Autumn Equinox: A ritual for reflection

As the days begin to fold in on themselves and the nights begin to stretch out their dark and wondrous ways, we have reached the final arc of the Celtic calendar, the Autumn Equinox. In the ancient Celtic calendar, the Autumn Equinox was one of eight points on the annual wheel of the year, mid-way between the festival of Lunasagh and Samhain (Celtic new year).Like with the other Celtic seasons, the marking of the Autumn equinox can be evidenced in the ancient stones and monuments of Ireland. In Cairn T at Loughcrew, for instance, the sun is welcomed into the inner chamber on the dawn of Autumn equinox, illuminating the back stone to reveal symbols and markings, bringing light to the ordinarily dark places. Which in many senses is what rituals do; they create a pause and point into which to invite contemplation and reflection, focus and intentionality to the places in our lives which we may rush over or abandon due to busyness or the pace of contemporary life.Like the Spring equinox six months ago, the autumn equinox is a time when day and night are in equal measure. At this time of year, as we enter the darker phase of the year, marking the turning with a ritual can help us embrace the change, and the gifts and offerings of the dark days ahead.So, as the year turns and we cross this autumnal threshold, we are invited to an inwards motion, a introspection and a re-gathering, calling us to bring ourselves into relationship with our own rhythms and needs, our own equilibrium and to take stock of our resources for the winter ahead.To support you, I have created the final ritual in the cycle of eight, beginning last October (with Samhain), all the way through the Celtic year, until now. For those of you who completed the Spring (Vernal) equinox ritual, you'll find parallels in the practices, with a focus on equanimity. In addition there is a new section on preparing you for the winter days ahead.I recommend you carve an hour for yourself, light some candles, cuddle up with your journal and a hot cuppa, and savour. 

You can download your free ritual guide when via my mailing list (and for those of you already on it- check your inbox!) Sign up here.

With love, may your day unfold with delight,Clare. xx.. 

A time to harvest your gifts: Autumnal Reflections and Seasonal Planner.

Autumn is on it’s way and I can feel the pull and the turning. I’ve been picking blackberries nearly every day. The bushes are literally bursting with their generosity, and now my freezer is too. Winter will be made all the sweeter by this season’s harvest.Speaking of harvest, around this time of year, I often run my Living Seasonally Autumn course. It’s a chance to reflect on the year so far and tune in with the rhythms of the seasons. It is particularly a chance to think of harvesting your own life, and then contemplating on what needs to fall away in order to create space for new growth down the line.The autumn equinox is not for another few weeks, when I’ll share the Celtic ritual for that threshold, but I am aware of the ‘back to school feeling’ at the moment. So many people have been speaking of transitions, and not feeling grounded.I decided not to run the course this Autumn. I am in the process of reconfiguring my online teaching, but that does not detract from the value of reflection and tuning in at this time of year- and I am feeling the gap too!I’ve been savouring the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer this year also, reading each essay slowly, and sometimes twice. It’s so rich and lyrical, and grounded. She speaks a lot of reciprocity and generosity as nature’s rhythms. The final paragraph sums up so much of my current thinking, which I am seeking to incorporate not only into how I share my gifts, but also the economy in which this operates.

‘The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honour our responsibilities for all that we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread out blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defence of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice and vision, all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.    In return for the privilege of breath’ 

Wow!So, for the moment, I have decided to offer you all the option of working through the Autumn planner for this season ahead, the planner that normally accompanies the course. Working through it will be a way for you to calibrate and connect with yourself, your gifts and your intentions for the next few months. There is space to think through your priorities and connect them to actions you might need to take.Then, if you feel called, and if you feel it is of value, I ask that you make some contribution to the work. This is a way for me to continue to offer my writing and planners in a spirit which feels generous and inclusive, and also a way for you to honour your own commitment and engagement in the content.If you are on my mailing list already, I've emailed you a download link, but if you are not on my mailing list, and would like a copy, please email me clare@claremulvany.ieAnd if would like to make a contribution, then here is a link to my ‘Paypal Me’ button. Thank you.Happy harvesting folks, happy reflecting.May your gifts of mind, hand, heart, vision and voice be offered. We need them now, so much.Onwards and with loveClare x..(I'm grateful to Orlagh O'Brien for her original design on the planner, which was the result of a gift exchange between us: her design services, for my coaching services— the gift economy in action).

