BRAIDED RIVER ONLINE WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL Created and guided by Carolyn Hillyer
Please go the BRAIDED RIVER website to explore THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL and find the doorways into the journeys: www.thebraidedriver.co.uk
Here is a summary of the information below but you will find everything you need to know to enter a journey on the new site.
The Weavers’ Trail has been opening gradually since midsummer 2022 and will be fully open this late spring. DAWEYO JOURNEY (The Hearth Woman) and LAGYÂNO JOURNEY (The Shrine Guardian) are open for bookings. SOITLÂ JOURNEY (The Bone Dreamer) will open on April 30. On the Braided River website you are able to subscribe to our new newsletter to receive notice when bookings open. Welcome to the river!
~ INTRODUCTION TO THE WEGJÊ KERDÂ
~ SUMMARY OF THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
~ SOURCE OF THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
~ ANCIENT MOTHER WORDS
~ STEPPING ONTO THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
~ THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL PROGRAMME
INTRODUCTION TO THE WEGJÊ KERDÂ
We travel through the landscapes of our lives yearning for, seeking out and gathering together the lost and unremembered parts of ourselves; fragments that we may not have even known were missing, dissolved or torn from the fabric of our being until we glimpse their returning shadows at our heels. These journeys of remembering and mending, reweaving the familiar and newly weaving the unknown, are uniquely healing, revealing, profound and empowering to each one of us for, of course, every traveller follows her own meandering route. But there are common elements to be found in our soul pilgrimages which is why the companionship, compassion and shared wisdom of other travellers can be such a precious resource with which to infuse and enrich our experiences.
I have created and guided women’s workshop journeys and teachings for more than thirty years, on Dartmoor and throughout the world. This online programme has been created to enable what is shared in this remote wild moorland sanctuary to be explored by a community of women far beyond those who are able to travel to my home. For some years I have circled the question of how to weave deeper digital connectedness into my work while preserving the integrity and wonder of what we experience in our physical gatherings and ceremonies. There are compelling reasons for offering online workshops now. The practical limit to the number of places that may be offered on the Dartmoor workshop programme can, as a result, tangle into long waiting lists. The urgent need to reduce our collective air miles around the planet is understood; an online vessel enables women to participate in this work without physically travelling, as well as fitting fluidly around domestic, work or personal commitments. And the shape of my work is changing since I entered the steadying pace of my seventh decade; this is not a slowing so much as a recalibration for while I am casting an eye back along the journey undertaken, I am peering with anticipation through swirling mists into the trail ahead.
So the task has been this: how to infuse an online experience with the raw energy of the moors and of ancient feral dreamscapes? How to anchor the physical dynamic of women gathering together into a digital framework that can be sustaining, inspiring and fully grounded in the integrity of sisterhood? How to bring the wild sanctuary of this ancient ritual landscape and this sacred roundhouse hearth and these tender and fierce sister circles into each woman’s own home? I hope that this Weavers’ Trail is able to go some way in meeting this task.
SUMMARY OF THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
The Weavers’ Trail is a workshop programme of thirteen cycles, grouped into three deepening and consecutive travelling landscapes: DAWEYO JOURNEY (The Hearth Woman), LAGYÂNO JOURNEY (The Shrine Guardian) and SOITLÂ JOURNEY (The Bone Dreamer). These ancient words come from the 4000-year-old Proto-Celtic mother tongue. The three key elements of sacred hearth, wild land and ancestors that are represented by these three journeys form the primordial granite foundation from which everything else within this body of work is dreamed and created. Daweyo, Lagyâno and Soitlâ are the three ancient grandmothers or wise women archetypes who anchor and accompany these ritual journeys, bearing witness as each travelling sister sets out to kindle the fires within the sacred house, tend the feral prayers of wild shrines or dream without boundaries inside the ancestral cave.
This Weavers’ Trail might be entered because you have reached a threshold of change or challenge in your life and are seeking a journey you can use to support or encourage your way forward. This Weavers’ Trail might be threaded into your own deepening, questing, yearning path as a woman of spirit and curiosity and courage. Along this Weavers’ Trail you might find prayer or magic or dream or a myriad of other possibilities; it depends, of course, on what you are seeking. You might encounter answers to your questions or more questions waiting to be revealed; this trail can certainly be a tool for the awakening or strengthening of your own intuitive wisdom. This Weavers’ Trail is in essence a woven vessel of words and images, songs and rhythms, ideas and imaginations, waiting for you to travel here, to shape it anew with each step you make, to thread it into the unique textures and colours of your own journey. Welcome, sister, to the WEGJÊ KERDÂ.
SOURCE OF THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
The Weavers’ Trail draws on the writings, paintings, songs that I have created, the many workshop journeys and women’s circles that I have guided, and the place of wild sanctuary that I have tended during half my lifetime. This Weavers’ Trail may be undertaken alongside the broader reading of my books as a way of widening your experience with those texts, or developing your own interpretations, or binding your own understanding and insights into a collective enrichment of women’s anciently-held wisdom. The books that are woven into this trail are: Weavers’ Oracle, Sacred House. Her Bone Bundle, Book of Hag and Wild Litany.The images threaded into this journey are from paintings created during 35 years, most of them originally life-size and now embedded within the Weavers’ Oracle. The songs and drum chants spun into this work are drawn from a broad archive of 200 songs recorded, performed and shared in circles many thousands of times since I was a young woman. The mythic stories and sacred tales laced into these landscapes are infused by dream and song and image, and fed into the memories of stone and river and bark and wind. The sacred house finds a physical form in the ceremonial ancestral roundhouse which sits on the land at the centre of our turning circles, and a spirit form in our constantly renewed honouring of women’s primordial truths within this earth womb, this dark cave, this blessed nest, this wondrous manifestation of our magic. The ultimate source is the ancient land and the ancient women who fill it with their ancient whispered prayers. We are simply the cups that catch the whispers and the cloth that tenderly enwraps the spell.
