April 2012 International Gathering In Ireland:

 

Irish Centre For Shamanic Studies, Dunderry Park, Co. Meath, Ireland, April 24th-29th

 

"2012: Shamans Of The World: Building A Mála Naofa/Mesa For The Earth"

 

Ireland,

November 2011.

 

 

Ár chairde, dear friends,

 

since 2009, we have been waiting to offer you this news and personal invitation. For in that year, we co-hosted our first international gathering of shamanic practitioners in Ireland and during it, a dream was set for 2012, a year and a time that called strongly for a unique meitheal (co-operative gathering) of shamans. In the last two and a half years, groundwork has been ongoing to “open the cauldron” for 2012: Shamans Of The World – Building A Mesa For The Earth, an international gathering of chosen shamanic keepers of wisdom, alchemy and vision. We are deeply pleased to post formal news of this unique event and that we may have the honour of welcoming you to Ireland for this homecoming to precious celebration and work by medicine men and women, from the four directions of the globe.

 

Since the founding of Slí An Chroí, we have brought our native Irish Celtic tradition to share in the UK, USA, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Netherlands, India, Bolivia, Venezuela, Austria, Finland, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Italy. To many of these lands, we return annually. Since our founding too, we have received many shamanic practitioners from abroad to the land of Ireland, indeed some immersed themselves in training wih us. In our homeland and in lands beyond the Emerald Isle, we have consistently cultivated arteries of symbiotic growth between shamanic lineages. We sit with elders, learning their prophecies and teachings. 2012: Shamans Of The World – Building A Mesa For The Earth is a natural peak development in the cycle of Slí An Chroí and it is positioned as a peak experience for the invited participants in this auspicuous year of 2012.

 

2012: Shamans Of The World – Building A Mesa For The Earth invites us all to adventure together beyond (ordinary, linear) Time to discover states of being that inspire true shamanic knowing. From that place, our invitation beckons us towards visioning, manifesting and celebrating new life and order for Mother Earth, in harmony with her dream as it pulses through the land of Ireland. Mannanan MacLir the Sea God was visited by a crane bird, but learned that the bird was once a beautiful woman Aoife, who was transformed into a crane by the jealousy of a rival Iuchra who desired Aoife’s love, Ilbreac. He made a home for the crane for 200 years and upon her death used her skin to create an corr builg, the bag of the crane. In it he placed stones, shells and many treasures. When the tide became high his sacred bundle brings healing to the land and all who live upon her. Therein is the mythic source of the first mesa or what contemporary shamans call in Ireland, their mála naofa, (sacred bundle). You who live over the seas from Ireland, we invite to cross them and take part in an international creation of a corr builg for Mother Earth, her children and the time upon us. Cranes are exceptional birds, the oldest known species of bird and they can fly to almost 10,000 metres in altitude. The dream of 2012: Shamans Of The World – Building A Mesa For The Earth is ancient and epic, to draw shamans from the corners and hemispheres of our planet to the land of Ireland to set a new healing altar, a new mesa for our planet. There will be an abundance of support for us in the physical realm, sacred sites such as Tara, Celtic and Pre-Celtic Ancestral rituals and native Irish arts. All will hold us so that we may cross the bridges into the metaphysical, “The Otherworld”, going beyond ordinary time and space to source the treasures of new visions and new orders that will infuse our mesa-making. Surrounding our adventure naturally, will be the presence of An Sí, the luminous ones, the wild Faerie Folk energy of this island, charming our perception for magical new ways of being. Our work and our world includes them, their world and their work includes us.

 

We are pleased that you may consider bringing the energies of your heart and hands to the making and placing of the Mesa For The Earth in the land of Ireland. You will be coming too, to a diverse, stimulating community of internatiuonal shamanic practitioners. And Ireland is a place of poetry, stories, music, dance and craic (a unique Irish-Gaelic word for ‘wild fun’), so we will set that place to lift you into celebration, escape and friendship. Let us be a vital force together to draw the 2012 prophecies to a working place of fearless compassion and to be the ones who enter the cauldron to distill the new prophecies.