Bealtine Ritual: Light your Inner Fire

 So, why a ritual?We are ancient and new all at once. We’ve evolved from generations and generations, who each laid the template for our being in the world. The seas, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the bees, the smallest of creatures to the largest, are all part of our ecological heritage which has enabled our being in the world. Our human ancestors then mapped the fields which feed us, paved the roads and gave us their wisdom and medicine. Rituals connect us to a time span longer than our life span- serving to remind us that we are stewards to this earth and have been offered the gift of living- right here, right now, in this privileged time of ours. The act of honouring ancient rituals brings us into conversation with our deeper, wiser selves- to our inner knowing and simultaneously to our place in the wider community of life, ecology and customs which surrounds us.In the Celtic Calendar, Bealtaine was a time of the year- one of the eight significant points in the Celtic Wheel- when the ritual of fire ceremony created a portal of celebration to mark the summer season- a time of fertility, light, growth and blooming. On the hill of Uisnech, the ‘naval of Ireland’, a place which in myth and ancient lore marks as the centre of our celtic imaginal capacities, and a meeting place of the provinces of Ireland, the Bealtaine fire is still lit, high on the hill. As the central fire rises, the flames communicate their celebratory announcement of summer to the communities across the land. Fires begin to simultaneously rise across the hills of Meath, and from there the celebrations spread, from province to province, from heart to heart.The Uisnech fire is a strong symbolic nod to the power of lighting our own inner fire. When we are ablaze with ideas and inspiration, fuelled with long summer nights and at least the promise of sunny days- our light can catch, like wildfire, spreading out into our families, our colleagues, our communities.So, this Bealtaine (1 May), take pause to fuel your own inner fire. I have designed a Bealtine Ritual to support you to reflect, to tune into what wants to blossom in your own life, and to symbolically light your own Bealtaine fire.Sign up to my mailing list to access your free Bealtaine Ritual. You'll be sent a link to access the ritual as well as a host of useful resources and planners.

>>Sign up here. <<

 Then, I invite you to join the Living Seasonally Summer Edition, which will provide you with practical, actionable tools you can apply right across the spectrum of your life to bring your ideas to life. For remember, when we all learn to share our light- as the writer Marianne Williamson has celebrated- we give others permission to shine too.This is the season to bring your ideas to life. Join me.Registration for the Living Seasonally Summer Edition is now OPEN. We start on May 10th.>>Find out more here and register today to avail of the early bird offer.<<Register before 11pm on May 5th for the early bird offer.(use the coupon: EarlyBirdSummer2018) Onwards, with light in our hearts and fire in our feet, one elegant step after the next.Clare x

Vernal Equinox Guidebook

We are travelling through the cycle of the year, traversing the quarter arc, the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, a time when day and night are in equal measure, an auspicious moment in the calendars of many cultures across the ancient world. This marker of time, this nod to the celestial orbit of the sun, was a moment to pause, to create rituals and traditions where stories of identify, ethnicity, religious and cultural roots could be told, weaving cohesive bonds through global evolving societies.With origins in Zoroastrianism, the Persian Spring equinox marks the New Year (NowRúz or NawRúz), meaning ‘New Day’, commencing the first day of the first month in the Iranian Calendar (Farvardin), a moment symbolically carved into the rock of the ancient site of Persepolis, where the bull (earth) and lion (sun) are duelling with equal strength. For members of the Bahá’í Faith, NawRúz arrives after an extended period of fasting, a deep inner spring clean, marked as a holy day- a commemorative shabbat- to honour the crossing of the calendrical threshold. The celebrations for the Vernal new year span as far as Kurdish lands in Turkey, across the Black sea and into the Balkans, across Iraq and on into Tajikistan and to Uzbekistan, where ‘Pisanka’ or decorative eggs are hand-painted, echoing the Easter orthodox tradition of decorating the ‘egg’ of fertility, a tradition which, in turn, can be traced down to Greece. We can travel West too, as far as Mexico, to the ancient Mayan pyramidal tombs of Chichén Itzá and witness the vernal sun lighting the side of the tomb dedicated to the snake god Quetzalcoatl; the light revealing a serpentinecreature descending to the earth; the mythic return of the God to bless the forthcoming harvest.So it may not be surprising then that this quarter cycle of the year was marked in Celtic lands, this time with a turning towards the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eoster, Ostara, to which ‘Easter’ can trace it’s etymological as well as pagan origins. In Ireland we can find alignment of the equinox sun most notably at Cairn T at Loughcrew, part of the Knowth Megalithic Cairns, when the dawn rising sun, lights up the Sliabh na Caillí, the backstone of the passage tomb, highlighting engraved and decorative sun symbols.In the ancient celtic calendar, the Vernal Equinox was one of eight points on the annual wheel of the year, mid-way between the festival of Imbolc (Celtic Spring) and Bealtaine (Celtic summer). While not one of the main festivals in the year, it is a time of celebration of the re-birth of life, a resurrection of visible growth, as the budding of leaves and spring greens arrived in ever increasing abundance as the season turns. It is a time of equal exchange between the light and the day, the ying and the yang, the masculine and the feminine, and it is a time of planting and getting back out into the land to do the work which will be harvested at the end of the Celtic year, at Samhain, six months down the line.So, as we move through this arc of time, let’s take some pause, to tune into our light, to re-calibrate our intentions, consider our relationship to equanimity and to actively plant what we want to harvest, with intention and with hope.I have designed a planner to help you do just that. It incorporates meditative and journalling practices alongside some powerful questions to tune you into your intentions for the season ahead.

