• The importance of fathering - both for partner and child
• The role of rhythmic stories, fairy tale, adventure, and romances in the development of children
• The role of ritual, particularly coming of age rituals which get people to wake up and be alive to what happens in life.

Our Music

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

Work With Marisa

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa....

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Find the in-depth show notes, get special supporter-only podcast episodes, and stay connected between seasons.

Subscribe to our on our Substack newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

Our Story

Did Saint Patrick have a wife? Irish folklore of the 18th and 19th centuries declared he did. Sheelah was celebrated on March 18, the day after Saint Paddy's Day.

KnotWork host Marisa Goudy imagines a one-sided bedtime conversation between the couple. The story also weaves in two other women of the Celtic Otherworld - Cailleach and Sheela Na Gig.

Our Guest

Martha Wright is the perfect combination of maternal and bad-ass, she devotes herself to helping people embrace their inner divinity. She is a vessel and facilitator of divine energy - whether that is a healing session, her own writing, or leading a class or retreat. As you’ll hear in our conversation following the story, Martha has apprenticed as bean chaointe, the Irish tradition of keening and as a shaman.

Find her at marthawrightshaman.com or on instagram @Marthawrightshaman

Our Conversation

• Sheela Na Gig: a figure of a woman with a skeletal head holding her vulva open wide that was carved into medieval churches and castles, a representation of death and rebirth
• Approaching a story of Ireland’s patron saint with a kind of holy ambivalence - responding to the call to the ancient, often hidden divine feminine, and also the beauty and the scholarship of early Irish Christianity, but acknowledging that Catholicism became such a punishing, diminishing force in Irish culture.
• Reclaiming the tradition of divine coupleship as the full humanity of the people in the story. They are both spiritual beings and as sexual beings
• This story was inspired by the famous “Pillow Talk” scene from Ireland’s greatest mythological epic, The Táin.
• Intimacy, at the emotional and at the physical level.
• Marisa borrowed from Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, particularly its refrain “I bind unto myself this day”
• The tradition of celebrating Sheelah’s Day seemed to emerge in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly in the Irish diaspora, as a way to extend the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations one more day (and to avoid the Lenten abstention for one more day)
• Martha as bean feasa (wise woman) and bean chaointe (keening woman), as shaman, as emerging author who has uncovered so many layers of her own identity in the process of telling the story that is truly hers to tell
• “Wildness” and what that really means in our modern world.

Our Music

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

Work With Marisa

• 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at