You’ll begin by creating and entering a sacred gathering place or circle, which the ancient Celts called a nemeton — a clearing in the forest or a Neolithic site. The nemeton was viewed as a place of invocation, ceremony, and creation — a place where Heaven and Earth united.

You’ll also explore the Celtic Medicine Wheel, a nemeton in its own right, and make a brief stop at each of the five points or airts of the wheel, witnessing how this ancient tool outlines some of the core challenges of living an honorable and meaningful life.

Lastly, you’lll listen to and be invited to contemplate a very old Celtic tale called “The Settling of the Manor of Tara,” which answers the question for the characters in the tale — as well as for us: What is the proper order of things?

In this module, you’ll:

• Ask the important questions about who you are, how you live your life, where you feel strength, and where you experience loss and depletion
• Ascertain a deep truth about yourself that has been forgotten
• Investigate what roles you would welcome playing in this life
• Evaluate the ways you’re divided against yourself and how to close that breach
• Identify the “false gods” to whom you have given away your allegiance, and the core purpose of your life that requires that allegiance
• Understand how you have given away your sovereignty and what it takes to reclaim it

In the Celtic tradition, prosperity of all kinds comes from the Land, or more specifically, from the Goddess Sovereignty. To maintain prosperity in their lives, the Gaels served the Goddess with their devotion and reverence, and they emulated her unconditional generosity by raising hospitality to a virtue, which they conscientiously honed.

This “giving to increase” principle extended not just to feeding a beggar or helping your neighbors harvest their crop. It includes pursuit and service to the deeper yearning of your soul and the role it longs to play. Your greatest contribution in life is bringing to excellence and mastery whatever skill or craft you are called to pursue.

In this module, you’ll probe the story of Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny, and recognize the ways in which Lia Fail lives within you.

You’ll:

• Bring your gifts and talents out of the closet
• Go back and unearth forgotten dreams and yearnings
• Vow allegiance to the inner yearnings of your soul
• Marry the land of your destiny

In the ancient Celtic lands, music was believed to be a gift from the gods, a creation of the Otherworld known as the Oran Mor, or the Great Song. Song kept the world in a state of harmony, and that harmony was carefully tended by the Fae, inhabitants of the Otherworld.

It was observed that life was chaotic, arduous, and harsh, and that humans required a way to lift themselves out of the mire, to bring themselves closer to the gods, if they were ever to attain their sovereignty — their own divinity. Music, and the inspiration and comfort it provided, was the force that enabled that ascen–dance.

In this module, you’ll:

• Experience the healing power of the three strains of music: joy, sorrow, and peace
• Discover powerful ways to cultivate inner peace and harmony
• Learn to change the tune of discord with gratitude and surrender
• Discover how to see and hear with the eyes and ears of a faery

Moving beyond the boundaries of what is known demands a bold willingness to forge into uncharted waters, to surrender to the unknown. In core shamanic practice, this is called becoming the hollow bone — letting go of the familiar, of what you think you know, and allowing numinous experience, divine wisdom, and expansive vision to fill you.

In the Celtic tradition, this kind of journey is called an immrama, and might even entail going to sea in a corracle, an oarless boat, and allowing the sea to take you to where she sees fit.

When we sail into boundless and unpredictable waters, we enter a realm that teems with possibility. Navigating these waters demands our focus. No one can predict what mysteries these waters contain, but our journey into them is imperative if we are to explore this important question in every person’s life: Who am I?

In this module, you’ll:

• Deeply investigate the question “Who am I?”
• Undertake the living of your life as a heroic journey
• Question the boundaries of your own limitations
• Devote your life to the greatest wisdom of all — the wisdom of who you are
• Explore the expansive sea within yourself for gifts of insight and liberation

The greatest battle in life — the only true battle — is the battle within. We are deeply divided beings, severed by our loyalties to an outer temporal world and an inner timeless world.

The depth of that division correlates directly with the measure of struggle we experience in life — be it emotional and physical distress, relationship discord, work dissatisfaction, family trauma, or lack of abundance. The greater the division, the greater the struggle.

We’ll visit the Celtic mythic figure of The Washer at the Ford, who will emphasize how the Earth is a place of change — of rough places — and we are called upon by our soul to lean into those reshaping forces and allow ourselves to be broken, reconfigured, rebirthed, and perfected.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover practices to release the false beliefs and selves that hold you hostage
• Learn to nurture what grows in their place
• Discover how to accept not just your destiny, but the effort it requires to live it
• Learn ways to eulogize what no longer serves you, and let it go

Celtic wisdom defines sovereignty as being in right standing with the Earth beneath us, the heavens above, and the soul inside us. It means knowing your place in the world and standing firmly in it.

