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the Unf*@k-withable Cauldron Within + the Luminous Net of Us!
Friday, April 17, 2026 • Duration 42:41
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.
Reflecting back at the extraordinary feast of episodes and offerings 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 joined me for the first new moon emergent collaboration 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 ) 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 Lovelyis 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.
And many thanks to Tim Britton & Kyle Gilmer @ Residual Audio for sound editing
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe
connections of trust + voices of courage & depth
Wednesday, April 1, 2026 • Duration 45:03
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.
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.
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.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
an ending within endings...
Wednesday, March 18, 2026 • Duration 01:03:14
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 - 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?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
What We Women Desire Most...
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 • Duration 27:12
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, which sprouted from an even older story - 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,
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
A Grandmother's Vision
Tuesday, February 17, 2026 • Duration 29:25
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.
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 (Everything is Changing). .
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Maker of Dreams
Sunday, February 1, 2026 • Duration 30:40
Dear Dreamers, Tenders, Keeners, Revolutionaries… and any and all who land here - you are most welcome!
Ah, just an fyi in advance, there will be swearing that follows, it’s medicinal and appropriate. These are swearing times. How are you feeling, doing? It’s Imbolc - yay we made it through the heartwood of winter and right on schedule a stiff warmish wind is stirring the trees, gently, gently waking the tucked-in roots as i type.
My dream for myself and us all, right now, is that we can practice; meeting life on life’s terms, live in the discomfort, the not knowing, and to what feel what we are ready to feel, showing up where & when, tending to what is each of ours to to tend to, together. It’s a f**k-ton! We can hold paradoxical energies and as fascism spins it’s toxicity, remember to open your hand to new beginnings, to the awe of ______ (fill in the blank) or use mine which is, the radiant glittering fresh snow, to the birds singing nearby, and to the cycle of life reminding us rebirth & renewal are inevitable. The cycle of life also says that death and decay are inevitable. And this so is my practice, to sit in the discomfort of what is presenting in my life, in the collective, give myself space and time (both often not available, and both strangely a privilege) and move with and through, sometimes with the support of allies…and this can really, really suck. I also must do my best to stay open to expressions of connection, care and aliveness. Okay, that was a lot….here’s to us, to holding a slippery center with all that’s inevitable, tending, resisting, loving, dreaming, witnessing, taking action and resting (don’t f*****g forget this folx!!!) to the best of our us’ness.
So, if you are still here, thank you! Would you like a story? Open a window or your front/back door and say, YES! to the day, or night, invite the story in, light a candle, get cozy, pour yourself a cup of tea, pause into the weight of your body, let your attention settle into the bowl of your pelvis. Now, breath into that hallowed hollow and notice the hum of quickening energy there fully held and protected in the cave space of your womb (whether you have a physical one or not!) Now, invite the story into this well feathered nest.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
a Tearing Tenderness + a Way Within
Saturday, January 17, 2026 • Duration 29:58
Hello Still Tender Ones,
Again, Big deep loving breaths. Here. Now. And later.
This might be the most potent, powerful and profound pod in this series…my whole body is still ringing from Carter’s audio offering. Wow…and if the story I shared on the last full moon stirred and touched you in some way, this deeper dive through Carter’s art and voice is a feast. If you are reading this before you listen to this episode a few things to know; these notes will refer to two previous post. The first is the story of the Cailleach at the End/Edge of the World which I told at the last full moon.
The second is a short episode just before this one you might want to listen to as an Introduction to Carter and this pod.
Thank you for your patience as I navigate the audio editing obstacles. My desire is to continue to offer the emergent collaboration podcasts on A year & a Day, and I just don’t know how that will work out. Until it does I shall be pivoting and making lemonade and swearing, maybe crying and for sure employing all my creative resourcefulness to find a way through. And the recording quality might suck…that will change.
And…starting with this post I’m asking now for dedicated patrons for upcoming episodes. If you would like to sponsor any of these episodes taking us through the end of this 13 month cycle. Suggested donation is $250/episode.
