Samhain. Summer’s End in Old Irish. The completion of the current year, and beginning of a new one, in the Celtic Wheel of the Year. A season of harvest and celebration as we bring in the “crops” of the past growing season and gather with our families and community to offer thanks. It’s also a season of closer connection – traditionally called a “thinning of the veil” – with the spiritual dimension and those loved ones and guides and Divine Beings on the other side. Cultures in the ancient and current Celtic world throughout Europe and North America have honored this season as sacred for all of these reasons, for eons. And they have learned to connect and call in and draw down the gifts and power of this season, moving forward on the Wheel.
Samhain began for me this year in September, the month of my birthday and beginning of my own new year. For months before, I felt a deep draw and compulsion to spend my birthday in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. I’ve been there briefly in the past on vacation; this drawing felt different – it felt like I was being called to a passage and crossing of a threshold, and that the place, the land, and the mountains of Tennessee, were to be part of this crossing.
I have had this kind of experience before, and I have learned to follow the prompting. Compelled and driven to go to sacred ground, to have open a sacred experience – an experience that was simultaneously transcendent and transformational, grounded and embodied in both eternity and time, in mySelf and the Divine. In the North Visitor’s Center at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, beside a mountain creek in Vail in my home state, in a sealing room in the Manti Temple, the veil thinned and heaven and earth united, and time and eternity opened, and I was brought into direct, visceral, embodied communication and communion with the Divine.
So my husband and I drove to Tennessee two days before my birthday. As soon as we crossed into the western Cumberland Range foothills, I began to feel it. The land was drawing me to Her. I could feel Her presence more strongly with every passing mile.
Ancient. Primordial. Deep. Vast. Limitless. As timeless and eternal, and ever present as the land itself. A part of the ancient Central Pangean Mountains that connected through areas of what is now Scotland, Ireland, the Little Atlas of Morocco, and Africa, The Smoky Mountains are a section of one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been designated as a United Nations International Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site. The Smokies are sacred to the Cherokee whose native land they are. They are sacred to people who live in that region now. They have a mystical presence that is deeper than their famous smokey blue haze, rising from the vast forest and streams and lakes. This is the land that had been calling me for months.
Deeper and more vast than the mountains themselves is the presence of the Divine there – the Goddess of the Land. Sharon Blackie, the English Irish Jungian psychologist, mythologist, and author talks about Her as the Cailleach, the archetypal goddess of Sovereignty in Scotland and Ireland, whose blessing and care made, shaped and protects the land and the wild things in it. It is Her blessing, protection, and partnership we need to be fruitful and abundant in the land in which we live. Sharon writes:
“Before there was the Word, there was the land, and it was made and watched over by women. Stories from almost every culture around the world tell us that once upon a time it was so… In Scotland and Ireland, the Cailleach – the Old Woman – made, shaped and protects the land and the wild things on it. In these and other Celtic nations, Danu gave birth to all the gods and was mother to the people who followed. Women: the creators of life, the bearers of the Cup of knowledge and wisdom, personifying the moral and spiritual authority of this fertile green and blue Earth.” 1
The further east we traveled, the stronger Her presence became. Once we passed Knoxville, in the foothills of the Smokies, She was all around me, in the very air we breathed – in every place we visited, the resort where we stayed, and especially in the land itself. As we walked and toured and spent time in the land of those ancient Smoky Mountains, I felt Her presence begin to walk with me. She stayed and walked with me, every minute for those seven days. She walked with me at my pace, paused when I paused, and took all the twists and turns and forks in the road that I took. As She walked with me, I began to have an ongoing inner conversation with her, about topics and questions that had been on my heart for a long time. She met me as an equal and enlightened me with insights and connections and intuitive knowing, all opening from deep within my body, a profoundly recognized inner voice. In those seven days, I gained answers, clarity, and direction that I had sought for quite some time. I released burdens I had yearned to release; and had needed that experience so that I could. And I finally felt at home in the land, in a way that I have not for over 12 years.
In those seven days, through walking and talking with Her continuously, I learned how to recognize, call in and connect with Her presence and guidance anytime and anywhere.
And it all was as natural as breathing.
And it was as natural as breathing to bring this experience with me. For a woman of Celtic heritage, who has felt like a stranger in a strange land in the place in which we currently live, going to Tennessee and walking with the Goddess of the Land was a remembering and reconnecting of the sweetest and deepest kind; it was also a reconnecting with a part of mySelf. I felt immediately deeply at ease and relaxed, and at one with the land of the Smoky Mountains, at one with that ancient, primordial, vast, limitless place; and immediately at ease and at one with the Presence in the land of the Smokies – with Her vastness, Her depth, Her timelessness. This was an experience I had been yearning for without consciously knowing it. Through the experience of walking with the Goddess of the Land, I remembered and reconnected, and learned how to embody in an even deeper way, my own vast, limitless, eternal Sovereign Feminine Soul.
1. Blackie, Sharon. (2019). If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging. p.5. September Publishing
Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET is a women’s trauma healing therapist and pioneer in healing the Patriarchy Core Wound™, whose work sits at the interface of depth healing, women’s spirituality, and Western wisdom traditions.
From her professional beginning as a marriage and family therapist over 3 decades ago to the present, Debra has found that a woman’s Heroine’s Journey to her True Self to be the path of greatest joy, fulfillment, soul-satisfying love, and highest-level contribution. She is passionate about guiding ambitious, high-achieving women through their Heroine’s Journeys of the inner healing of trauma and the Patriarchy Core Wound, that blocks them from the fulfillment they hunger for, to transformation and reclaiming their Sovereign Feminine Souls. Women become free to create the deeply joyful, rich, and meaningful lives and marriages they Desire, while making the highest, Soul-level contributions they are uniquely meant to give the world.
Debra is the founder of The Sophia Women’s Institute and works with clients worldwide. To learn more, visit The Sophia Women’s Institute.