Sign up here to my mailing list to download your free copy.

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Working with the dark receptive...

 .It’s three weeks into January. Christmas holidays seem like a century ago (right?!) And right about now the slump can hit. Slump= procrastination/ doubt/ fear/ wanting to give up on whatever it is you set out in 2018 with and instead curl up in bed. Familiar?First up, curling up in bed in a wonderful thing, especially with a good book or a cuddly person beside you, or both! I’ve a new found appreciation for naps, for naps are dreamtime and dreamtime is our subconscious/ unconscious helping us to figure out the unknowns in our lives and reminding us of the mystery. So, yes to naps, especially when we are only still 3 weeks into January and (at least in the Northern Hemisphere, and very much in West Cork, it is wintery outside and the hailstones still insist on coming at us horizontally).And secondly the challenge is that default dominant cultural mode is to do. Get things done. Do things quickly. Like many of us, I’m a do-er. I get a buzz from starting projects and catalysing shifts. I love to see ideas made manifest in the world. So, I know it takes conscious effort for me to tap into the power of being. To be. We often associate being with ‘not doing’, which can, quite frankly, put the fear of God into all the default do’ers out there -and, yes, there are many of us!The other morning I got up and immediately jumped into my ‘to-do’ list. By 11am something was really off. I felt out of sorts, stressed, worried. Then it clicked- ah, my ‘to be list’. You’d think I would have learned by now. But learning is a cycle too.I am actively working with the celtic calendar at the moment and in these weeks before Imbolc (early Feb), we are in the dark receptive cycle. In this phase, ‘to be’ is to be receptive- to be open to receiving- to be growing with intent.I am realising that there are two layers to this receptivity- the inner and the outer.The inner layer is an inwards orientation to our own bodies. It asks us, what is it like to be receptive to our own presence, to the space of our bodies, and to our breath. What is it like to be open to feeling the textures we come in contact with on a moment by moment basis, and how does it feel to be aware of our intrinsic connection to all beings and all things, purely by virtue of our being-ness. To be is to be enough. That is baseline. This is the actual default of our lives, and yet we cover it up with busyness to safeguard ourselves from not feeling like we are enough.The outer later is the external ‘being-ness’: how we show up in the world around us. ‘To be’ in the dark receptive cycle is to be willing to give time to those parts of our life which are still in germination or gestation; to be engaged with the world as a receiver of knowledge, emotion, experience, grace and then to express this receptivity through a trust that life is forever unfolding, always, just as nature does.And so, with the remembrance, I return to my ‘to do’ list with a calmer breath. Suddenly the ‘to-do’ is put in perspective. I cross off some of the things which I realise are not urgent and return to the things which will help me to engage with the full presence of the day’s receptive unfolding.PRACTICESo, during these weeks, here is a really quick practice for you which could radically alter your day:As you start you day, begin with your ‘to-be’ list and only then write your ‘to-do list. This way you will be making room for what is essential and important, plus you’ll have a way of prioritising, especially when it comes to longer term goals. The urgent will suddenly seem less so. Try it for a few days in a row and notice how different your week is…JOURNAL PROMPTS:And here are a few journalling questions for you:What part of your life is in gestation - if could be an area of personal life or business? And how can you attend to it with the care and support, as if you are nurturing the very beginnings of a tender sampling? ..Learn More about Intentional Living and the Celtic CalendarIf you are interested in learning more about the celtic cycles and using the wisdom with in your own life and business, Living Seasonally, The Spring Edition, is open for registration. We start on Feb 3rd. We will be actively looking into how we refine our intentions and cultivate nurturing inner and outer habitats for our ideas, projects and lives to grow...COMING SOON! I’ll be sharing a beautiful Imbolc ritual with you all towards the end of this month- so watch this space. If you are not on my mailing list already, hop on over there, add your contact details and the ritual will be sent directly to you.… Want to work one-to-one with me? Clarity Sessions is one month of powerful attention, tools and support tailored just for you. Find out more here.

