February 8, 2022

I first saw this artwork over a decade ago at my favorite restaurant in Spiddal on Galway Bay. I was smitten. There was no name on the framed piece and none of the restaurant staff knew anything about the piece. And it slipped my mind as the restaurant went out of business and slipped into oblivion.

I love the synchronicity that this image, The Cailleach Quilt, appeared in a recent web search. The timing is interesting because when I first saw the piece I didn’t have the context I do now. Now I immediately think of the Old Woman card in Jane Brideson’s Wisdom of the Cailleach oracle deck. Now the image speaks to me on a much deeper level.

Knitting past into present. Preserving myths. Keeping the ancestors alive. This is the realm of the Crone. This is old woman craft.

Old Woman

I am
gnarled hands that knit
the past into the present.
Preserving myths,
keeping ancestors alive.
I am
Your heritage,
Your hard lessons,
the kindness, old conflicts,
the good blood and the bad.
My crooked fingers unravel knots,
Free tethered thoughts,
Release the ties that bind.
I am
the parting and the letting go,
which heals your broken thread.

The questions I sit with. As Crone, what am I knitting? How am I keeping the ancestors alive and what myths am I preserving? What broken threads need healing?

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith