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Category: cosmology

Category: cosmology

A skull and a milk offering Caileachs herbarium

Category: cosmology

Scottish Crannog - Roundhouse in black and white
Birth
Scott Richardson-Read

The Sacred Circle of Home and Hearth

Our homes were round once – a sacred circle.  Imagine. A home with no corners.  A roundhouse.  Folk say the Romans made houses rectangles and introduced the cross-cutting corners of bureaucracy.  The ideal Roman city was a regular grid of streets dividing square building plots or insulae. From here, the Insulae became a public marketplace. The Basilica was located on one side, and on the other, the Council Chamber and Civic Offices. You can’t provide hierarchical order without squares. There’s equality and the ‘chaos’ of equity in circles.  The roundhouse, the meeting place of communities. There were very few large

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a river in snow - sacred waters - Cailleachs herbarium
Animism
Scott Richardson-Read

Sacred Water : Journeys of Transformation and Personal Power in Scottish Folklore

In Scottish cosmology, sacred waters such as our sea and rivers are more than elements; they are animated by their own spirits and present to us gateways to profound wisdom, spiritual insight, and personal power. Water is life and wise rulers go out their way to protect it. This connection is pivotal in folk belief and folk magic and reflects deeper poetic metaphorical narratives about transformation and our ability to change. Seas and Rivers are never the same shape twice, constantly shifting. By examining Scottish and Gaelic tales and traditions, we see how water acts as a catalyst for growth,

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Animism
Scott Richardson-Read

Scottish Cosmology of the Three Realms

Introduction – Celtic cosmology  To understand why Scottish folk practice includes a focus on nature – earth, sky and waters spirts and its animated world we need to understand the roots of this island and its associated cosmology. This post explores Scottish cosmology and “Celtic” and Gaelic cosmology ideas and hypothesis in an attempt to unpick some of the more modern elemental systems found in Scottish folk magic. Scotland is a small part of a larger nation and has been influenced by many different cultures- some though war and raids some through colonisation and settling and then the march of

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