---

Just wanted to mark a decade with a heartfelt thank you to all of our followers and supporters over the years!!!

This September marks a decade of the Druid’s Cauldron which was previously called ‘Illumination by Rhymes’ or ‘Celtic Druidry’ before that. We started as a blog to share what we were collectively learning through OBOD or general Celtic Studies circles and discussion online. We became a non-profit this year just as a nod of respect to the importance of folklore, folk stories as well as living cultural memory. We’ve continuously evolved always trying to infuse everything we do with genuine care, sensitivity and love for folklore and folk practices, particularly of the isles or Western Europe where the druids existed and their heritage can still be felt. Most specifically to Ériu where most of us know as home.

My gratitude for the friendships and connections over the years can’t properly be encompassed into words. I have truly met some of the most beautiful souls on this path I’m endlessly grateful for. Although, it hasn’t always been easy. Myself or other writers have experienced strange and cruel slander, bullying and relational issues that were disturbing realizations of what people are capable of. I’ve retreated inward countless times unsure of who I could trust and that’s no one else’s fault but my own nervous system and my own often debilitating anxiety. My introversion is unfortunately often far louder than I’d like it to be. We’ve lost relatives and dear friends. I nearly lost my mom and lost a best friend to suicide that prompted a 6 month break here. Etc. There’s a lot to that ‘Etc.’ but that is all to say, this blog has been an immovable rock to lean on.

The world in general has arguably not gotten easier over the last decade. We’ve experienced societal heartbreak after heartbreak watching covid and genocide unfold. We’ve entered another level of surveillance state. Every word, picture, music and piece of art we make can be recycled into A.I. slop at the hands of psychopaths. There’s a far larger class divide. Endless hoarding of resources and power at our and the environment’s expense. Divide. Distract. Extract. Consolidate power. Launder billions with false narratives (embedded within countless socially manufactured schemes) or staged terror. Rinse and repeat…

Avoiding the implications of this are only partially and temporarily possible for the privileged. The endless urban sprawl, data centres and voracious destruction of everything and anything good and biologically healthy is increasingly angering. The thinking that usually made me feel better about any current state of affairs, “Well, at least it isn’t the dark ages.” is not as comforting of a balm as it used to be.

I digress… it often feels like the only and best thing we can do is focus on community and building each other up which is what this page has always been about. I’m cyclically reminded of the Irish hermit tradition… of living simply, slowly and meaningfully. I lean into my own ancestors and focus on healing and light while also doing what I can.

We can protest, make smart and specific purchasing choices and purposefully choose to not participate in the system in as many ways as we can. We can remind ourselves that much of what they show us and the algorithm is working purposefully against us and to break free from allowing our emotions to be controlled so easily. To spend most of our time reveling in simple practices like gardening or focusing on the beauty of each day, at the sight of a bee, rainbow or our children’s eyes feels like the only truly sane thing we can do.

I feel like I’ve personally come full circle this last decade and have ended up very thankfully, where I started when this page was created… incredibly inspired, happy and with every piece of myself healed and immersed in wonderment and love, but it didn’t come easy. Yet, it is true that… “Nothing worth having arrives easily.”

I wish only peace and all good things, wholly and truly for anyone reading this. Thank you dearly for being here all these years. You are not alone. You are in good company and we are all in this together. Cheers to more stories, music, poetry, art and the little things we all do every day in direct protest to colonial powers in all of their varied forms.

As an added thank you, i’m attaching a short film I did in collaboration with the wonderful Lemurtale Media from Cork with all sales of the screening going to Gaelic Woodland Project a couple years back. It has not been publicly viewable until now. Thank you to Kate and J.D. for being willing to be adventurous with us for a couple days!

---

Thresholds: A Selkie Love Story

A selkie walks the shoreline of a remote island in her human form, drawn by curiosity toward a solitary fisherman who works the same grey waters each dawn. As the seasons turn, the two fall into a quiet and deepening love, meeting at the threshold between land and sea, between the world of breath and the world of wave. She begins to show him the ocean not as something dangerous but as a home, as freedom, as the vast and luminous country she carries inside her. The film is a meditation on belonging and surrender, on the longing that lives in people who feel the pull of something beyond the ordinary world. What would it mean to follow love all the way to its source, to be truly vulnerable, to allow ourselves to be transformed and discover the truest version of ourselves?

No A.I. was used for this video.
Writing and production by: Isla Skye
Video by: Lemurtale Media
Music is: ‘The Gift’ by Ob-Lix

---