SPRING SEASON BEGINS FEBRUARY 12, 2024
Circle themes, dates and details below.
In the rush and tumble of modern life, there’s an undeniable hunger for soul nourishment. But how do we effectively meet this longing when the sacred has been so thoroughly divorced from the dominant culture? What does it look like to cultivate a vibrant and meaningful spiritual life - without intermediaries or dogma?
In this course, we’ll carve out time and space each week to discover your unique answer to “what it means to be spiritual.” With the Celtic Wheel of the Year as our framework, you’ll receive cross-cultural wisdom teachings, rituals, and experiential practices to feed your soul and re-enchant your everyday life.
Walking the Wheel is for those who’d like to:
Build a spiritual home for yourself that’s relevant, practical, and useful in everyday life.
Creatively explore your spiritual identity, develop personal practices, and share what you’re learning with others.
Shift from an intellectual place of “acquiring knowledge” to an embodied space of “living my practice.”
Cultivate deeper states of presence, enchantment, wonder, and awe.
Reclaim your place in the web of life, and expand your connection with the unseen realms.
As you develop your personal relationship with Spirit, expect to uncover new layers of yourself in the process.
“Chris creates a space for curiosity, connection, and community. She honors spiritual work by others by inviting them in to share their gifts and tools with the group. I appreciate how there is space for everyone to grow and learn together.”
- COREY, 2023 participant
Walking the Wheel is an annual cycle that begins in Winter, in alignment with the Celtic perspective that "all life begins in the dark. A new course is offered each season, and you can join in at any time. While the themes and practices can build upon one another, you don’t need to start “at the beginning” or approach the course in a linear fashion.
It’s a spiral, always turning! Here’s your next opportunity to get started:
Spring 2024
Themes of the East direction:
Emerging into the light half of the year in alignment with nature’s rhythm
Building the foundation of your personal spiritual practice
Cultivating eagle vision and perspective
Brigid’s flame
Authenticity & clear communication
Claiming your voice
Nurturing life dreams
Working with ritual tools
Connecting with your spirit allies
Working with the archetypes and Celtic deities of the East
DATES & DETAILS
In-Person Class
When: Mondays from 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Dates: February 12, 19, 26 | March 4, 11, 18, 25
Location: House of the Faun in Port Townsend, WA
Looking for something like this, but not local?
While I will not be offering the Celtic Wheel online this season, there are a number of teachers I am happy to recommend that offer online courses on complementary themes. They include: Slí An Chroí, Ancestral Medicine, Katy Pavlis and Mari Kennedy. I am also available for 1:1 spiritual mentorship, coaching and personalized rituals if you’d like to develop a program of individual study together!
What To Expect
“Spirituality” is a broad tent, and all are welcome in this space.
We’ll drink from many wells in this course, including: Celtic mythology, ecopsychology, poetry, animism, ritual, neuroscience, meditation and mindfulness, tarot and oracle cards, Buddhist psychology, reflective journaling, cultural anthropology, and shamanic journeying.
Along the way you’ll be introduced to a variety of ideas, tools and practices, with the aim of discovering what resonates and works best for you.
QUESTIONS? I welcome you to reach out! Contact me here.
“Walking the Wheel was a great introduction and learning about how seasonal changes impact us in every way. As we dove deeper into the teachings, it was so clear to me that we all “know” this deep inside, but societal pressures have caused us to lose sight of it. By taking this class, I allowed myself to slow down, pay attention, and know that not only was that OK, it is needed and a part of the natural life cycle. I really appreciated that we learned how this focus on seasonal changes is common throughout many cultures. It makes sense that our lives would follow the seasons, and that sometimes we can be in a season of life that it not necessarly the season of the weather. So excited to continue this journey of learning more, and growing with the seasons. ”
The cosmology of the ancient Celts shares common threads with earth-based wisdom traditions across time and human culture. It’s the one I’ve chosen as our guide, because Irish spirituality is what’s in my own blood and bones.
As we walk this path of remembering our sacred birthright, the aim isn’t to live as the ancestors did. Instead, our task is to pick up the maps they’ve left us and find what rings true for our lives today. After all, our spiritual practices and traditions are meant to give us tools for living. To really stick, they’ve got to meet us where we’re at.
Spiritual truths also extend well beyond what the human mind and ego can conceive.
The Celts, like many indigenous peoples past and present, listened deeply to the Unseen, the land, and all the old powers that go by more names than we will ever know. With this work, we’re reacquainting ourselves with ancient technologies for listening and receiving.
As we nourish ourselves through these practices, so too do we nourish the world. The reclamation of indigenous ways of seeing and being is itself a form of sacred activism, and vital to our shared fate on this planet.
acknowledgements
With gratitude to the teachers who have helped shape my thinking about the Wheel, and our place in the natural order of things: Heather Cole Gatto, Dr. Daniel Foor, Dr. Karen Ward & John Cantwell, Mari Kennedy, Dolores Whelan, Katy Pavlis, Char Sundust and Angeles Arrien.
The land itself is our greatest teacher and guide, and she is calling humanity home. As I’ve sought to answer that call, I’ve discovered again and again the soulful connection and resonance between Irish Celtic spirituality and North American indigenous ways of seeing and being. For this body of work, I call upon and honor the land of my ancestors, and the land that holds and nurtures me today.
With gratitude, I recognize and acknowledge the S’Klallam, Suquamish, Makah, Chimakum, and Twana/Skokomish nations, on whose ancestral land I now live and work. A portion of the proceeds from this course will be donated to Longhouse for the People.