Liz reveals some of the secrets and mysteries of the Celtic Calendar…
Please welcome to the B Bar stage the wonderful Liz Rivers so welcome um so my slightly cryptic title what have the pr Romans ever done for us I’m going to talk to you tonight about the Celtic calendar which is this ancient calendar that was used by the Kelts who lived in the
British is and across Europe in pre- Roman and Roman times and it’s something that’s been rediscovered in the last century or so and uh people are using in all sorts of different ways and it’s something that’s made a really big difference in my life so I wanted to share that with you
Tonight so a look so let me tell you a little bit just about my relationship with nature and my journey into connecting with the Celtic calendar so I grew up in St Albans if anybody knows that so A small Cathedral City on the north of uh just north of London uh very
Pretty place but it’s nature was sort of something that happened in gardens playgrounds and Parks you know there was a few little pockets of Woodland but I didn’t really have much experience of sort of raw nature and the wild when I was growing up that was something that
Just sort of happened occasionally when I was in holiday but life revolved around towns and cities and um and as I grew up I then went to study law University and went into the city so you see this picture of canary Warf so there I was striding into
The office with my big shoulder pads this was in the 80s and uh and again life was very Urban and um yeah and and very sort of city-based and I remember walking down the street once in London and thinking what month is it you know I was so disconnected from nature I sort
Of didn’t really even know what season it was I’d have to sort of stop and remind myself it wasn’t really wasn’t really part of my life in a very embodied way but something was tugging at me because in my spare time I was going off into these amazing uh
Experiences in nature so in my mid-20s I went off to Nepal and treed around the Himalayas um then I went to Africa and climbed Mount kilamanjaro and then I went and did these nature Retreat solar retreats in the South African Wilderness where we carry our all our own stuff
Walk out into the bush and sleep out in the open surrounded by wild animals and taking turns to keep watch at night and then to top it all I went to the Sinai desert and spent a week with the bedin um including three days on my own
Out in the desert fasting just with a few bottles of water and uh taking in the desert around me so and I found these experiences really uplifting and and inspiring and and it made me feel really connected to everything and one with one with the world and the universe
But um and then I’d come back to London to my normal life and I just sort of put that on the Shelf really and it wasn’t really part of my life anymore so it was very it was very sort of split and divided really there was a stark divide
Between my everyday life and these powerful experiences I was having of nature but they had to be they were a long way away I had to sort of get on a plane and travel Long Haul and it quite complicated to access these experiences so um so it was but it was
Something that was important to me and and called to me and and I felt very different when I was in these places to how I felt when I was in my everyday life in London and then about perhaps about 13 years ago somebody invited me to a
Weekend Workshop in Wilshire and I love a workshop I’ve probably done every sort of Workshop you can that’s known to man or woman and and this one was a place in wlure called Hazel Hillwood um which is this lovely Woodland which gets used for Retreats and nature it’s 70 acres and
You can go and you can be off grid and there are um uh sort of campfires and composting L and Woodfired saers and all of these sorts of things so a lovely sort of nature experience and the topic was the Celtic calendar and I had really heard of this before but I thought
Sounded sounded interesting and it was on the weekend of Halloween so which the Kelts called sa and so we spent weekend really delving into what the Kelts thought about Halloween which is very much about connecting with the ancestors and it’s at that time of year when the clocks have just gone back it’s
Getting darker we’re drawing in towards towards the winter and the darker months and the hibernator time of the year so there was something rather rather than just thinking oh I hate this time of the year it’s getting darker to actually really pause and embrace it and think
About well what does this time of year mean and to connect with it in a conscious way and and really think about my ancestors and the generations that came before me and and what they meant to me and what they what they gave me so I spent this weekend doing this and this
Was this was fun and then I got in the car so I was driving back down the M3 back to East London where I was living at the time and I thought wow I feel as as transported and as grounded and as INSP ired from doing this weekend in
Wilpshire as I did going on these amazing Long Haul trips to Exotic locations I thought oh this is interesting there’s there’s something in this so I went back and there were there were eight there was a series of eight workshops all through the year working our way through the Celtic calendar to
To really understand what what this Ancient Ancient practice meant so let me let me talk you through what Celtic C cend is I’ve got my my pointer here so basically you can see that there’s there’s eight different points to it and this is a map for the
Year you could also take it as a map for the day with Midnight at the top and midday at the bottom or even a map for your life the seasons of your life so there’s a lovely sort of symmetry of being able to apply this cycle to to
Many different phases and rhythms of our lives and the the structure of it I think there should be a here so you see up at the top um you see the the points that are in blue so we have the winter solstice which is the the shortest day of the year happens
Just before Christmas and then the summer solstice which is the longest day of the year uh in in June and then we have the equinoxes so these are exactly halfway between the winter solstice and the summer solstice and those are the days when the day and the night are of
Equal l length so we always thought there was something quite magical about that and they’re these sort of tipping turning points into the half of the Year where the days are longer than the nights and then the half of the Year where the nights are longer than the
Days so there’s something to me very satisfying about the symmetry of the light and really paying attention to the light and taking some time and the days the three days around the solstices and the equinoxes to pause and tune in and think about the past of the year so that
Almost creates the skeleton really and what the what the Kelts particularly added to this were the the festivals in red which are known as the Celtic quarter festivals so they go about halfway between the solstices and the equinoxes and these are all festivals and the Kels seem to know how to throw a
Good party um they were great uh Festival people so each of these has a different sort of flavor and character and purpose to it so starting in the top right hand corner you’ve got imul which literally means in the belly and that’s when the the the ‘s are pregnant the
