Cailleach

Saga Kraft

Welcome to Saga Kraft: myths, fairytales, legends stories, comfort us, inspire us and heal us. Please join us as we share stories both old, no more than anything. We're open to the story and it's unfolding at times. It may be one story told by one person at times it's the same story told through three different voices.

In the end, we go where the story takes us and we invite you to follow. I'm C a writer, artist, and storyteller. I'm Betsy, a medium and teacher of mystery. I'm Gabriela, an artist and practitioner of folk magic. We are magic. Oh, very common in training. We welcome you veiled one dark Berra to come and to be part of this storytelling time.

And I also want to invite saga to be present as the tremendous storyteller and holder of space for stories. Um, but this story of the cardiac also has. Bridget in it in her early as formed. I'm not as religious. So we want to invite Bridgette to be present. And the other person in the story is Angus, who is the summer King.

So we invite all of you in your life, compassionate forums to be present with us for this story. And may you be pleased with this story? May it make whatever sense two individuals that it does? May it touch the hearts that it's supposed to. Um, may I speak to those who will be listening to the story in the future?

I ask that my words go directly into the ears and to the hearts of those who will in the future, listen to this. And also to you now who are hearing this story. I really thank you. My story is about the Collie arc. Who is a goddess figure in Scotland, Ireland, and the isle of man, um, Kelly Ark. When we look at what the word means from old gala, um, what it means is the veiled one and it refers to old women, old hags and very powerful goddesses.

And this story is about that powerful goddess who is truly the veiled one. Dark Berra was the mother of all, all the gods and goddesses in Scotland. She was very old, quite tall, and everyone feared her. She reigned as the queen of winter with fierce winds, ice and biting storms at her command. As spring year, each year, she would try with all her might to prolong the winter and her reign as the queen.

Though she lived in this way for hundreds of years, she did not die because when spring inevitably came, she conceded the ruling of her realm to her son, Angus. The summer King was a beautiful golden God freed of her winter duties and aged with the effort to create the storms, to freeze the land. She would go seeking renewal.

On the night before bell Tane, she would go to the floating green Island of the West to the sacred and hidden well of youth here. She would sit in silence and alone all the long night waiting for Dawn. When she would drink the magical waters after drinking from the sacred, well, Vera would begin to grow younger.

And that anti-aging would continue for her. She leaves soon after drinking, returning to the mainland of Scotland, where she would then go into a deep, magical sleep. At length when she awoke, she was even younger, still emerging from sleep as a beautiful golden haired girls, suite of disposition by Midsummer, she would be a woman fully mature.

And with autumn came her wrinkles by winter's beginning, she was again, a withered blue faced one eyed hag. She continued in this way for hundreds of years. One winter Barrack kept captive. A young woman named Bridger barren knew that this lovely princess was going to be the wife of her son, Angus. And she would eventually put on the crown of the summer queen.

Berra didn't love her for this. She kept her captive in a hidden mountain and she set the beautiful maiden to impossible tasks and was exceedingly nasty to her when she wasn't able to complete them. And she wasn't meant to complete them. She scalded are constantly finding fault with everything. Bridget did.

The girl was wretched with this treatment and deeply miserable. She was also unused to be treating in this treated in this way. Berra gave her a Brown sheep police and told her to wash it in the stream until it became snowy, white bridge have washed it day after day, all day long with no change to the color of the fleece.

It remained a dingy Brown bridge of worried and fretted that this was going to go on for her whole life. It seemed like it was never ending. One day while washing the fleece an old grade bittered man came by and watched us Brita cried bitterly, washing the fleece to no avail. Taking pity on her. The old man asked her why she was so sad when she told him, he said, I'm sorry for you.

And taking the fleece from her. He shook it vigorously three times. At which point the fleece became instantly as white as snow I'm father winter. He said I can easily make things white. Giving the fleece back to her. He accepted her heartfelt. Thanks for saving her so much trouble. I have something else for you.

He said, and he handed her a bouquet of snowdrops pure, absolute white. Give these flowers to Berra. If she scolds you. And tell her this, tell her that snow drops are growing in the green for woods and crest is growing on the stream banks. Be sure and tell her that bridge of went to Berra and drop the fleece that are feet bare.

It didn't even look at it. She handed her the snowdrops bear. His rage lit up when she saw the flowers where these flowers from she shouted. Breaches said snowdrops are growing in the green for woods and crest is growing on the stream. Banks raging with fury Berra center, eight hugs to the North, the South, the East and the West freeze and blight any new green growth, any sign of spring, smite the world with Roston storms, wage war against all growth wage war against my son.

The summer King. Her hags mounted their shaggy goats and rode forth. Bera took her black hammer and smoked the ground again and again, freezing the earth solid and keeping spring at Bay as she's smoked the ground, she reshaped the mountains and the valleys, meantime Angus, the son of bearer and the summer King dreamt a dream of a beautiful and very sad maiden.

He saw an old gray bearded man beside her in the dream and asked the man why the maiden wept. So unceasingly, the old man said, she's a captive of Vera, your mother, and treated most cruelly. When Angus awoke, he sought guidance from the King of the green isle. The King told him this maiden is going to be your wife.

