Tomb

Enter the tomb in her mountain. If she accepts you and allows you to see the tomb for what it is, you will not return to this world unchanged.

Culture of origin

The Celts do not seem to have been the first to be aware of or build a relationship with the Cailleach. Although the word, ‘Cailleach,’ is a Gaelic one, it derives in part from a Latin loan-word … it would make sense, if the Cailleach were native to the British Isles and truly Celtic, that her name would not owe any part of itself to the Romans. If she were Celtic, but not native to the Isles, would there not have been evidence of her among the mainland Celtic tribes to the south (as seems to be the case with Danu)? As of yet, I have not read about this being the case. So my question is, from which culture does awareness of the Cailleach come? In the Isles, prior to the arrival of the Celts, is a time of sporadic population that goes back a while – an article on Wikipedia about prehistoric Britain says Homo sapiens has been present at various points for ‘tens of thousands’ of years. This leaves us with plenty of options to choose from ….

Revelation, a question of morals and ethics

If a magical creature, one of legend or the lore of (y)our ancestors, were to reveal itself to you, would you tell others; or would you keep the revelation to yourself?

Angry people

This may not have much to do with the Cailleach; but it is an issue that has recently come up in my life, and since it blindsided me more than any storm ever has, and has to do with an ending, maybe it does have some remote relevance to the Cailleach. Either way, I would post two little pieces of advice here ….

One, in life there are going to be angry people who will set out to hurt you. Sometimes these people are simply confused about something, and are lashing out. Sometimes they are simply trying to distract themselves from their own inner torment by trying to bring pain to others. Neither situation excuses the behavior, it simply explains it. How you react to this will be for you to choose, not them.

Two, don’t make the mistake of letting your own negative reactions to such people blind you to those in your life who would not deliberately hurt you. In doing so, you award a victory to someone who would hurt you, and a loss to someone who would not. And you run the risk of doing to someone else what was just done to you – perpetuating their anger is not the solution.

Time

I was doing some reading the other day, when I read about a group in Scotland who were attending a workshop of sorts, and got to talking about medicine wheels. While I am not aware of this concept being native to the Isles, at least not in the the way it was described where I read, this caused a breeze to blow through my grey forest, bringing down a few interesting leaves of thought. Close in shape as well as function to some medicine wheels (accepting that some, but not all, medicine wheels align themselves to astronomical events) are places like Stonehenge. As with medicine wheels, these places in the Isles seem to have been built up and used for different purposes by succeeding generations.