the Unf*@k-withable Cauldron Within + the Luminous Net of Us!

the Unf*@k-withable Cauldron Within + the Luminous Net of Us!

This is the last pod in this 13 month cycle of A Year and a Day, it’s an ouroboros moment deep in the liminal in the initiating energy of a New Moon in Aries. More about that here from Dr. Mindy Nettifee [https://substack.com/profile/4934951-dr-mindy-nettifee]. Reflecting back at the extraordinary feast of episodes and offering [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/archive?sort=new]s these past 13 months and feeling paradoxically celebratory, noticing a festive feeling wrapping around me at this closure moment like a richly woven shimmering tapestry created by so many of us. Like the all-is-possible moment before the birthday candles extinguish in a mighty wish laden exhale. This is an exhale moment. A place of thanksgiving, acknowledging, hunkering and an incantation to women’s voices, women’s bodies and our shared cyclicity! Ripple this onwards… So in this snug and heartening…again paradoxical closing, is an opening as wide as a canyon and grander than this little podcast. A sun-soaked canyon of women now; visioning, grieving, planting, raging, resisting, feeling, screaming, witnessing, tending, resting, being, mending, whirling, singing, weeping, holding and, yes, welcoming other women, weary women, into the folds of what is becoming, in spite of the mortifying world events where everyday offers yet another unprecedented layer of mortification. Big forest inhale, and long sea-change exhale for this exit and arrival. 13 months ago Elizabeth Jane Lovely [https://substack.com/profile/64402060-elizabeth-jane-lovely] joined me for the first new moon emergent collaboration [https://open.substack.com/pub/allheredwellfree/p/a-maiden-and-her-magical-allies?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] in this AYAD cycle and we danced our trance-dance with Vasalisa, and the mighty Baba Yaga. Now, for this galloping new moon in Aries ending, she has returned to play! And we invite you to join us. We offer you this liminal journey, through our sisterhood soaked in the archetypal feminine becoming, and burnished in the pyre of holy witch women to a remembering of the Unf*@k-withable Cauldron within each of us. ‘Tis a sovereign place we know, feel and live from…each arriving and pitching a sturdy yurt in our own time, becoming inevitably a luminous net of power with ourselves and with each other that holds and murmurates us into the wild unknow, alchemical journey together. Thank you to those who became paid subscribers this cycle! Deep bow. What’s next you may be wondering? A Year & a Day will take a moon cycle of fallowness and a summer of sporadic showers (watch for an amazing episode with Perdita Finn of Take Back the Magic [https://open.substack.com/pub/perditafinn] ) and re-constellate in it’s next iteration just beyond the horizon. Stay tuned! Thank you for your bright listening, Tracy A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Elizabeth Jane Lovely [http://www.elizabethjanelovely.co.uk] is an artist whose experimentation encompasses the written form, oral storytelling, ceremonial chant, and spell speaking, through ritual interaction. She is a Creative Arts Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University and an English Cunning Woman of sorts. Her specialisms within and without the academy are centred around how we can cause kindly disruption through enchantment, the story as the activist, the essentiality of our bodily state as gateway to sacred creativity, and everyday imagination as change maker. She currently lives in the United Kingdom in a tiny county that does not always exist, regularly having to negotiate with the brambles and briars to access the rest of the human world. All Our Voices These 13 Moon Cycles Adriana Forte [https://www.youtube.com/@thec-lab/videos]| Anna Lisa Clifford Gold | Brianna McInerny [http://www.briannamcinerny.com/] | Carter McKenzie Cielle Backstrom [https://www.ciellebackstrom.com/]| Cybele [https://www.youtube.com/@cybele1111] | Debrae FireHawk [http://www.debraefirehawk.com/] | Elizabeth Jane Lovely [https://thefaerytaleapothecary.