The Cailleach of Callanish Watches Over Us

I wonder if the entrance to the site is from the north because the north is the direction on the medicine wheel associated with the Cailleach – she wakes up at summer’s end, enters our world, and begins her job of dis-assembling what summer has built. Her first job is to dis-assemble the current shape of things. The “sleeping woman” hills are to the south of the Callanish stones – and that is the direction of summer, when the Cailleach sleeps, and when she is caressed by the Dreaming Moon. The moon is sometimes seen as a male figure in Celtic culture.

In Scots and Irish (patriarchal) tradition, the Cailleach is usually viewed as a mean goddess of winter who delights in stamping out summer with her giant stone hammer, draining the life from the world and bringing terrible winter. She wakes up about this time of year and starts doing her job of bringing autumn, then winter. 

But at the Callanish Stones, the Cailleach is honored in a much broader sense – as the Great Earth Mother. She is the one who assembled all the rocks, hills and mountains of the earth – indeed, of the cosmos - and who continues to shape and reshape, dis-assemble and re-assemble, the world (both outer and inner). This cosmic Cailleach brought the asteroids loaded with water crashing to earth to make it habitable, the nebulas are her wild-eyed flock of goats, and the milky way is the nourishment she pours onto the earth.



The green arrow in the arial picture points to a pile of three large rocks. As you can see, they are aligned with that north-south avenue - the main ceremonial corridor. They are also up a hill, a slow rise of maybe 20 feet. So, these rocks have a sense of overlooking the entire Callanish stone circle. These rocks weren’t moved here - they were present when the circle was built. Here is what they look like from the side that faces the avenue and the worshipers:

Is this also the Cailleach, the great goddess, so often described in (patriarchal) myth as mean, cold, and dangerous? This sweet-faced grandmother? Was the entire Callanish circle situated so that she looked over the whole sacred space, and each and every person who entered? Every time I take a group to these stones, I can’t wait to sit in Her embrace.

My Friends: beyond everything else that the Stones at Callanish may have said to the Ancients and have said to the millions who have pilgrimages there over 50 centuries, I believe they also say this: The Earth Mother is always with you, always watching over you with an open and loving embrace, always wanting you to flourish, always wanting you to blossom. Your life is one long ceremonial procession to the center. 

The druids have a saying: death is the center of a well-lived life. For each of us, death is our destination. Every road you take leads to the same place. That destination is not an end, but merely a place of the re-arranging of the stones. At each step, the Great Mother watches over our ceremonial procession – a long, sometimes arduous walk of many miles, much discomfort, much learning, much beauty. 

We are in a time of the great re-arranging of the stones – the foundations upon which we’ve built our lives. The stones are shifting; we are climbing over them, learning big lessons about living in the body with each other, and with the powers of nature. 

Some people fall into guilt and proclaim the Great Mother is mad at us, and punishing us, but I think that’s just an unhelpful rewrite of the mean patriarchal Cailleach with her smashing hammer. It’s also just another version of the Great Judging Male God that has really gotten us into this mess in the first place. It’s Yahweh in a dress. 

For me, there is no punishment in the face of the Cailleach at Callanish – just guidance, as she teaches us our current, difficult lesson about redefining abundance. This is a question you can carry with you into this dark part of the year: what is true abundance?