She'll be your summer. Queen Angus wanted to go at once and free her. The King tried to persuade him to wait until the first sign of spring to rescue her. But I think it's decided to go at once, even though it was deepest winter and the time of his mother's greatest power. Uh, borrow three days from August and I will sing a spell upon the land and the sea for peace of the winds and peace in the sea.

This he did. And he wrote to the lens where Brita was captive. He searched high and low day and night, but he couldn't find her. She was hidden so well, Vera angry at our son's stirred up a Tempest and blue and back to the green aisle. Undeterred Angus went back again until eventually he found her from the first time that Angus and Bridger saw each other.

They also loved each other and to help them the local fairy queen and her many maidens help the couple to safety crossing a river frozen by one of the hugs of Berra. Reja put her hand on the ice and began the very first melting of the waters. The ice hag responsible for the frozen river shrieked and fled back to Berra bridge was transformed from her rags to a gown of white silk and crystals.

She was given a white wand woven with golden stocks, the fairies, the nature spirits, the birds, the animals, all of nature celebrated the wedding. Feasta Angus and Brita shoutings spring has come spring has come. And Angus spoke. Spells is a fertility for the land. Well, breacher waved her wand, the spills of spring were strong and even made their way to the land of the humans.

Angus left his bride in safety on the green aisle. When you went and challenged his mother bear since storm after storm to drive him away, he kept coming back. She sent the wind called whistle to him, which brought hail and ice. Scotland's suffered greatly Angus flood, but returned again. The next week embarrassed sent to him was sharp, build wind, which pecked at the land, like a great bird.

Next was the sweeper, which tore branches from the trees and budding plants from their stocks. The earth was ravaged. People starved in the weeks of leanness came on. There was a sorrowful time, but where that wind of verus could not reach spring, came flowers, appeared Barrow retaliated with the gales of complaint.

Yet she was unable to fully subdue the powers of the spring, wielded by Angus and Brita it together at length. At the end of her own strength, Berra had one more blast in her. She called forth. The three days of winter that had disappeared when Angus called up the three days of spring, the spirits of those particular days of winter were Tempus spirits and they did their utmost to defeat the summer King to no avail on belting Eve weekend with effort on an extreme old age, Vera conceded, defeat, and flood in despair.

She dropped her black hammer and made her way to the well of youth on that floating green isle and waiting through the long night. She drank at Dawn the next day, when Barrow returned to her home, Reja in triumph, dipped her white hands into the high mountain waters that still held ice Vera. The veiled.

One felt instantly into her magical and deep sleep. That was beautiful. That was very magical and triumphant, a story of triumph. So many things. So we know who the man was or did I miss it? He just called himself father winter. But we don't know who he was, but the fact that he was old, put him on a powerful footing with bearer, I think could he have been her husband and the father of Angus?

He could have been one of the stories about Vera says that she was amazed in seven or nine times over because she could go through that process of renewal. She had many husbands and many children. I want to be like her. It was hard for me not to just relate to her. Cause I know I'm sure I know her and I've loved the whole winter thing.

And my son is guess, well, this is a tale that definitely honors your son as a namesake of the King of summer. I'm struck by how it would be to be constantly changing age in such a rapid succession to. Seems like it would be nice. I love to change age like breathing. Yeah. Oh, that sounds really pleasant. I think parts of it would be pleasant, but I think other parts would be a great challenge.

And I would think you would never fully be any of those ages because there's that constant change. And it seems like there's something unnatural about that, how the age can shift from one to another, in a person, but this is a goddess. So this is and nature being who has rained over well, but she has rained over one specific time and somehow she's managed that time to serve her through all that the times.

So she has a fight like her power is in the winter. Her power though, can grant her different seasons of being that is where her true power is, is in that winter, which is why she holds onto it. So tightly. So in her crone age and her, at her peak of age, that's where her power is. It's quite interesting to look at her as a feminine being and think that yes, In the winter, she's at her most haggish repulsive.

I mean, other descriptions that people say is that she has red teeth and she dresses in the winter with clothing that are covered with bones and skulls. So she may be a bone mother and in places in Scotland, where there are mountains that she has purportedly shaped with her black hammer. That are associated with her.

Those are often in alignment with the neolithic sites as well. So there's a sense of her antiquity beings. So, so ancient. She certainly feels like a giant test. She feels like she is the bones of the earth and the hollows of the earth. And just maybe why she can command the wins is because it's from her hollow places from her shallow places.

They come. Love that she models to me that it's all right to fight reality, even though you're going to lose, I need that less than sometimes. It's about the battle, not the win, right? Yeah. He didn't gain commitment and what that engagement and what that battle invokes in other people. So they can find their destiny and power because without her.

What they find who they are meant to be without being challenged. I find that very interesting is that they don't really rise until there is a great danger for the land imbalance has to be restored. And they, uh, at that point are reminded of their natural time of their natural power and it's peak. And they have to show up in that form.