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search] Emmaleeya June | Erin Tenny | Jackie Singer [http://www.jackiesinger.co.uk/] | Judith Tamara [https://judithtamarah.com/password] | Julie Hill Kerri Kirnan [https://www.etsy.com/shop/RiverPrairieHerbs] | Lara Burrell Martinson | Laura Rovi | Marisa Goudy [https://mythismedicine.substack.com/] | Nina Smock Shelly Sharon [https://healingthemotherwound.substack.com/] | Stasha Ginsburg [https://thewildremembering.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search]| Steph Ament [http://www.root-words.com/creative-work] | Tracy Chipman [https://www.tracychipman.net/] And many thanks to Tim Britton [https://skep.com/britton/] & Kyle Gilmer @ Residual Audio for sound editing Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

connections of trust + voices of courage & depth

Hello, hello! Welcome to A Year & a Day and this the 13th full moon episode in this 13 month cycle bowing to the archetypal cycles of women’s lives through story & collaboration. Oy! We have arrived into the 13th and final month of this podcast cycle. Welcome here for this springing, full pink moon pod in balancing, love-spelled Libra. More about this sweet full moon threshold from Dr. Mindy Nettifee here. [https://drmindynettifee.substack.com/p/the-leap-we-can-only-take-together?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8n1n0&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email] This episode is so full of heart, it’s brimming in buckets, spilling in all directions. These stories were shared with me by three women; Morag MacNeil (Barra), Mary MacLean (Grimsay, North Uist) & Mary Ulph (South Uist), all tradition bearers from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. From 1996-2004 I was blessed to connect with them and other Gaelic speaking tradition bearers from the Outer Hebrides with The Hebridean Folklore Project. [https://www.tracychipman.net/the-hebridean-folklore-project] Morag, Mary and Mary all gave their permission for these stories to be shared and I have had deepest honor of carrying these stories for thirty years. I offer them here to you, in their memory, and for their lives devoted to language, culture and their island homes. As a collection these stories weave a non-linear cloak of power with the energies of the Maiden, Mother, Magah and Crone and the transcendent land of these western isles. Two of the stories are retellings. One I will read to you*. Each of these stories were shared with me in a space of relationship and trust; eye to eye, heart to heart & mind to mind. Each story holds the heart medicine of those connections, the precious fluidity of their the oral transmission into my ears then, and now into yours. This is magic stuff here and I’m so honored to share these three wee tales in this last full moon story offering for this AYAD cycle. So settle yourself and welcome the voices of these three women, telling women’s stories. We have one more pod left in this cycle, so come gather with me and Elizabeth Jane Lovely [https://substack.com/profile/64402060-elizabeth-jane-lovely] for our new moon, emergent collaboration finale! Bottomless thanks for your bright listening… agus moran taing (and many thanks) to Morag MacNeil, Mary MacLean and Mary Ulph. Love in the ongoing, Tracy Thanks for reading A YEAR and A DAY! This post is public so feel free to share it. ** read from Borealis Mundi - Resting in Place, Loss & Grace [https://bookshop.org/p/books/borealis-mundi-resting-in-place-loss-and-grace-tracy-chipman/2335cfc26f1e8555?ean=9798218232535&next=t] *** thanks to Kyle at Residual Audio for audio editing support. kyle@residualaudio.com **** image taken from Eriskay 1997 Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

an ending within endings...