Upcoming pods in need of sponsorship, email me to arrange this tlchipman@gmail.com
* 2/1 - full moon in Leo
* 2/17 * new moon in Pisces
* 3/3 - full moon in Virgo
* 3/18 * new moon in Aries
* 4/1 - full moon in Libra
* 4/17 * new moon in Taurus
Thank you, thank you! And if you are a paid subscriber here on Substack, thank you! This experimental, experiential project is way under funded, and it’s still fully free to anyone who’s keen…and your support is wildly meaningful and helpful.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
when everything comes undone
Thursday, January 15, 2026 • Duration 17:50
Big deep loving breaths. Here. Now.
As I drop a few words here this cold, cold northern morning, holding my body and my heart, i am acknowledging the terrible-terrible and the tender-tender in deep play in me, and in the collective of us. i am tending to my human and remembering i am also part of the larger, unfathomable something…
Everywhere there are words spilling as everything comes undone. Words as pleas, as poems, as calls to action, as prayers and as accusations. Words as sepulchral spin, and words dug from stars’ poetry and clay’s prose speaking to the what is, and what might be, in these unpresented and tangled times.
I am mostly speechless, except to coo with my sweet black tabby, Lady Fern. Speechless except for the sounds of sobs, that i am allowing to gush and spill, and radiating permission for you, for us all to do the same. i am mostly speechless like the silence that only the frozen northern lands know. Is this too the Crone’s voice?
This short pod post serves to untangle and bring present a few threads.
* Acknowledging us, together and alone at this time in the ongoing, in the deep dark of not knowing and in the colossal ruptures near & far.
* a reminder to give yourself and others space for feelings to come, and feel what you are ready to feel and that we can (awkwardly, unwillingly & messily) practice sitting in the discomfort of what is present. This I know from my own awkward attempts for many, many decades…and the acknowledgment that when i can feel and lean into the intense discomfort of being human, there is almost always, eventually, a clearer space and path on the other side toward action (even if it’s a nap) and an easing of discomfort. Those of you that have worked with me know the energies of alchemy; downward, inward, upward & outward.
* to share a short Cailleach story from the Isle of Harris, Scotland,** and
* to introduce my dear friend Carter McKenzie who’s deep emergent collaboration will be shared on the new moon episode. Due to tech stuff I will not introduce Carter in the podcast and the recording quality may be extra raw…I am exploring options to do better with this - thank you for your patience and please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
the weaver at the edge of the world
Friday, January 2, 2026 • Duration 31:58
Hello, hello! Welcome here to this full wolf moon episode of A Year & a Day. Wishing you and your loves all the blessings possible as we move into a new year.
To ease and peace.
To fire in the belly and birch syrup in the heart.
May the World Tree, Yggdrasil root in your pelvic bowl, rise through your heart and flower 10,000 blossoms in your mind. May we feel, see, hear & know what we are ready to feel, see, hear & know and may we each dig deep for courage as an antidote, a balm to all the fear, sorrow and grief. May our grief be clean.
Thank you for your bright listening!
Tracy
** image by Elena Ray
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.
TRE® is a universal somatic ( body-based ) healing modality & practice that can help release tension, stress & trauma from our bodies by activating a shaking/tremor response. This tremoring release process is inherent in all mammals, though has often been conditioned out of humans’ experience.
In addition to helping our bodies release stored and unhelpful tension in the body, TRE® also has a calming and positive impact on the nervous & polyvagal systems.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Welcoming the Unwavering Presence of Crone
Friday, December 19, 2025 • Duration 43:51
Welcome, at long last to Crone Season on a A Year & A Day! To the new moon in Sagittarius and the threshold of the Winter Solstice… or Summer Solstice for you in the southern hemisphere.
If you’ve been journeying with us these many months exploring the seasons of women’s lives through storytelling & emergent collaborations honoring the Maiden, Mother and the Magah phases - thank you for your precious attention here. Thank you for your bright listening!
As we move into full-on winter here in the north & middle of America, the cold bite and dynamic silence of Crone is alive. She is the foundational weaver of life and cultures throughout time have bowed to her power and her unapologetic truths. In some culture she IS the land. Her names are many, including; the Morrigan, the Cailleach, Skuld, Baba Yaga, Dhumavati, Kali, Yamauba, Hecate, Nyx and Baubo.
