The Braided River

This arc of the WEGJÊ KERDÂ steps out from the hearth place into the raw soul of wild land. During these four moons we will be circling around ancient shrines weathered by rain and prayers, stepping into hidden forest corners where magic is seeded and nurtured, unfurling river paths and marsh trackways. We will lean into peat and granite and wind and night. We will journey by the gleaming lights of moon and stars and dawn and our own intuitive eyes. LAGYÂNO, the Shrine Guardian strides fiercely and steps tenderly. She braids together sky and earth and water, then wraps their feral song around our journey. She whispers and calls, summoning us into challenging landscapes, accompanying us across uncertain terrain. We are wilder in her presence; we learn to carve prayers of protection into our own bones.

WILD EARTH is the threshold through which we step into the Lagyâno journey. We each cherish our own wild places of the heart – hill, mountain, moor, desert, forest, ocean, valley, island, cave or a hidden feral corner in the smallest domestic patch. We each know inside us a piece of wild nature that calls to our soul. We each have a corner on this wild earth for which we yearn. This moon’s offering travels through an arc of shrines, each born from the energy of feral horse or ancestral bear or forest deer or marsh heron, while we explore, deepen and anchor our lagyâno work into our own home place (the land that we love or into which we feel, or yearn to be, rooted) and the wider earth. As wayfaring women we are glad to walk unbounded into ancient sacred landscapes; we cherish what we learn there in order to protect and mend what sits within the care of our own laps. These wild paths carry us strongly, we learn to move as instinct or yearning take us, our travelling feet seek and remember these returning trails. We are beloved of this wild earth.

WILD WATERS is the second strand within our Lagyâno Journey. The trail now brings us to the river – and to sea, ocean, stream, lake, spring, rain and all free-flowing waters of the earth. Our watery souls are drawn to these fluid-coursing-swelling-ebbing-churning prayers, for we know and treasure these spiraling flows within our own bodies. We are part of the eternal dance of wild waters. During this moon we will honour thirteen water shrines, each representing a small prayer within the vast all-embracing vessel of this planet’s wild and sacred waters. We will weave water and sing water. We will place rituals into water and draw dreams from water. Come to us, these wild waters croon, let us wash you through, let us return you clean and new, we are here to welcome you…

WILD SONGS carry us out further into a landscape without clear edges: a marsh filled with mist, a mountain peak surrounded by horizon, the deep belly of an ocean. In these places we can reach out to touch and catch the music of the feral earth, songs and sounds carried to us by weather and memory, that wrap around our hands until we learn how to spin extraordinary raw melodies out of the air, that twist around our ankles until we remember how to pound deep heart-drenching rhythms into the ground. During this moon, thirteen wild song cords will circle around our trail journey while we explore the flutes hollowed from our own bones and the drums fashioned from our own skins. And the ancient mother language will weave ancestral words into the wild songs that we find and collect into our travelling bundles.

WILD SPIRITS brings us to the final curve of this Lagyâno Journey. We emerge from the dancing winds of our wild songs onto the solid granite that anchors this shrine guardian’s pilgrimage into the ancient land. We will travel from the spirit house (cistvaen) of this lagyâno landscape to the doorway of the ceremonial roundhouse, following an arc of seven granite rocks: the ritual stone way. Each stone was gathered from deep within peaty ground then rooted again into the soil. Each earth stone is marked by a river rock at the place where it emerges into air and is touched by the sun, binding together the earth-water-air-fire elements that feed our sacred wild shrines. Slowly we tread, gently we tread, prayerfully we tread this route, walking within all weather and beneath the cosmos. Finally we arrive at the doorway of the ancestor house. There is smoke filtering through the entrance and we can glimpse the shadows of ancient women moving around the fire. The bone dreamers are gathering.

WEGJÊ KERDÂ, this Weavers’ Trail, continues to curl around a spiralling path as Lagyâno deepens us towards the centre of this travellers’ dreamscape. The Daweyo Journey gave us steady foundation stones in which to root our experiences and explorations; the Lagyâno Journey sets us loose into wilder terrain and witnesses our emergence as potent and tender protectors of shrines and souls. The Trail is becoming more densely textured, stories and images are gathering in richly interwoven layers along its route. We add elements and symbols and raw ingredients from the land to the tools within our travelling bundles. Most importantly, our tracks begin to climb; the trail of a lagyâno woman rises up from the gentle valleys and soft undulations of the Daweyo route into craggy land. This journey is more vertical as slowly we start to rise towards the place where we can encounter the threshold of our Soitlâ undertaking, where the Bone Dreamer waits to accompany us into her hidden world…