Hello and Welcome to A Year & A Day! We are here, in this the most disturbing, profound and challenging time collectively (and perhaps individually) of our lifetimes. We are here. Here we are. How is your body, your heart, your mind? So, so, so much has been playing out within and without…and here we are in this fertile and feral fluster-cluck of endings. In this 13 month odyssey on A Year & a Day, we are in the 12th month of our journey exploring the seasons of women’s lives. This is the last episode celebrating the Crone phase. Joining me in this new moon in Pisces emergent collaboration are three brilliant women living their gifts in the wide arc of cultural rhythmicity, feminine empowerment and story; Adrianna Forte, Stasha Ginsburg and Marisa Goudy. I am so humbled by this episode, by us! As I listened to the final edit of all our voices woven together I wept…this work, our voices = deep meaning for me! I am honored and so grateful for their generous offerings and for our collective ‘yes!” to do the work we are each doing, alone & together. This teeny-tiny microcosm of an ending also coincides with the new moon opening in the last degrees of the final sign of the Zodiac cycle! And here in the northern hemisphere, we are in the final days of winter. This is a Matryoshka doll’s worth of endings and… the Spring Equinox is only days away! Mighty, unprecedented beginnings, re-patternings & shift-shapings await! Just pause and take that in….dream into this new moon portal and then, in a few days take up the reigns and ride! I highly, highly recommend reading/listening to this new moon post from Dr. Mindy Nettifee [https://open.substack.com/pub/drmindynettifee/p/all-the-wishes-that-float-just-on?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] - every word, the braiding of all the layers of this complex threshold and the sustaining fluidity in between. In the past month I reached out to Adrianna, Stasha and Marisa and invited them to; Tell me about crone energy through your lens, this could be a story and or a sharing of your relationship with her as both lived experience and as an archetype? Enjoy their responses. Below more about their work in the world, the poems read and pictures from the magic of fresh March snow and northern sunshine. Thank you for your bright listening and all love, all ways! Yours in the ongoing, Tracy Poems: Cailliach Bheag an F’hasaich | Little Cailleach of the Wild ‘Duair bha an f hairge mhor‘Na coille choinnich ghlais,Bha mis am mhuirneig oig,Bu bhiadh miamh maidne dhomhDuileasg Lioc a Eigir,Agus creamh an Sgōth,Uisge Loch-a-Cheann-dubhain,Is iasg an Ionnaire-mhoir,B’ iad siud mo ragha beatha-saAm fad ’s a bhithinn beo. Chuirinn mo naoi imirean lurach linAn gleannan grinn Chorradail,Is thogainn mo chrioslachan chnoEadar dha Thorarnis.’ That time the great seaWas a grey mossy wood,I was a joyous little maiden,My wholesome morning mealThe dulse of the Rock of AgirAnd the wild garlic of ‘Sgōth,’The water of ‘Loch-a-Cheann-dubhain,’And the fish of ‘Ionnaire-mor,’Those would be my choice sustenanceAs long as I would live. I would sow my nine lovely rigs of lint (rows of flax)In the little trim glen of Corradale,And I would lift my skirtful of nutsBetween the two Torarnises. from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, 1900, p. 284 [https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/cg2/cg2109.htm] The Hag’s Call She is the essence of weather itself.She is the windtearing violently at the roof, squealing on the old gate,calling down the chimney.She is my fear taking human form,calling into me tonight -unexpected -seeking lodgings.Dressed as Karalalam,she torments me’til, at first sight of day,she flees. Let me out to the wind after her.out of my concrete skin,out of my iron skull,because there’s a fierceness in methat desires the edge,the tempest,the change.Marrow stirs in my bonesreviving the awe of youthin my flesh,endingthe inertia of winter,reopening my sword-sharp eye. Glaoch na Caillí ’S í an uain féin í. ’S í an ghaoth í ag réabadh cheann an tí, ag gíoscáin ar gheata críonna, ag glaoch anuas an simné. ’Sí m’eagla i gcolainn dhaonna í ag bualadh isteach chugam anocht - gan choinne - feis na hoíche á lorg aici. Gléasta mar Karalalam, cránn sí mé go dtí go dteitheann sí ag lóchaint an lae.. Scaoil mise amach sa ghaoth ina diaidh. amach óm chraiceann coincréideach, óm chloigeann iarainn, nó go bhfuil fiantas ionam a shantaíonn an t-imeall, an t-anfa, an t-athrú. Smúsach ag smúrthaíl im chnámha a athdhúisíonn scéimh na hóige im bheo, a chuireann deireadh le stolpacht an gheimhridh, a athosclaíonn mo rosc rinnghéar. by Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, an Irish-language poet living in Kerry [http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-guest-editor/december-2011/1150-ceaiti-ni-bheildiuin-poetry)]. This