She embodies lived wisdom born of the tender culmination of one’s life experience and the robust maturation of the magic of the Mage/Magah phase. The Crone’s initiating experience is death, in the way that menarche/first blood is to the Maiden, birth is to the Mother, and Menopause is to the Magah.
Her season offers us rest, contemplation and if we are willing sweet releasing of the material and the worldly. The Crone can open us into greater connection with spirit and the delicious dreaming of winter. The veil between this world and the next thins for the Crone, and for us in Crone season, if you are willing to soften and slow down. She is Mighty, Mighty!
Wherever you are in your cyclical journey, what might leaning into the gifts of the Crone feel and look like for you now?
Joining me on this new moon in yummy, big vibe Sagittarius is my dear friend, and healing guide Cielle Backstrom. I listened back to our recording I’m blown open in awe of the richness that rises up from this emergent collaboration. Cielle’s wise gifts truly opened the field of her Crone’s unwavering presence..
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
We have one more pod left in this cycle, so come gather with me and 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.
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.
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.
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 |
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.
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.
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 and here.
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.
Today’s tale is a retelling of a story i’ve been carrying for three decades. The Maker of Dreams was shared with me long ago by Scottish storyteller, David Campbell. ‘Tis a tale from the Isle of Skye and offer the energetics of the sharing of the old ways, from the oldest ones, with the new, with young life. This story is one of two of stories in me that makes reference to a time when the ancients revered the gentle, nourishing grace of the mighty Deer People.
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.
To order Carter’s extraordinary book, The Book of Fire, please email her directly at cartermck@gmail.com.
***
Carter McKenzie, speaking about the Cailleach, the Crone….
“I’m so glad to be joining Tracy for this focus on the Cailleach for A Year and a Day. Thank you so much for having me, Tracy. I’m going to begin by reading a poem that I wrote in response to Tracy’s telling of the traditional tale of the Cailleach in her cave at the end of the world.
I Am Not Alone Here
What stirs beneath my closed eyes
but a desire to attend to this
passage of dark and light.
Patience.
The moon’s face waning again, the soft shadow
erasure shaping light, my 62 years
in this field of earth and sky.
***
I believe in the possibility of a return of self
like the Cailleach at the End of the World in her black cave,
after the descent of the raven
while she was not looking, while she was stirring the elixir over the fire, the broth
the essence of every living thing,
What makes the grain, the deer, the stones,
she had almost let burn, so bound had she been in her weaving,
Her back now turned away from the loom,
the raven waiting for just this moment, bringing
ruin heaped
on the cold floor, a tearing. A tearing of her weave holding the world together,
the warp and weft
remembering the harvests, the birds and stags, the many grasses,
the green, golds, and earth red before the gray of winter, the mountains she had made,
and lichens and blossoms, heather tops,
breath of the tangible born upon the loom,
ravaged, no longer visible.
***
Yet the thread
she found through grief,
the crimson light of it. She held
the loss in her hands, the thread
reflecting fire. She held it up in the light among the shadows,
a way of making
a way within her, she didn’t know she had.
*** from The Book of Fire by Carter McKenzie (order directly via her at cartermck@gmail.com)
This poem about the Cailleach, the goddess of winter, who must remake that which has been torn to pieces when she looked away, is placed at the end of my collection of poems in the chapbook of poetry, The Book of Fire, published by Above Ground Press in 2024. It is a collection of poems dedicated to the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act that was passed in a reformation parliament in 1563 and finally repealed in 1736. During that time, nearly 4,000 people were found to be accused of witchcraft. 84% of those people, at least, were women and girls. This is just in Scotland. There were hunts going on as well in other parts of Europe. And the percentage of women was similar there too. In this case, Scotland had the highest number of people accused during that time of anywhere in Europe and the British Isles. And so this was a female crime, this crime of witchcraft. And two-thirds, it’s estimated, were found guilty. And since it was a capital offense, those found guilty were mostly executed. Their bodies burned after the people had been strangled, or sometimes people burned alive. So mostly there are no graves.
