‘I am the Strength of the Herd, the Call of Ancient Pathways’
When I was a kid I always had dreams of a great movement coming from the south, over the River Clyde and heading northwest. It took years before I realized that the great movement took the form of a great herd. Fast forward yet more years to when dreams introduced me to the people who followed these great herds. Slowly I would gain another snippet, another insight. Those dreams spilled into daydreams and eventually dances into the Otherworld fed me more of the story.
It was only a few years ago when I made the pilgrimage to visit Tigh na Bodach (or the Shrine of the Cailleach) and on the return journey amongst a scattered herd of 200 deer, with my feet on the ground I felt the last piece of this story click into place. As the deer bolted I saw a ripple, saw between layers of time and knew as I stood on that spot I saw another herd, I saw the reindeer make their great migratory pathway through the glen.
One of my very first meetings with one of the people who followed the herds was a woman. In a journey to the Otherworld I was viewing her from behind and she turned around to look at me, acknowledging my presence. She didn’t seem to mind as she just went on with what she was doing. I watched her gather a necklace of what looked like inscribed bone and then she attached antlers to her head with leather straps to make a headdress. She picked up a drum and started swaying as she sang in a guttural, primal tone. Her chanting got lower and resembled the snorting of a great animal. Then she threw the drum down (and yet somehow the drumming continued) and her breathing got heavier, the grunts louder and then before my eyes, this blood and bone woman shapeshifted into a creature with great branching antlers!
Then she began to run, she ran up hills and down through the forest. She jumped over great fallen tree trunks and over streams. I am unsure what form I was in but I was following her. We ran for many, many miles. I knew that with each placement of her hoof she could feel the path of the herd. In this animal form she grunted in the same way she had when she had picked up the drum.
We ran for many miles until her hooves led her to the herd, where she was welcomed as one of their own.
Then suddenly she was back to that lone woman drumming with antlers attached to her head and I watching her. That night she relayed the dance to the others who came and circled around her fire. They also know the land and the ancient pathways and she told the others the knowledge that the antlered ones had given her. And then these great circles of women picked up their drums and danced between the worlds.
I do not know this woman’s name - some call her Elen, I know her as ‘She Who Runs with the Herds’. She is an ancestral foremother who honors the Old Antlered One, the great creatrix who brought the moon and sun into position and brought the great migrations of creatures to this land as she orchestrated the great ebb and flow of the great walls of ice.
The Old Antlered One
Come Join Our Antlered Foremothers
My Ancestral Mothers Wheel of the Year course at Winter Solstice explores this ancient foremother who honors the old Antlered One. She is a priestess of drum and antler, who speaks with the ancient language of ritual. Our winter solstice offering explores:
Take an otherworld journey with ‘She Who Runs With the Herds’
In ritual create your own ‘Stone and Bone’ shrine offering
Explore the story of the Old Antlered One
Create art to honor the story of the winter solstice
Also, click below to check out our Facebook Group Sisterhood of the Antlers