Living Seasonally: Spring Session

 It is really only now that I feel like my year is beginning. As the season starts to shift into longer and brighter days, I feel ready to get going. Ideas which were planted months ago are starting to take shape, and more seeds are being sown. Emerging from the winter, there is an energy of growth around; an energy that needs support, fostering and nurture.I am soon to launch the Spring cycle of Living Seasonally, and I must say I’m excited- because it is exactly about that- nurturing ideas, fostering community and supporting people to find what is really  bringing them alive right now.This will be the third time I have run this course, and by now I am getting a sense of what people really gain from it. They gain new perspective I see, and it provides a structure for thinking through ideas, reframing challenges and plotting a map for making their visions tangible. But what it also offers is a tight time frame- we look at the next season ahead, and ask what vision we have of ourselves for this chunk of time.So often I find when we dream, we dream of a distant future. I am all for dreaming but sometimes we also get addicted to the dreaming, and there is a blockage from drawing the dream down into daily reality- right here, right how. Plus it can be hard to do it alone, so gathering with like minded people, and sharing perspectives and insights can not only accelerate the process but make it clearer, and more fun too.The course is online, over 8 days. Shared through video, audio and written medium will be a host of visioning and planning tools on a private online learning platform. There is a ‘Living Seasonally’ Spring planner to go with the process and participants are given access to a private facebook group following the course, where we continue the connection and conversation. Interested?  You can read more and register for the course over here. We start of Feb 10th and it will run until Feb 17th.Would love to have you on board!Clare xx

Being led through a major transition through Clare's Seasonal Planer was a joy - artistic, beautiful, simple yet highly effective in its approach. It helped me to kick-start working on my new projects. I was looking forward to the vidoes every day, also for the community of likeminded women through the FB group, the sharing, the safe exploring of openness. For weeks the files were a great help to keep me on track and still are.Clare in her wonderfully down-to-earth way is a coach you can trust to guide you with focused, gentle kindness. I am looking forward to the next segment.Esther Moser, Autumn 2015

Living Seasonally Winter Session

The months swing around. The seasons come, and go again. As the days here in Dublin get shorter and the nights longer, I am preparing for the winter.There are practical things, like buying a new blanket for my bed and stocking up on woolies; and then there is the mental shift, understanding that the darkness has something to serve, for in the dark the light is born.It is only really in latter years that I have started to understand the darkness more; an understanding which has been augmented by appreciation of the ancient rhythm of the celtic calendar, itself underscored with the truth of constant change. Tuning into this seasonal pull and pace is a way, I find, to steady myself and connect me deeper to the natural cycles of life. I find it a beautiful thing, for nature knows when it is time to bud, then bloom, and it knows so instinctually when it is time to rest.We resist so much of that, with our electric cities and the constant murmur to ‘do’ and push at pace.I have come to think of the seasons as powerful metaphors, offering us questions from which to explore our own currents, visions and purpose. The turning inwards of nature offers the questions of, 'what is wintering in your own life?', and then, 'what wants to be seeded?'.But winter is a time too for a slower germination.I remember the first bulb I planted. I was about 6 or 7 years old and was given a hyacinth in school. But in order for it to germinate I had to keep it in the dark, for what seemed like an eternity. I hid the pot under a bookshelf in my classroom but every so often would peak a glance, staring into the darkness for signs of life. I was doubtful, very doubtful. ‘How could something grow in there?’, I wondered.But the conditions for growth have a mystery to them, and little did I know back there that darkness was growth’s aid.Then one day, kneeling down of the cold classroom floor, and scooting further under the bookshelf to get a glimpse of the plant pot, I spotted it. A green tuft popping out of the clay, edging towards the light. I’ll never forget that hyacinth. It turned out to be purple and had the most magnificent evocative fragrance. All born in darkness.The winter is a time to turn inwards, to let our own hyacinths come to their gradually life. It is time for us to honour our own wintering, as we honour our own growth. It is time too to warm our hearts.All of this; this wintering, this honouring, has led me to develop  this coming session of ‘Living Seasonally’. Over the course of 8 days, there will be a chance to gather online, prepare for the season ahead, turn inwards and trust our own rhythms. There will be time too to warm the heart- with poems and the sharing of stories. And time to find a sense of rest and renewal through meditations, journal practices and creative prompts. I’ll be sharing some seasonal recipes as we all learn to nurture ourselves, and others, from a place of connection and wisdom.This is living seasonally for me.We will be live from 4th- 11th November. I would love for you to join me.Registration is now open. Head on here to find out more and if you have any questions please get in touch.Until soon…