We begin life with little or no sovereignty. Children cannot carry the responsibilities that sovereignty implies. In childhood, we develop adaptive skills that help us negotiate challenges and ensure our survival. Maturation requires the reclaiming of our place and standing.

In the Celtic spirit world, there is no greater sin than stealing or manipulating away the sovereignty of another, and the story of Macha will illustrate this for us. We’ll reclaim and become devoted to our own sovereignty, and realize that accomplishments and capabilities of others pose no threat to us. Far from diminishing us, the strengths and talents of others inspire and light our own pathway to sovereignty.

In this module, you’ll:

• Focus your attention on cultivating your own sovereignty
• Witness — with compassion — the ways in which you give away your sovereignty
• Develop self-sustaining responses and behaviors
• Call back lost strength, imagination, and purpose
• Identify your role models and challenge yourself to emulate the virtues they demonstrate

When you are sovereign, your’re at peace with the world around you and the world within you. Inherent in the state of being sovereign is a spirit of allowance — letting things be. In Gaelic, this is what’s known as being an sith, which refers to the imagined peace of the Faerylands and the Faery folk, namely the Sidhe, who lived in a realm of no struggle, illness, or deprivation.

What disturbs our equilibrium and peace — our sovereignty — is oftentimes what we cannot let go of, what we cannot “allow.” In blessed moments of clarity, we recall that the only true battle is the battle within us.

The Celts were a warlike and fierce people, but they were also very moral, and their stories are filled with the misfortunes that befall us when we choose arrogance, blind ambition, pride, and jealousy over forgiveness, grace, and humility.

As this course draws to a close, you’ll uncover the greatest contributor to your sovereignty through the story of Finn MacCumhail and Diarmuid — forgiveness of ourselves and others.

In this module, you’ll:

• Practice avoiding the struggles that steal your tranquility
• Identify what and who needs to be forgiven
• Learn how you can forgive everyone
• Establish a daily practice of choosing peace over being right
• Become a vigilant witness to the ways in which you lose sovereignty
• Reallocate lost strength to more fruitful goals

Nearly every Indigenous culture recognized and spoke of Faeries in their language and stories, but the Celtic people have always shared a more intense and complex relationship with these numinous beings. Tom Cowan explores with Jane the ancient practice of faery doctoring and the road forward for humans and the Fae.

Tom Cowan is a shamanic practitioner specializing in Celtic visionary and healing techniques. He combines universal core shamanism with traditional European spirit lore to create spiritual practices that can heal and enrich one’s own life and the lives of others. The author of several books, he’s an internationally respected teacher, author, lecturer, and tour leader. He’s taught training programs in England, Wales, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Slovakia.

Scottish storyteller Rowan Morrison spins a selkie tale or two, and discusses both what inspired her and how she trained to become a storyteller in the old Celtic tradition. Since Rowan’s accent is strong, you’ll also receive a PDF transcript of this program as a guide.

Rowan Morrison trained as a community artist, then as a Theater of the Oppressed facilitator, then obtained a degree in Community Education. She has worked with children, young people, and adults in various communities for over 30 years. She has experience using educational tools to raise awareness of mental health issues; she uses puppets to teach school children what they should do if they experience abuse, and uses life-story mapping, creative writing, and song to raise awareness of domestic abuse and homelessness. Rowan is also a shamanic practitioner and teacher, supporting people to dream new stories into being to help them create a better world for themselves and others.

In this video teaching, Jane details the severing of the bond between the Gaelic people and the Land which they and their ancestors long tended, and how the loss of the mother goddess, the one who rules, who feeds and provides, is a loss felt not only on a physical level, but at a profound emotional and spiritual depth as well. The mass emigration of the 19th and 20th centuries from Ireland and Scotland still impact those with Celtic ancestry today. We can look to ancient Celtic wisdom and story to help us understand what practices will heal both ourselves and the wounds of the past.

The loss of ancient death rites can disrupt the smooth passage of souls into the spirit world and impede our own transcendence from the grief that death incurs. This article explores the history of keening and its disappearance, and suggests practices for healing grief.