is her own translation from the original Irish. Guest Collaborators: Adriana Forte is a cultural architect, philosopher, and writer dedicated to bringing the cyclical nature of women’s minds into collective awareness. She aims to create spaces for provocative thinking, reflection and transformation through dialogue, writing, workshops, retreats, online group work, and one-on-one mentoring. Above all, she’s a mother to two amazing girls, a partner to an awesome guy, and an apprentice gardener living off-grid in a community in Australia. To tap into some of my written work, please visit https://theclab.substack.com/ To watch some of the conversations I’ve had that brought the cycle into culture, visit: https://www.youtube.com/@thec-lab/videos [https://www.youtube.com/@thec-lab/videos] | Stasha Ginsburg is a transformative language artist, song tender and storyteller in Boulder, CO. She is the creator of the Wild remembering —formerly the Wild matryoshka. Stasha assists others in rupturing narratives and disrupting the old story with embodiment and mythos. @the.wild.remembering IG TheWildremembering Facebook.com/thewildremembering Substack.com/thewildremembering Marisa Goudy is a myth worker, a story healer, and a writing coach. She’s the author of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic and the host of the KnotWork Myth and Storytelling podcast. Marisa studied at the University of Galway and got her BA in Irish Studies and English at Boston College. She received her MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. The land itself is Marisa’s greatest guide and solace. She grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts (traditional and ancestral land of the Wampanoag) and now lives in the Hudson Valley (originally home to the Esopus-Lenape) with her husband and two daughters. www.marisagoudy.com, www.KnotWorkStorytelling.com IG: @marisagoudy @knotworkpodcast FB: https://www.facebook.com/marisa.goudy/ [https://www.facebook.com/marisa.goudy/] https://www.facebook.com/knotworkstorytelling [https://www.facebook.com/knotworkstorytelling] Substack: Myth is Medicine And with enormous thanks to Kyle Gilmer at Residual Audio. kyle@residualaudio.com [kyle@residualaudio.com] Cailleach image source unknown. A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What We Women Desire Most...

Dear Bright Listeners, A medieval feminist tale and poem written by men! What? Yes, so says history anyway! If you are not familiar with the story of Dame Ragnelle and Sir Gawain, welcome here! Come set your weary bones down and have a listen. If you are familiar, or have vague memories flashing back from high school lit class, you are also welcome. This 6oo year old tale and the question it begs are still powerfully & absolutely relevant today - strangely and sadly too. Thank you for opening your ears and eyes here for this full blood & worm moon story, on A Year & A Day - a 13 month journey through the cyclical seasons of women’s lives; archetypally and literally from maiden, to mother, to mage to crone. We are winding up Crone season with this tale. A story which was born from the 15th century poem, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle [https://metseditions.org/read/49MyYpRH2ZvaUg6llivLljIbGqZaEGDY], which sprouted from an even older story - The Wife of Baths Tale [https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/geoffrey-chaucer/the-canterbury-tales/text/the-wife-of-baths-tale], from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century. Tis a worthy rabbit hole if there ever was one! The original tale (The Wife of Bath) challenges the double standard, the socialized and conditioned belief in the inferiority of women. It also sets out to create a defense, upholding women's sovereignty and opposing the conventions of the time, drawing attention to the imbalance of power in a male-dominant society. Sound familiar? This was written over 600 years ago. Thank you for your bright listening! Please share comments below. What does sovereignty taste, sound, feel, look like for you, in your life? Please share! Things are moving and rising. Stay with your sovereignty. Stay connected with what nourishes and lights you up, and love, love, love up your peoples. Yours in the ongoing, Love, Tracy A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Sources: Crane, Susan (1 January 1987). Alison's Incapacity and Poetic Instability in the Wife of Bath's Tale. PMLA. 102 (1): 20–28. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: the Wife of Bath and All Her Sect. p. 75. image by Frank Lampard Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A Grandmother's Vision