Lands are on their way the first snow drops are coming through and it’s I I love this it’s the beginning of the end of winter so this sense of you know the Winter’s coming at the end of winter it’s coming to the end but we can start
To see some of the the signs of spring and some of those shoots coming through it’s a little bit it’s light until about 5:00 a bit later and uh yeah it’s that sort of marking um moving into the into the beginning of Spring so that’s in
Bulk and then you have belan which is probably better known so this is very much like sort of um uh very sort of high energy it’s when Springs at its full full full um its full power um you had sort of ancient fertility rights going on in in ancient times at glenbury
Or wherever um and jumping over fires to um to get your wishes to come true that was a that was a Celtic uh ritual around belan so and I think in Edinburgh now they’ve reinstated it so they have a big belan festival and a big bonfire in in
Edinburgh now so um lots of these things are being celebrated a lot more and in fact imul is being celebrated very much in Ireland they’ve given um St bridgid who’s one of the patron saints of Ireland her own saint day ever since last year so it’s like Patrick’s had all
The glory for about 1500 years so Bridget’s getting getting her place at the table too which is at the same time of the year as inul as well so uh so that’s that’s being marked more as well and then you have Lamas which in Irish
Is known as lunasa so some of you might have heard of lunasa and this is at the beginning of August and this is the start of the harvests so in the first half of the year you’ve gotot lots of you’ve got seeds being sewn you’ve got shs coming forth you’ve got leaves
Plants flowers and then fruits and you start bringing in the Harvest around Lamas and that works all the way around through the Autumn months so it’s a starting of a a gathering in and having a bit of a rest after all the effort of spring and high summer and then finally
It comes back to SA or Halloween the end of October which is the which the Kelts saw as the beginning of the year actually so very interestingly that they marked the um the year of starting with the going into the darkness and they saw the day as starting at the at Sunset
Rather than at Sunrise or at midnight so a sort of the idea of right really embracing the darkness first and going within and spending some time that hibernator time before coming forth into the into the day so that’s uh that’s how I so I spent a year doing lots of
Workshops um practicing all of these different or really exploring the the flavor of each of these points of the Celtic calendar and and really sort of understanding what each of them have their own particular personality and character and set of practices that go with them so um and what I’ve learned
From it is I think and and what I now do is that I’ve really sort of in integrated that into my life so I always make sure I Mark each of these these points I write a blog about it which I share with people um I might do a little
Create a little alar or do some sort of ritual or maybe do some journaling and review particularly on the the solstices what’s happened in the last year uh what’s happened in the last six months you know where am I compared to this time last year it’s a it’s a great way
Of mapping the year and uh and keeping track of things in a way that feels very organic yeah so some of the things I’ve got from this I think there’s something about embracing the whole of life and I think in our culture very much we we have a culture that glorifies growth and
Is afraid of Decay that likes beginnings and isn’t so comfortable with endings that um prioritizes activity over rest that um and yes is is happier more comfortable with light rather than Darkness so it’s like we want to be in a Perpetual spring and summer and are never really happy with autumn and
Winter so in the cult of glorifying sort of Youth and energy rather than being comfortable with whatever phase of life we’re at so I think for me by taking the time to really work with the seasons in this conscious way I feel that I’ve I’ve come to appreciate the gifts of each of
The seasons rather than thinking oh I like this but I don’t like that or wanting it to be different you know I can enjoy coing up by a fire or you know by pausing at the beginning of February I can really notice some of the those
First signs of spring that I might just otherwise ignore or not notice so it’s uh yeah so it’s yeah much more sort of integrated way of making friends with all the seasons and all their different characters yes there’s also something about aligning to the light and in
Modern days with um with with climate change and with Seasons changing we might think well can we even rely on the seasons anymore you know are they are they there in the same way that we’ve we’ve always assumed they would always be there are we are we changing them and
There’s something about the fact that the fundamental structure of the Celtic calendar is based on the light and our relationship with the Earth and the Sun that is actually beyond anything that human humans can interfere with so there’s something more real that we can
Base ourselves on and I think in a in a world where it’s hard to know what’s real and what we can trust and with AI and fake news and all of those sorts of things just coming back to something that is eternal and unchanging and that
We know is real and will and has existed for Millennia before us and will exist for Millennia after us I find something quite comforting in that and this is a picture of newrange which is an ancient Passage Tomb in Ireland in County me which is the county my my mother was
From so I’ve got lots of Irish ancestors who grew up lived around this area and so about I think at least 4,000 years ago it was built before Stonehenge um Generations it took 150 years to build this Passage Tomb and life expectancy was about 30 years at the time so basically five gener
Generations of people thought it was important enough to build this structure and basically it’s a long passage leading to a chamber and at sunrise on the winter solstice the sun rises and assuming it’s a sunny day which I can’t imagine that happen very often in in Ireland in December uh the light comes
Down the chamber down the passage and hits the chamber so you know the way in which uh you know early prehistoric people you know they knew about the light and they knew it was important to align with the light so those um those practices and structures and then finally I think what
The Celtic calendar has done has has brought me home to the British Isles that I don’t have to go on a plane somewhere exotic and spend thousands of pounds to have a Transcendent experience in nature that actually I’ve I’ve come to a practice that’s rooted in the
British Isles where my my ancest cestors came from and where I live and something that I can enjoy every day and uh and and as a way of connecting with with nature and the beautiful nature that we have in the British Isles as well so uh
If you’d like to know more I run leadership programs for women which are based on the Celtic calendar we use those use those ideas and principles as a way of bringing a different approach to leadership away from the sort of Machine model of of leadership that we
Have so much in in the modern world and I write a regular blog as well eight times a year I send out a newsletter with a Blog about whatever the the season is so thank you very much