Michelle MacEwan

The Little Hill of Women

Saturday 16th June, 2007

In this landscape I allow myself to be drawn to a place. It calls to me and I follow the call. It is really the way I choose to live my life – in accordance with my spiritual pathway. Of course here in the west of Ireland I feel at home in such a deep sense as I am following the footsteps and the calling of my ancestors. The yearning to know my Father has been such a deep part of me that it is blended with my spiritual essence. It is part of who I am. And as I seek my father and his family – my ancestors, his call inevitably draws me to their home. Having just finished a series of introductory evenings about my spiritual pathway and my work, I find that my journey has become a continuum, for this year my message is about the Dreamtime connections and of course my own such connection is very much here in the west of Ireland. Today I have followed a new aspect of that calling. In a way I intuitively began to follow this thread several years ago when I started to dream about a woman called Scotia – and I will write more about her another time, this powerful female ancestor of mine. It is the female ancestors in my Father’s lineage who have called to me more and more. Today was a calling from the ancestors of the land I have grown to love the most in the west of Ireland – the north west of Connemara. A place that hugs me, inspires me and cradles my inner child. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to bring the pilgrimages I guide to this place as I know how it will nurture individuals in their own quests for transformations, creative connection and integration. There are many islands off this coast – they are mysterious and they contain the language of the ancestors in their landscape. Islands are often considered to be “inbetween” or at least very close to the borders of the other world. Today I visited one that is even more mysterious, more close to this place – because it is a tidal island – Omey Island is a place that can be accessed by foot (or car) when the tide is out. But pay attention to the forces of the water – as when the tide comes in it can be fast and the current can be treacherous, so don’t linger when the water is rising if you want to make it to the mainland for nightfall….

This land disappears between the veils at times, mysteriously perched, as it is, on the borders of the otherworld. As I walked across with Susan we felt the strong ripples embedded in the sand and were in awe of the power of the water that created these patterns of rhythm and flow. We also loved the feeling of walking on the bottom of the sea. Today I was drawn to walk the pilgrimage around the island with the intention of reaching the Little Hill of Women last, to spend time there experiencing the flow of energy, the ambience, and to lay in the grass and wildflowers and breathe the fresh and golden air.

It really was a perfect day, a gentle breeze beckoned us on, sunshine sparkled on the water and as we walked across the sand drawing closer to the island there was that familiar feeling of moving between the worlds. A feeling that I have known not just in my work but for as long as I can remember. It is the feeling of moving closer to the Dreamtime. And I felt a sense that when the tide once more flowed and washed against the shores this place would move back in space to a time out of time where the light of the sun, moon and stars still guide the way and the dreaming and songlines can be seen and heard. And there was also the knowing that as the tide flows out the land once more embraces the world of mortal men.

We were filled with a sense of deep peace as we walked the narrow winding pathways and were welcomed by wildflowers and the song of the birds. A golden haze filled the air and the mountains of the mainland hovered seemingly far far in the distance. From far across a field a horse pricked her ears and called us over. We greeted her and the three of us shared a pear. Then we found our way back to a track that lead us further west to the bay where the holy well is nestled into its southern side. The well embraced us in her mystery, Indeed this is a place of mystery, where unlike other wells I know, the water runs some times while at other times it mysteriously disappears, flowing perhaps through the caverns of the other world. We lay in the sand below the well and dreamed for an hour or so amongst pink and amber coloured rocks sparkling crystaline in the sun and then continued on to the ruin of the old church.

The energies here whispered and shifted evocatively. The ruin is curious, built in a hollow and you can see how the site had been landscaped – dug out and shored up with dry stone walls, so the temple dwells in an almost subterranean place. Curiously big it has it has the energy of a long house – a gathering place – not just for worship but anything that would bring the community together. It is of course built on a much more ancient sacred site.

Then we were ready to make our way to our destination, just across from the hidden site of the church, to the Little Hill of Women.

The green hill nestles elegantly at the side of the north western bay. It is perfectly poised to receive the flow of energy from the ocean as it flows between the islands, from the open sea into the bay the hill resides over, and beyond. As one sits atop the mound you receive, perfectly, this flow – of the energy of the open ocean and the current flowing between the islands of inbetween. The hill receives (the feminine principle) the flow as it passes through before moving on to the mountains in the north east, where you can see, on a clear day, the pyramid peak of Croagh Patrtick (Eagle mountain as it was known by the ancestors), rising above the 12 Bens. The flow of this current aligns with this holy mountain – the Hill is the doorway it must enter to connect with the mainland.

The old women that once lived here told stories about the raven power that lives in this hill. The power of the rhythms of the life force and selfhood. The power of the Mor – righan. The goddess of the between time of Samhain, celebration of and doorway to, the ancestors. She is an ancient Goddess of this land who represents the rhythms of the life force.

And as I watch the sun as it dips low in the sky it is apparent that in this month of the summer solstice it falls into the ocean neatly between the islands we face here – shining the pathway into the Otherworld, the west – direction of the ancestors, wisdom and transformation.

And now it comes to me, the stories I have talked about with my Irish girlfriends, of the Griannan’s. the Sunny Place or the Sun House – the traditional sunny place where the women of old would gather together at various times, perhaps during menstruation, in times of preparation for rituals and for retreat. Places of women’s business. Once, we believe, there were Griannan’s (pronounced Greenon’s) along the entire west coast of Ireland and Scotland. And we talk of how we would love to help establish these places of feminine retreat once more.

This hill – The Little Hill of Women – An Cnoc Beag Na Mna - was taken over by the Christian women – the nuns who built their nunnery on top of the old sun place – but this too is long gone. And now it is a green, sunny place with the energy of the feminine – soft and receptive, observing and guarding the opening, holding the space for the ebb and flow – the opening between the worlds. It truly has become a hollow hill. A place of connection between our world of here and now and the timeless place of the Dreamtime

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