It's striking to me that in the summer, when she's rejuvenating and renewing the spring on the summer, that she's not the giant tests, not the hide, but a beautiful golden inherit maiden herself and has no power whatsoever during that time. But her beauty. That's what I was just thinking. It's hard to think that a beautiful maiden doesn't have power and she's noted to be sweet tempered as a girl, but as she ages and moves into her power, her temper gets worse and worse until it definitely a template very quick to rage.

Yeah, that's a liberating, it just feels requisite to me. Like the way that you earn your power is by going through things that make you shorter tempered. Totally makes sense. Thank you for the story. It was so beautifully shared and just exquisite and it's magic and unfolding. I feel like I'll be sitting with it for a bit.

It's really lovely. That's a beautiful story. I'm trying to think what the, the lesson would be for me, where I'm the younger woman. So it's so easy for me to relate to the elderly, but where I'm the younger woman, what would that be about? Just to hang in there. My noticing about the younger woman Bridger is that she's given most things like a beautiful woman.

She's given the clean fleas. She's given the snowdrops, she's rescued by Angus. She's given her wand, which she then wields beautifully, but everything is given to her. For her to play her role as summer queen. That's very true. I did not even that didn't even occur to me. I just thought of her as somebody that already had those powers ahead of time and has come into them upon challenge.

But no, the man arrives to help her. She's given the clue. Yes. She seems somewhat ambiguous and who she is and how she even comes into the picture. But then yes, ends up being one of the heroines to restore part of the restoration of nature, which I think is something in many stories that there is the young maiden that brings either an aging God, back to life or restores the piece of the land along with the summer King or along with an appropriate partner, that there is that meeting of the two youth.

Bring balance back into nature and they're are always King and queen and Lord and lady at the same time. And here are. Or escorted by or are blessed by the Fe. So blessed by the magical land, the magic of the land and the blooming land and nature spirits, Davis trees, all of those beings. I think we're always holding that tension of opposites between the old and the young between the, this is the way things were and the way things should be.

And. Think of the crazy good things we can do if we just started things differently, there's always holding that battle. Like how do we move forward? Do we follow tradition explicitly? Or do we break out and use our creativity to try to create a better world and different people's side to different ones, but nobody holds just one.

Well, put it was a naivety required creativity and bursting forth. I trust in the world that you don't get so much as an old hag. Well, and it's possible that the old carried a certain necessary role to maintain a time and retention of what it needs to be and change wasn't needed until it was yet, they were not of the awareness to.

Or maybe not even awareness is the word, but they knew that they would disappear with that change. So of course they would fight for survival of what they knew. Against all odds. And regardless of what the consequences would be, where the younger people in the story, the newness is not only newness, but it's a return to balance.

It's both it's that the old ways have forgotten or resisting a certain movement in time. And someone has to come in to stop them. That's exactly what's happening politically right now, but I don't want to drag you into that. Um, and on that note, it seems as though one thing that I'll be pondering over the next week is the power of working together with someone because it was when Reja and Angus work together that the power of spring became potent enough to turn the tide.

Whereas I can certainly relate to bearer. And her rage and her desire to kill things going the way that they have been. I also see the benefit of how hands together can bring forth that fertility and that something perhaps that our world needs needs right now is that fertility. Is that working together with the masculine and the feminine, bringing their own powers to bear.

And each of us have those within us. So that can look different ways for different people. That feels like a good, a good lesson to take from them. The story, for sure. Even on the aspect of the other. It's embracing the other and it's embracing the change that comes with a complete shift in outlook on a situation that is necessary for things to change and believing that they can.

And holding that as the new, as the new normal, as the new is the new way until that becomes exhausted in itself. And something else comes through, it'll just keep going. And that way. Yeah. And so confusing directions. In addition to my father, dying was big. My friend, John is also dying this week, probably already dead, but I haven't gotten that notice yet, but I have been really aware of how much John meant in my life.

Even though we really weren't close because we went to high school together and we both had moments of collusion where we broke the way things were happening, because we worked together against the group and moments where we worked in opposition to one another. And I'm so aware of how he taught me to cut my teeth.

You know what I mean? Like just how to stand on my own. And how to not care, what other people thought and how to be myself in a world that would not particular they appreciate or respect me. And I simultaneously think of when I spent time with small child and we would play games and they wanted me to lose.

Of course, but they'd be like, I want to play with that other person. Cause they're going to let me win. And I was like, no, I know that you were smarter than me. I know you are. And when you win from me, it will be a real victory. So I wonder how much she is playing into that, how much he is setting up terms in which they have to do what they need to do to get to the place where they're able to move forward before they're permitted.

I wonder if she's wording them or if she's being a gatekeeper with integrity. I always like to think that the big, bad is doing just what needs to be done in order to, in order to enlighten. I always want to believe that the opposer is there to enlighten the hero and that the hero really wouldn't exist without me too.

So I think I will be looking this week at what Gates I am keeping. And if I am keeping them to the best of my ability for me, someone who has always been very comfortable with the crown and all of her, all of her forms, the crone, the hag, the dark goddess, the challenging goddess. I will remember that I have aspects of that in myself and I...