Weaving together profound stories, original source materials and lyrical texts, this extraordinary book travels a spiralling route around the hearth fire of a sacred ceremonial house, gathering up the words that are fed into the ancient flames. Drawing on over 30 years of being absorbed in women’s work (political, spiritual, creative and magical), and decades spent as a workshop creator, song writer, intuitive painter and inhabitant of hills and moors, Carolyn Hillyer has written a book that describes a deep mythology for women in relation to earth, spirit mothers, mystical journeys, sisterhood and the unfolding landscape of our travelling souls, as well as a view through a personal window into life and wild land.
A fascinating, hypnotic, mesmerising, tearful, joyous, mournful delight of a work. Fragments of tales, stories, poems, songs, chants, memories, myths, legends, all interwoven. Would work incredibly well as an audio drama, but to do it justice, you would need hundreds of voices. Bewitching and beguiling and beautiful.
A book of stories, snippets and songs, poetic and lyrical. A treasure trove of wisdom and magic from women of every age and place in the world. I read this very slowly, absorbing it gradually like the warmth from a hearth fire.