‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ is a unique year-long experience for women who want to delve deeply into wild stories, myths and archetypes, and so to connect in a grounded, rooted way with the cycles and seasons of the year, and the themes associated with them as they arise in your own life. This course is focused on building a deep, embodied sense of belonging to the place you live in right now.

What you’ll receive from each installment of ‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ is very much more than just a story: it is a way of actively writing yourself into the world of wild myth, a way of working with and taking into yourself the stories that the world around you is telling itself. It’s not about being a passive vehicle for someone else’s story; it’s very much an act, if you like, of co-creation.

‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ is organised around the eight seasonal festivals which many of us in Ireland and the other Celtic countries still acknowledge. If you’re subscribing from places in the world that aren’t rooted in this Celtic culture, the aim isn’t to impose upon you something foreign, or inauthentic, something that isn’t deeply grounded in the place you’re in. I believe that it is critically important that the stories we take into ourselves, and that we live by, spring from their deep roots in the land where we are living – not from some place that we can only imagine, or dream of, or romanticise. But the reason for this focus is simply to offer up one example of a way in which we can root ourselves into the seasons and cycles of the living land, and if the Celtic festivals and their associations don’t have much meaning for you, there is nothing in the materials which would prevent you from experiencing the cycles and seasons of the year in your own way. ‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ is not about showing you how to celebrate Imbolc or the Winter Solstice, about creating rituals or altars or practicing any particular brand of spirituality; it is about deepening your relationship with the land you occupy, using the eight festivals as anchor points for your own experience of the cycles and seasons of the year. From this grounding, ‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ offers you ways of finding your own stories of cycles and seasons, showing you how to penetrate the musky, earthy places of your own territory, and so to apply the lessons that you’ll learn here to the reality of your own embodied life.

Subscribe to this year-long course, and in the days before each of the eight seasonal festivals, you will receive links by email to download:

• An illustrated telling of a Celtic/ European myth or fairytale which has relevance to the issues and themes that we are reflecting on during the season in question, and a discussion of the psychological and ecopsychological issues that arise from that myth. We’ll explore the key themes and images in each story, and the ways in which it connects us back to the land and its seasons and natural cycles, and its nonhuman inhabitants.
• A brief illustrated introduction to each of the eight seasonal festivals and the themes and ideas that each season offers us.
• A narrative guide for you to follow: one which you will slowly piece together over the eight installments of the course, and which will allow you to experience the transformative power of myth and story in the your own life. In ‘Sisters of Rock and Root’, this material focuses on building our relationship with place, and on building a sense of belonging to the world. (Please note that the writing/creative element of ‘Sisters of Rock and Root’ doesn’t entail supervision or individual feedback: it’s for you alone to pursue.)

You can join at any time during the year and it will roll on through a full calendar year so that you cover all eight instalments in order. (Please note: subscribers in the southern hemisphere will be sent instalments that are relevant to their own seasons and calendars.)

Sharon Blackie

 

PAYMENT

The course fee is 100 euros; you may pay all at once, or in four monthly installments of €25; please use the one of buttons below to make your payment.

If you choose to pay in installments, please keep your credit card details up to date on your subscription account to ensure that it remains active and that you continue to receive all the Modules.

(PayPal will accept payment in any currency and automatically convert it, without fees. Please note that you don’t need to have a PayPal account to make the payment; when you are taken to the PayPal login page, simply click on the link next to ‘No PayPal account?’ at the bottom of the page. If this is a problem and you would prefer to transfer the funds directly into a bank account – in euros only, and in one installment – please contact us to arrange.)

 

PAY ALL AT ONCE

 

PAY IN 4 MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS

 

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ THIS INFORMATION CAREFULLY!

1. If you are paying by PayPal and have a PayPal account, please make sure that the email address associated with your account is correct, to ensure that your course materials are sent to the right place. If you would like to have your materials sent to a different email address, or if you would like to purchase the course as a gift for someone else, please email us (info[at]thehedgeschool[dot]org) with the details as soon as you’ve made your PayPal payment.

2. Once you’ve made your payment you will receive a PayPal receipt for your payment. We always then acknowledge all sign-ups individually by email. If you do not hear from us within three days of signing up (allowing time for weekend breaks or travel-related delays) please check your junk mail folder. Although fortunately this happens only rarely, it is important to be aware of the possibility, because so many email programs now have strong spam filters, and links to your course materials will come via emails which are sent to multiple recipients and contain hyperlinks, and so are strong candidates for filtering. If your course emails do not arrive as expected, you will undoubtedly find them in your spam folder! Please do check before you contact us, as if our emails are being sent to your junk mail folder, then you will not receive our replies to your queries and life can get rather complicated. If in doubt, and if your email program permits it, please add the email address info[at]thehedgeschool[dot]org to your ‘safe senders’ list, as this is the email address the materials will be sent from.

3. Please note that once you begin the course and have downloaded your first materials, no refunds can be given.