I wanted to bring attention to this history, which I had not known anything about until I found about the story of Lilias Adie, who died while imprisoned under accusations of witchcraft in Fife in 1704. That story became known because a forensic artist had created an image of her face based on a photograph of her skull that was on exhibit at a university in Scotland before it was stolen, the last of her bones disappearing. It was that story that became the portal for me to write these poems for these people, mostly women, for those whose lives were considered to be worthless and expendable, and it seemed right to close the book with the Cailleach, seeing her weaving torn to pieces and then finding a way to begin again, to close the book with her energies. Because though she is known as the Queen of the Dark months of Winter, she does also have the qualities of protection. And it’s that duality that really draws me to her.
I wanted to think about that and share those thoughts with you today because it is about, what is expressed in a Scots word, smeddum, smeddum, S-M-E-D-D-U-M, which is resilience and resourcefulness, and a lot of the women who were accused of witchcraft had smeddum. Smeddum was not a good thing in a patriarchy for women to have. It caused them to be troublemakers, perceived troublemakers. And the Cailleach certainly is connected to that energy.
Also, I want to say that most of those accused in Scotland were in their 60s, late 50s. Most of them were not young. Most of them were not very, very old, but they were in the age of an older woman, an older woman’s tendency to say what she thinks. So the Cailleach, again, is representing that time of life for a woman that is not respected in a patriarchy, that is disdained in a patriarchy. All you have to do is look up the word hag and find out just how much hostility there is to an older woman, as we know our society to be, because patriarchy continues. So I wanted the Cailleach, the idea of what had been torn apart, to come to her own strength and hold these stories for a renewal, a remaking.
As I look at the word Cailleach, I think it’s important to think about the root meaning. And Cailleach in Old Irish means the veiled one, the hooded one. And if you go back further, there’s a relation to the Latin word for cloak. So she is the cloaked one. She is the veiled one. And I feel that veil is connected to her duality. She is clearly a fearsome goddess, an old, old goddess, a queen of the winter, a queen of the departure of the greenness and lushness, a departure of the flowers for the stark outlines of things. But she is not just old, she is of a lineage that has witnessed the beginnings and endings of world after world. She holds both the terrible weather, and protectiveness of the wild, because she is a protector of the wild. She’s a protector of deer in particular. She is also in the final sheaf of corn at harvest time. Her powers are there, assuring fertility for the following harvest while marking the winter that is approaching. She is a warning of that winter. And as I envision her through the stories, I see her ferocity.
In Scotland she is described as having one eye, long white hair, teeth the color of copper, skin that is blue or stone-colored. And she comes for Samhain, November 1st, the beginning of the Celtic winter, and rules the land until Imbolc, which may have its root meeting as in the belly, which is about regeneration, and new life in the belly, which happens on February 1st on St. Bridget’s Day.
She is a giantess. She’s a witch. She is a hag. She is the creator of Alba, of Scotland. She sits on Ben Nevis, throughout the winter, keeping an eye out for Brigid, the arrival of Brigid, the Queen of Summer. And some think of her as the other face of Brigid, but certainly Brigid cannot exist without the Cailleach.
And in the summer months, she washes her plaid in the sea, creating the whirlpool of Coryvrecken, the cauldron of the plaid, a deadly whirlpool. So I think of this presence as anything but reductive, anything but little old lady, and I am drawn to her unapologetic strength that is unapologetically paradoxical.
And I think that even after decades and decades of courageous feminist work, we’re still stuck with patriarchy. And we are still, I believe, I will speak for myself, I still struggle with being unapologetic in my strength. I’ll just speak for myself. And it troubles me that we cannot talk about anger as a valid energy. It has been talked about that way. It has been expressed that way. And there have been different ideas of how anger is alchemized. And I’m not talking about destructive reactionary behavior. I’m just talking about true feeling. I think anger in women has bothered the patriarchy more than anything.
So I believe, I realize as I think about this, that the recovery that the Cailleach experiences in her cave at the end of the world comes from the strength of her duality, which is, you might say, a kind of love, as well as fierce anger, that is in that grief to see what raven did for no other reason than it could. All that she had created shredded to bits. I think that her duality enables her to hold the grief and to find that bright thread that she extracts from the ruin to make again. And it comes from herself, from her smeddum.
