Blessing By Jenna

06/15/2024

With National Museum of Ireland – I just got recognized as one of their rising fans! 🎉

05/09/2024

Freedom is requisite to the bindings one perceives; the bindings of society; to be free is to either shun all binding cords or accept the tolerable ones and wear blinders that our society only removes when it is convenient.

03/16/2024

Annual reminder that St Patrick did not persecute pagans. Snakes are not an idiom for pagans. St Patrick's story's are likely based on a number of Abbots who controlled the monestary at Armagh. The Irish tribes existed alongside the monastic Christians for hundreds of years. There was no forced conversion.

03/16/2024

Here is a brilliant account by Giraldus Cambrensis from 12th century of the lack of snakes in Ireland. Also love how he notes that we didn't have tortoises, scorpions or dragons either!!

"Of all sorts of reptiles, Ireland possesses those only which are harmless, and does not produce any that are venomous. There are neither snakes nor adders, toads nor frogs, tortoises nor scorpions, nor dragons.

It produces, however, spiders, leeches, and lizards; but they are quite harmless. Hence it may be said, or even written, pleasantly, as well as with historical truth: “In France and Italy the frogs fill the air with their croakings; in Britain they are mute: in Ireland there are none.”

Some indeed conjecture, with what seems a flattering fiction, that St. Patrick and the other saints of that country cleared the island of all pestiferous animals; but history asserts, with more probability, that from the earliest ages, and long before it was favoured with the light of revealed truth, this was one of the things which never existed here, from some natural deficiency in the produce of the island."

Text: Michael Fortune
Source: Giraldus Cambrensis: The Topography of Ireland
Translation: Thomas Forester and Thomas Wright

03/16/2024

Always the best resource for a real connection to Ireland!

Reliable Resources for Exploring Your Connection to Ireland, with a Native Irish Draoí (Druid Priest)

02/09/2024

So some deep, over caffinated thoughts this morning while I watch the sun rise..
I am deep diving on Jesuit missionaries in China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...and I also happened to catch a video that ranked the size of celestial objects from smallest to largest (earth is definitely at the very small end) and I got to thinking about religion and science. Religion attempts to define our place in the universe and answer questions like why are we here, and where do we go when we die. And for thousands of years, humans have also looked to the sky and wondered what is there. These two concepts are not really very different...humans have always known their time here is short, and impermanent so we base our lives on a feeling that there is more to it than this. "Religion" in it's base form helps define those thoughts and provides a "path" in the very incomprehensible enormity of the universe. In the 1500s most people thought of earth as the center of this vast universe. They still tried to explain the cosmos, but it was a smaller view. We now realize how small and insignificant we are in the vast reaches of time and space. That knowledge can cause a person to give up on spiritual pursuit, I completely understand that path. But, for me, knowing that we know so very little about even the physical universe makes the spiritual concepts that much more real. If all there is in the end is a return to the dust of the universe...sign me up! I am more than happy to have any part of me float off as cosmic dust! And as for the part that isn't physical, well it's fairly evident there is a huge energy in motion around us. I'll be fine if that's where my soul returns. I know there are many layers to the physical and energetic realms. We have so much more to learn, and each generation us only allotted a bit of time to participate. So I can be both science minded and look for explanation in the physical, but also realize there is so much we can't explain that the spiritual or energetic has yet to be discovered.

Happy Friday

02/01/2024

Absolutely wonderful project. Inaugural podcast on Brigid, with two amazing people! If you're interested in Irish folklore stay tuned for more!

https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaIreland?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Wikimedia Community Ireland

01/29/2024

Interesting prompt for this week's essay...I am looking forward to diving into the readings. And yes, I did finish the damn bibliography...
The resources provided this week included an interview with a History of Medicine expert who discussed the use of social, primary sources to understand attitudes about medicine. We also read about these concepts in specific regions. For this week's short essay, choose a medical concept (disease, illness, balance, or treatment) and compare and contrast how that medical concept was expressed in two different historical civilizations. Your choice of medical concept is the primary concept for this short paper. What do we learn about the influences of other historical lenses (government, economics, religion, social structure, resources, technology, and language) by using medicine as a historical source?

01/26/2024

Additional Imbolc resources from authentic Irish practitioners.

https://irishpagan.school/imbolc-challenge/?fbclid=IwAR0pOHiOEqc8k9YiK3FelfBTa59gaB1M0kzZMgudoGpi4vvHUPrlIPFZvdo

Join the IPS 5-Day Imbolc Challenge for personal growth and spiritual renewal with daily prompts, meditation, and community sharing.

01/26/2024

Life Rites and bespoke ceremonies