 

Le Spiorad, bigi linn, (”In Spirit, come be with us”),

John and Karen

 

Irish Practitioners, to view & download the e-poster, click here

 

UK, Continental European, Practitioners, to view & download the e-poster, click here

 

US & Other Worldwide Practitioners, to view & download the e-poster, click here

 

FOR BOOKING FORM, click here

 

 

Article

“It is important that we come back. We must, in 2012”. We all heard it, before it was spoken. Looking back now at the gathering of international shamanic practitioners in Ireland in 2009, we see ever more clearly the personal, collective and global significance of that extraordinary event. A unique cauldron of soulful community, celebration, purpose and vision came together for six days in April of that year. As co-hosts, we witnessed and continue to do so, the lasting openings created in the lives of the participants and the new friendships woven in the tuatha (tribe). And yet, while that is worth thanksgiving it was not the primary reason that shamans from the four corners of Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Scandanavia, USA, Canada and Africa migrated to the heart of Brú Na Boinne.
Our shared world needs to be witnessed, held, healed and manifested. Our collective destiny as a species asks for our most compassionate and wisest vision in tuneful harmony with the natural living systems about us. This is the dedication of the shaman and that is what we came together to do. Working in and out of linear Time, calibrated by the energies of Brú Na Boinne’s sacred sites, firewalking, composing numerous burla ghuí (prayer bundles), sharing creation and Ancestral stories from around the globe, drumming and dancing into ecstatic states prepared our ground for the harmonising and manifestation rituals, drawn from all our cultures. The strength in the diversity of this tuatha of shamans was eye opening, intriguing and often, colorfully entertaining. And there were truly tender moments. One, the time Diane, an American woman of First Nation descent chose to give her blanket to Helen, an Irish shaman. For Diane to pass on her handwoven tribal, Ancestral blanket carried by her for most of the years of her life, was to witness the deepest honouring from one caretaker of the Earth to another.

 

Back then in 2009, the economic, political, social and environmental storms currently gripping us were evident on the horizon. There is every possibility these upheavals in our physical world will continue as part of the very real birth pangs of change that is the nexus of the 2012 prophecies. Shamans are engaged in the physical world like anybody else, yet their skill is navigation of the metaphysical and archetypal worlds that underpin the physical one. Intervening audaciously and compassionately on these deeper realms can effect enormous, beneficial change in the material “surface” world. For the shaman him/herself, this work is profoundly grounding and sense-making, great attributes particularly when storms are about us.

 

2012: Shamans Of The World-Building A Mála Naofa (Mesa) For The Earth is the event of the year for Irish and International shamanic practitioners. Once again many from the 2009 gathering will return to sit among others hearing the call and migrate to this unique and significant meitheal (co-operative gathering). The land of Ireland, her mythologies, arts and Ancestral heritage of sourcing Spirit through Nature will be stepping stones for the collective dreaming and building of the great Irish-Celtic altar of healing prowess, the Mála Naofa, (Crane Bag/Mesa). On the final day, it will be ceremonially buried deep in the Earth of Brú Na Boinne, pulsing an eternal collective, loving prayer. A great adventure awaits those who will form the tuatha for 2012. It will be a peak experience in this world and The Otherworld.

 

 

International Gatherings 2011:

 

Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA: Fri.Sept.30th - Sun.Oct.2nd

 

"Irish-Celtic Gathering To Nourish Your Soul", click here to view the e-poster.

 

 

Spencertown, Columbia State, New York, USA: Fri.Oct.7th - Sun.Oct.9th

 

"Sacred Man 2" (Mens Gathering), click here to view the e-poster.

 

"Awakening The Sacred Feminine 2" (Womens Gathering), click here to view the e-poster.