PEGI EYERS
In September of 2022 the most amazing thing happened. My dear friend Kat Elliot visited Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer of Braided River Books and Seventh Wave Music in Dartmoor in southern Devon, England, and presented them with a copy of Ancient Spirit Rising~! It's wonderful when our creations find new homes all over the world, especially with amazing people and sacred sites. Tapadh leat gu dearbh (!) dear Kat, for your amazing friendship, and support of ASR~!
Excerpt from Ancient Spirit Rising / Chapter 25 / "Practices"
For the ultimate inspiration on how to recover and embody our ancient European Indigenous Wisdom directly, we can look to the work of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer in fine art, music, ceremony, material culture and daily life that sings to the Celtic heart and sets our souls on fire. Deeply embedded in the English landscape, Seventh Wave Music offers texts, poetry, music, artwork and musical instruments from richly-reconstructed Indigenous traditions affirming the Celtic, Nordic and Northern tribes of Europe. Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer “live and work on a thousand-year-old farm in the heart of Dartmoor, a mist-veiled landscape of wild hills and moors, and the inspiration for their work is drawn from the raw beauty, hidden spirit and ancient memory of this deep ancestral land.” [1] Music has the powerful ability to bring us back to our originating culture, and with hand-crafted drums, flutes, rattles and other musical instruments using locally-sourced wood, stone and other materials, the soundscape journeys and primordial rhythms of Seventh Wave Music restore us to the spirit of the wild landscape and the gifts of the land.
“What is the story of our forgotten people? It is a story of return. It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers into their hair. It is also, however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather than runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives. Remembering our people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan or land or any other bond that serves to entwine hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we chose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become.” [2] Carolyn Hillyer
Excerpt from Ancient Spirit Rising / Chapter 25 / "Practices"
For the ultimate inspiration on how to recover and embody our ancient European Indigenous Wisdom directly, we can look to the work of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer in fine art, music, ceremony, material culture and daily life that sings to the Celtic heart and sets our souls on fire. Deeply embedded in the English landscape, Seventh Wave Music offers texts, poetry, music, artwork and musical instruments from richly-reconstructed Indigenous traditions affirming the Celtic, Nordic and Northern tribes of Europe. Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer “live and work on a thousand-year-old farm in the heart of Dartmoor, a mist-veiled landscape of wild hills and moors, and the inspiration for their work is drawn from the raw beauty, hidden spirit and ancient memory of this deep ancestral land.” [1] Music has the powerful ability to bring us back to our originating culture, and with hand-crafted drums, flutes, rattles and other musical instruments using locally-sourced wood, stone and other materials, the soundscape journeys and primordial rhythms of Seventh Wave Music restore us to the spirit of the wild landscape and the gifts of the land.
“What is the story of our forgotten people? It is a story of return. It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers into their hair. It is also, however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather than runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives. Remembering our people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan or land or any other bond that serves to entwine hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we chose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become.” [2] Carolyn Hillyer
With a foot in both worlds, Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer are immersed in the Old Ways, and have manifested ancient EIK on their Dartmoor land by building a Neolithic-style Celtic Roundhouse using granite, oak and rye grass thatch, for ceremony and to evoke sacred space. Like a miracle from a dream, or the answer to a yearning we never knew we had, hearing their music or reading Carolyn’s words transports us directly to our ancestral roots, reconnecting our hearts to the heartbeat of the Earth and the glowing hearth, to stone, bone, willow, reed, antler, feather, copper - and to the warp and weft of stories that are woven in the land.