Dear Listeners, Dreamers, Composting Wonders, The womb of the underworld is not hell, let’s restory that mistake of the intellect. Lay your body down, lay it down on the floor, ultimately all the way down to earth for reals, or through your fecund imagination. Let’s call in the Cailleach, the Crone of Winter’s rest. Give in, give it up, open it, shut down. Get still, like a stone, like a sun-sucked bone, breathing all your breath out. Pause. Become snow covered. Become a perch for a chickadee flooding clear air with song. Invite a passing owl to land, to lend a helping hand and dig in. Become a feast. Become good earth with the holy hat tricksters of decomposition; ectoparasites, protozoans and wily helminths. Or if fire is your medicine, strike a match, catch fire and blaze with the sun’s kin until there are only shards of char and smoked bones. Above you, as ever the bluest sky welcomes you home into the non-story beyond all stories. Welcome to a Year & A Day, our 13 month feast celebrating our cyclicity through the seasons of women lives and our changing, shapeshifting bodies! We are arriving into the initiation of Crone - the big D. Death. If this isn’t your scene, this post is for you. If you are down getting down with death - this post is for you! In the weave for this post, a true story from my grandmother’s end of life journey. From that sweet liminal straight to you. Also in this pod a reading of ripe words belonging to two beloveds, who when offered this prompt -My death will be…. picked up the crimson thread, courageously imagined in, and seeded their own inevitable death beds, perhaps catalyzing yours. Then (yes there’s more) a truly gorgeous response to the prompt from The Faerytale Apothecary : Elizabeth Jane Lovely [https://open.substack.com/pub/thefaerytaleapothecary]. And… all this playing out in the new moon in Aquarius, the start of the Year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese lunar year cycle, and a wildly generative astrological symphony of the watery deep, the old, old, and the spontaneous new who are conspiring to offer up the most exquisite of reincarnations. More about that from Dr. Mindy Nettifee [https://substack.com/profile/4934951-dr-mindy-nettifee] (Everything is Changing). And this from Marina Ormes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzoVGPf_01w]. Thank you for your bright listening and your powerful becoming! Tracy THANK YOU COLLABORATORS! Carter McKenzie (she/her) is a poet and activist, whose most recent collection of poems, The Book of Fire, published by above / ground press. Through imagined voices, often based on specific court cases, this chapbook is a remembrance and exoneration of the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act 1563-1736. Of the nearly 4000 accused under that law, 84% were women and girls. These poems are a bridge between the living and the dead. They serve as a way to grieve and understand our connection to those whom the forces of the Reformation attempted to erase, as if they never were. Cybele - My voice and music across airwaves is meant to evoke an altered experience and a subsequent deep introspection of my listeners. I take them to inner perches they may have never or rarely stepped out upon so that they can remark at vast and intricate landscapes within themselves that are oftentimes as yet undiscovered. I meander lyrically into territory that explores what Love really is in its most universally spiritual and also practically lived sense. Each of my shows is a tapestry that emerges through the process of quieting the intellectual mind such that the soul’s wisdom, one we all recognize as our own innately, can come through and speak. I seek to rekindle an awareness of the extraordinary treasure that we each truly are. Cybele’s amazing music and DJing here. [https://youtube.com/@cybele1111?si=QUuL-Gh6ODzfkluR] Elizabeth Jane Lovely is an artist whose experimentation encompasses the written form, oral storytelling, ceremonial chant, and spell speaking, through ritual interaction. She is a Creative Arts Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University and an English Cunning Woman of sorts. Her specialisms within and without the academy are centred around how we can cause kindly disruption through enchantment, the story as the activist, the essentiality of our bodily state as gateway to sacred creativity, and everyday imagination as change maker. She currently lives in the United Kingdom in a tiny county that does not always exist, regularly having to negotiate with the brambles and briars to access the rest of the human world. More here [https://thefaerytaleapothecary.substack.com/] and here. [https://www.elizabethjanelovely.com] A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks to Kyle at Residual Audio for sound supports; kyle@residualaudio.com [kyle@residualaudio.com] Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe [https://allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]