Living up here in the Highlands gives us the chance to develop a personal relationship with nature that can help to enrich our lives in many ways.
Through the cultivation of this very special relationship; a deeper appreciation for the ebbs and flows of the seasons, of nature and ultimately life can help inform and change our life decisions big and small.
The cultivation of this kind of relationship with nature is nothing new. One way that this relationship has been represented in culture is through myths and folk tales that personify nature and natural processes like the seasons. There are many examples from the local folk traditions and myths describing how humans lived as part of nature – part of an extended ‘Nature Family’.
‘Beira, Queen of Winter’
An ancient example of this kind of thinking comes in the form of the story of the Cailleach or ‘Beira, Queen of Winter’ in the anglicised version of the story, which is very apt for current times.
The personification of the seasons allows us to empathise with, and better understand, the transformational energies and opportunities they bring.
The Cailleach, or ‘old woman’ in Scots Gaelic, is more than just an old woman, she is ‘The Old Woman Eternal’, so to speak. She is the mother of all Gods and Goddesses in Scots Gaelic folk tradition and she made the mountains and the valleys when she walked over the land many years ago, dropping huge boulders from her ‘pinnie’ as she went and cleaving the glens as she walked by hammering down with her huge metal cludgel to transform the land into the stunning Highland mountains, lochs and glens that we know and love today.
She is the creator and destroyer, a kin to other powerful female Goddesses from other indigenous cultures the world over. A sister of Ishtar, Astarte, and Hecate to name a few, the Cailleach is both Queen of Winter, the bringer of transformative change and the protector of wild animals.
She is also associated with fertility and especially the grain crops that were relied upon in times gone by to feed people through the winter and is considered to be the inspiration behind the corn dollies made from the last sheaths of the grain of harvest in order to bring luck to the harvest for the next year. When the harvest is done, she brings the Winter storms in order to clear out what is old and used up, that which no longer serves us, before she goes to sleep in the spring, allowing for her daughter Bride, the beautiful Queen of Summer to restore new growth to the land.
Adapting to change
Change is often hard for people to go through, and anything that can help us to really move through changes and to be able to feel and connect with them on a personal level can have a profoundly positive effect on our psyche and well-being.
Viewing change as embodied by the Autumn and Winter storms allows us to feel the wind on our faces, the rain and sleet, no matter how cold and piercing, on our skin, the snow flurries and the cold sharp gusts through our bones and to know that change is part of a natural process as age-old as the earth itself.
As we move towards Autumn, we have the chance to notice the changing seasons, to anticipate the coming of the Cailleach and to allow her to help guide us in the natural process of transformation and clearing out of old patterns and ideas that no longer serve us well to make way for new growth in the spring.
We have the chance to explore Autumn and Winter as a transformative process, as the ‘wild animals at heart’ that we are, under her protection, to arrive refreshed and renewed as autumn and winter pass in to spring.
As the climate crisis ramps up and the threat to wild animals of all kinds, our own wild side included, increases daily, what better idea to play with and open up a personal discourse with than our very own Scottish ‘idea’ of the Cailleach, the Queen of Winter and bringer of transformations, there unconditionally for each and every one of us as we weather the changes we all must make to move to a better future for all, whatever that might be.
