Ceremonial work

Returning to the Old Ways

For thousands of years, the people of these islands marked the turning of the seasons with ceremony and celebration. They gathered at sacred sites, moved in procession along stone rows, lit fires on hilltops, sang, keened, danced and gave thanks. They understood that human beings are not separate from the natural world but woven into it, and that tending our relationship with the land, the ancestors, and the great cycles of the year was not essential to the health of individuals, communities, and the Earth itself.

That thread of practice was interrupted. The old ways were suppressed, forgotten, or driven underground over centuries of religious and cultural change. But the land remembers. The stones remember. And in many people today there is a deep, often wordless longing to find their way back to something that feels true, rooted, and alive.

This is the heart of my ceremonial work.

What I Bring to the Work

My ceremonies draw on nearly thirty years of deep relationship with the Dartmoor landscape and its sacred sites. Through that relationship, through ceremony, meditation, channelling and direct communion with the land and its ancestral inhabitants, I have received a great deal of knowledge about how our indigenous ancestors lived, how they marked the seasons, what their rituals looked like, and what they understood about the relationship between human beings and the earth.

I bring this knowledge into the ceremonies I hold, weaving together channelled ancestral wisdom, the energetics of the specific site we are working with, and the needs and intentions of the group gathered. No two ceremonies are the same, because no two moments in the seasonal cycle are the same, and because the land itself is always an active participant in what unfolds.

I work as a seer and channeller within the ceremonies, holding the space and reading the energy of the group and the land, bringing in guidance and wisdom as it arises. My background in Shiatsu, kinesiology, and plant and animal communication also informs the way I work, giving me a broad understanding of energy, the body, and the intelligence of the natural world.

The Wheel of the Year

The ceremonies I hold follow the ancient Celtic Wheel of the Year, the great cycle of eight seasonal festivals that our ancestors used to mark the rhythm of the earth through light and dark, growth and rest, expansion and return.

The four solar festivals mark the astronomical turning points of the year. The summer and winter solstices, when the sun reaches its highest and lowest points, and the spring and autumn equinoxes, when day and night stand in perfect balance. Between these sit the four Celtic cross quarter days; Imbolc at the beginning of February, welcoming the first stirrings of Spring in the land, Beltane at the start of May, welcoming in the fertility of the land and the summer. Lammas, or Lughnasadh, on the first of August, marking the beginning of the harvest and Samhain in November, marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. These were the great fire festivals of the Celtic world, each one marking a shift in the quality of energy moving through the land and through us.

Each festival has its own character, its own gifts and its own challenges. Working with the wheel of the year is a way of aligning ourselves with the natural rhythms of the earth, moving out of the artificial, disconnected pace of modern life and back into a cycle that our bodies and spirits recognise at a deep level.

Ceremony at Sacred Sites

Who This Work is For

Upcoming Events

Throughout the year I hold a series of seasonal gatherings and workshops on Dartmoor, open to all. Each one is rooted in the energetics of the season and the particular qualities of the site we gather at.