I believe this is a phase of life that I am in, being 65, coming through a year in which there was a lot of creative work, shared, and made, and also a year of rupture. For me, a rupture in terms of health. I’m grateful I’m healing, but two major injuries involving a lot of broken bones. Okay, so when I read a tearing, a tearing, I feel my bones tearing. But I’m healing. It’s just I didn’t expect that. And who knows what grief is behind those injuries? I also have lost my father, who died in December. And I know he would not understand this conversation, which pains me to say. I don’t think my mother can understand this conversation. She would try. But there are just so many negative associations. It’s scary if you haven’t thought about it, if you don’t have an example of how those words have been reduced to pejoratives from original, great energy. Words like crone, oh, does that ever make people shudder? Words like hag, of course. Look it up in the dictionary. It’s horrible. No example for how this came to be. Just like the word witch. How things became demonized, not in the dark ages, but during the early part of the Renaissance. In fact, misogyny is a word rooted. It became a term in the Renaissance, used by women who were furiously fighting, being defamed. That was in mid-17th century. It’s not a contemporary term or idea. It’s just been watered down. It’s been made apolitical, but in fact, it is political. I recommend the book, Down Girl, the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne, M-A-N-N-E, who argues that sexism, is a branch of patriarchal ideology that justifies and rationalizes a patriarchal social order. And misogyny is distinct as the system that polices and enforces its governing norms and expectations. That’s on page 20. Watch out if you don’t follow those governing norms and expectations. That’s still true. We know this. We know the system of misogyny is quite active, as it was during the times of the witch hunts. Manifested differently, but active. We can thank our Supreme Court for ensuring that continuation of misogyny when it voted, when the Senate voted in a 50-48 vote to accept Brett Kavanaugh as a member of the Supreme Court in 2018, despite sexual assault allegations by Christine Blasey Ford and others. She herself was persecuted for telling the truth of her experience while he was rewarded. And in her persecution, she had to hide. She had to take her children and go into hiding. And as of 2024, she still needed security.
And I’m also thinking of the overturning of Roe versus Wade by the Supreme Court. June 24, 2022. And I’m also thinking about the just-released posthumous memoir by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, which is about how she was targeted by Epstein and Epstein’s accomplice, Maxwell ( Ghislaine ). A woman who used her gender to lure girls and to trick girls into thinking that they were safe with Epstein, which is repellent. It is to me. This book has sold already. It came out in September of this year, and it sold over a million copies. And though Virginia did not survive, She committed suicide this past spring. She wanted this book to be in the world, and her voice is strong in the book. And it was written for the future, for our future daughters, and for anyone of any gender who is targeted by the patriarchy that relies on a rigid, hierarchical, bi-gender rule for its power. So if you haven’t read that book, I encourage you to find it and read it. It’s difficult, but it’s important.
And as I talk about all these things, I feel a rage. I feel a rage that so much has been permitted that so many people have looked away, that so many have said nothing when they’ve seen conditions and situations in which girls were being targeted. Where did all those girls come from? So, I feel that rage is very connected to love. It is, in fact, what enabled me to write the poems about the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act, whom I read about in court cases that were organized and researched by a very important research program in Scotland, the Scottish Witchcraft Survey. It’s based at the University of Edinburgh. And I remember after giving a reading in Portland from this book, someone asking me, how could you stand the pain? How could you be with these stories that are so difficult? How could you sustain that attention? And my answer was my anger. My anger that they had been treated this way, that they had been forgotten, or at least that It was presumed that they would be forgotten. That was how I got through. That was how I took the tearing and the tearing, and that was the bright thread. That was a way of transforming the fire that is a fire of destruction and terror into a fire of medicine. I see that as duality connected to the Cailleach.