ANCIENT MOTHER WORDS
The Bronze Age mother tongue that roots this workshop programme into ancient earth is the Proto-Celtic language, a resonance of the words used by the ancestor people of the British islands that fed into the various branches of the living Celtic Iron Age languages. This ancient nearly-forgotten tongue exists now as bone words, remembered within the marrow of our own songs and prayers. These words have been carefully uncovered, smoothed and burnished, held up to firelight and washed in chill streams. The undertaking and offering of this work are described in HER BONE BUNDLE. This mother tongue will feature constantly and profoundly within the Weavers’ Trail as a sacred channel of communication with land and ancestors and spirit forms.
STEPPING ONTO THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL
Although the Weavers’ Trail is laid out as a thirteen-month cycle, it is designed to be travelled at your own pace. You are welcome to unfurl and stretch the time in which you explore and deepen your study as much as you like, slowing the momentum of travel to fit the requirements of your life or circumstances or inner rhythm. The trail is sequential so you will follow each step of the journey in turn but you can choose when you want to begin travelling; the entrance to the trail is also not fixed in time. You can decide for yourself how far you want to deepen into the programme; you do not need to commit to the whole trail at the start for the next parts of the journey can be added as you go along. The only time criteria I suggest is that you do not rush through this programme of workshops; the Weavers’ Trail organically follows a circle of thirteen moons and I would recommend this as the minimum time in which to undertake the whole experience. You may wish to anchor your work with the DAWEYO and remain in her sacred house for many moons before you feel ready to move out into wild land to seek the LAGYÂNO. Working with the SOITLÂ can be intense, requiring focus and dedication if you want to reach her secrets; step steadily, do not hurry, there is no pressure to finish. Feel free to travel with your journey for more than a year, several years, a lifetime, if that works best for you. The pre-recorded films (teaching sessions, drum song sessions and ceremonies) may be watched at any point during each part of your journey and as many times as you want.
The workshop programme is a vessel that holds the various components of these three journeys but only you can shape the elements into something that authentically nourishes and strengthens your life. You are accompanied by the three ancient trail guides only to the extent that you invite them into your personal experience and understanding. You are answerable only to yourself, which can be both exhilarating and daunting. However it is important to have the chance to connect into the wider community of women travelling across these landscapes; sometimes mutual encouragement and support can be vital in keeping our feet moving forward. As well as the digital, filmed and physical workshop materials you will receive, I will be hosting and guiding monthly KURO zoom sessions (kuro means a circle). These are opportunities for all women who are travelling the Weavers’ Trail to link into regular kuro gatherings, which encompass informal teachings, drum songs and simple shared ritual with the aim of stirring the collective momentum of all participating sisters. Each session is recorded so women connecting from all international time zones will have the chance to view it later.
THE WEAVERS’ TRAIL PROGRAMME
1. DAWEYO JOURNEY / THE HEARTH WOMAN
First Month: KRUTTÂ ~ SACRED DRUM
Second Month: FFLINNÂ ~ SACRED COAT
Third Month: DABÂKÂ ~ SACRED VESSEL
Fourth Month: OIBELO ~ SACRED FIRE
Four packages of course texts, tasks and images (digital pdf file, approx. 150 pages total)
Four teaching sessions (pre-recorded films, 50-60 mins each)
Four ritual drum song sessions (pre-recorded films, 15 mins each)
Four monthly online kuro sessions with Carolyn (group circles on zoom, 2 hours each)
Hearth bundle (posted introductory package of materials for sacred ritual)
Suggested minimum journey time each month: 6-8 hours
OPEN FOR BOOKINGS – please go to www.thebraidedriver.co.uk
2. LAGYÂNO JOURNEY / THE SHRINE GUARDIAN
Fifth Month: WERITO ~ WILD EARTH
Sixth Month: MADYO ~ WILD WATERS
Seventh Month: DRENKSTÂ ~ WILD SONGS
Eighth Month: DRAUGOS ~ WILD SPIRITS
Four packages of course texts, tasks and images (digital pdf file, approx. 150 pages total)
Four teaching sessions (pre-recorded films, 50-60 mins each)
Four ritual drum song sessions (pre-recorded films, 15 mins each)
Four monthly online kuro sessions with Carolyn (group circles on zoom, 2 hours each)
Shrine bundle (posted package of materials for sacred ritual and craft)
Shrine ceremony (pre-recorded film, 30 mins)
Suggested minimum journey time each month: 8-10 hours
OPEN FOR BOOKINGS – please go to www.thebraidedriver.co.uk
3. SOITLÂ JOURNEY / THE BONE DREAMER
Ninth Month: BERYO KAMAWO ~ CARRY THE SORROW
Tenth Month: SNAD GWORO ~ BIND THE PRAYER
Eleventh Month: YÎKKÂ MANTALO ~ MEND THE TRAIL
Twelfth Month: ERBYO ADSORO ~ TRUST THE RETURN
Thirteenth Month: YÂLO WEGYÂ ~ HONOUR THE LOOM
Five packages of course texts, tasks and images (digital pdf file, approx. 200 pages total)
Five teaching sessions (pre-recorded films, 50-60 mins each)
Five ritual drum song sessions (pre-recorded films, 15 mins each)
Five monthly online kuro sessions with Carolyn (group circles on zoom, 2 hours each)
Roundhouse bundle (posted package of materials for sacred ritual and craft)
Roundhouse ceremony (pre-recorded film, 30 mins)
Support with final written or creative project (group zoom session)
Suggested minimum journey time each month: 10-12 hours
OPEN FOR BOOKINGS FROM APRIL 30 (2023)