When I was 28 years old, I came across a book by Adrienne Rich called A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Thus Far. I was in Midtown Manhattan, I had just moved to that area with my then husband. And I’ve never heard of Adrienne Rich. I don’t know how that happened, but I hadn’t. I was 28 years old. But I picked this book up from a dusty bookshelf, just a slender book, and read it from beginning to end. And then again and again, and came upon a poem that is one of my favorite poems from that book. It’s called Integrity. And in that poem, there is a stanza about anger and tenderness. not as polarities-- and I’m paraphrasing here from memory-- not as polarities, but as angels, both part of the speaker, who in the poem is in her 49th year of life. And that spider is teaching like the spider. She is learning, I should say, to both weave and spin at the same time. She’s learning her capacity through this duality to both weave and spin from her own body. And that includes taking care of the burning of her own skin with salve from her own hands. And I just wanted to remember those words, that poem. Again, it’s called Integrity, and you can look it up. And it is in the book, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far. And I think that is the cardiac for me, in a sense, a wild patience.
Finally, I want to close with remembrance of a woman whom I wrote about, and for whom there is a poem in my book, Book of Fire. Her name I brought up before Lilias Adie. She was accused by her neighbors in her small village in Fife of witchcraft. And the officials were eager to follow through on these accusations by drunken neighbors. So she was imprisoned. And as was the practice, she was interrogated by the men of the Kirk, the men of authority. And she was tortured. One of the ways that they would extract answers from the people they imprisoned to quote unquote prove the guilt of witchcraft was to keep people awake. They didn’t consider that. The law didn’t consider keeping people awake torture, but of course it was. And that was one of the ways she was likely suffering. But what they wanted from her were new names. They wanted new names of people who were allegedly witches. And according to the records, she did not give new names. She gave names, but not new names. She refused. And I wanted to remember her for her courage in the midst of her loneliness, that she had an agency that allowed her to be true to her own integrity. And I wanted to encourage us, may we never face such a situation, but that we can bear witness, we can have integrity, we can use our rage for love. And I think she did that too. Blessings on you all. this new year. And thank you for listening.”
Thanks for reading A YEAR and A DAY! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Thank you for your listening, for your tears, rage (etc) and your presence. If you’ve read & listened this far, here’s a potent song ally to sing today, a song by Minneapolis song leader, Sarina Partridge, This is a Wave.
May we feel what we are ready to feel.
Loving us,
Tracy
Here are a few verified ways you can help folx now in Minnesota, feel free to drop more in the comments!
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.
To order Carter’s extraordinary book, The Book of Fire, please email her directly at cartermck@gmail.com
** The story of the Cailleach Sqair was shared by Norman MacLeod and retold with his permission. More about The Hebridean Folklore Project here.
Book 3 or more sessions through April 2026, get a sweet deal.
There are many ways we can work together 1:1 engaging in the the alchemy of being human together, in our bodies, beholding & being held through the lens of stories, word magic, somatic movement & shared lived experiences.
Here are just a few possibilities:
* becoming and/or growing your skill as a creative, writer, & oral storyteller, .
* exploring stories as alchemical medicine to help hold, heal and allow personal growth.
* re-storying big life events that hold unhelpful charges for you (examples might be birth, death, divorce, major loss, etc)
* un-conditioning your consciousness working with orality, voice, grief/shadow, trauma, intuition and/or the imaginal.
* integrating the wounds & gifts you carry in the bone deep realms of myth, folklore & fairy tale.
* TRE and somatic work that helps your nervous system regulate, helping your body heal.
Email me for a free consultation - tlchipman(at)gmail.com
More below about Cielle, and also a link to Jackie Singer’s gorgeous new musical offering, Songhold, which launched earlier this month. Jackie joined me at last month’s new moon pod!
Thank you for your bright listening and every blessing to you in this Solstice season.
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Deep bowing to our winter dreaming,
Tracy
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Cielle Backstrom lives in Fairfield, Iowa, and supports folks on the path of embodied awakening. Her awakening in 2003 opened multiple inner doorways revealing just how “whole” life is and the huge range that it includes. This led her to study several tools which she uses as aids to assist her students on their path of awakening. These tools include compassionate listening, Focusing, Breathwork and energy healing.
https://www.ciellebackstrom.com/
And, for more deep wisdom about this new moon portal connect with Dr. Mindy Nettifee’s new moon post.