“we will build our dwelling from the bones of the earth
we are wed to the body of the earth
we will kindle our fire from the heart of the wood
we are wed to the soul of the land
now that the first hearth is set on the ground
to the spirit of this place we are bound……” [3] (Carolyn Hillyer)
The astonishing creative output of Seventh Wave Music and their hosted gatherings take us along ancient paths where we can reconnect with the energies of the earth, experience deep animist interactions with the nonhuman world, and feel the echoes of ancient forests, Atlantic coasts and stone circles once again. For over 20 years Carolyn has been offering workshop journeys for women, weaving together shared songs, chants, poetry, stories, ancient mythology, sacred symbols, hearth circles, ritual drumming, ceremony, oracle work, magical ways, rites of passage, wildcrafting, earth shrines, vigil, wayfaring, and interaction with the sacred wild sanctuaries of the land. Viewing her mixed-media art (“life-size images of archetypal spirit women, the ancient landscape in human form” [4]), and learning from the sacred prose and poetry of her mystic teachings can ignite our own deep well of remembrance and Indigenous talents as seer, bard, story-teller, hearthkeeper, healer, wanderer, hunter, gatherer, shapeshifter or lover of the land.
“Ancient shadows of women spiralling/
through the coils of time
we are part of those women spiralling
with the song of the land
and the dance of the moon inside.” [5] (Carolyn Hillyer)
The work of reviving an ancestral paradigm can arise from different motivations, methodologies, groups or inspirations, and diverse sources can guide our passage back to the ancient clanmothers while evoking the vibrancy of our Celtic sensibility in the modern era. With their rich tapestry of music, performance, poetry, story, ceremony and hearthfire, the works of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer give form and song to our personal journeys of cultural resurgence, and show us the way home to our EIK.
“we will build our dwelling from the bones of the earth
we are wed to the body of the earth
we will kindle our fire from the heart of the wood
we are wed to the soul of the land
now that the first hearth is set on the ground
to the spirit of this place we are bound……” [3] (Carolyn Hillyer)
The astonishing creative output of Seventh Wave Music and their hosted gatherings take us along ancient paths where we can reconnect with the energies of the earth, experience deep animist interactions with the nonhuman world, and feel the echoes of ancient forests, Atlantic coasts and stone circles once again. For over 20 years Carolyn has been offering workshop journeys for women, weaving together shared songs, chants, poetry, stories, ancient mythology, sacred symbols, hearth circles, ritual drumming, ceremony, oracle work, magical ways, rites of passage, wildcrafting, earth shrines, vigil, wayfaring, and interaction with the sacred wild sanctuaries of the land. Viewing her mixed-media art (“life-size images of archetypal spirit women, the ancient landscape in human form” [4]), and learning from the sacred prose and poetry of her mystic teachings can ignite our own deep well of remembrance and Indigenous talents as seer, bard, story-teller, hearthkeeper, healer, wanderer, hunter, gatherer, shapeshifter or lover of the land.
“Ancient shadows of women spiralling/
through the coils of time
we are part of those women spiralling
with the song of the land
and the dance of the moon inside.” [5] (Carolyn Hillyer)
The work of reviving an ancestral paradigm can arise from different motivations, methodologies, groups or inspirations, and diverse sources can guide our passage back to the ancient clanmothers while evoking the vibrancy of our Celtic sensibility in the modern era. With their rich tapestry of music, performance, poetry, story, ceremony and hearthfire, the works of Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer give form and song to our personal journeys of cultural resurgence, and show us the way home to our EIK.
Beautiful T-shirt design from Seventh Wave. Click on image to order.
NOTES
[1] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[2] Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, “About Seventh Wave Music: Words from the Wild Hills,” Seventh Wave Music, 2014. For information on music CDs, books, prints, hand-crafted instruments, concerts, events, Rivenstone, Festival of Bones, Thirteen Moons Women’s Festival and Workshop Journeys for Women: Hearth, Trail or Threshold Weekends, go to
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk.
[3] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[4] Carolyn Hillyer, “Books and Prints” Seventh Wave Music, 2014
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk
[5] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[1] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[2] Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, “About Seventh Wave Music: Words from the Wild Hills,” Seventh Wave Music, 2014. For information on music CDs, books, prints, hand-crafted instruments, concerts, events, Rivenstone, Festival of Bones, Thirteen Moons Women’s Festival and Workshop Journeys for Women: Hearth, Trail or Threshold Weekends, go to
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk.
[3] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
[4] Carolyn Hillyer, “Books and Prints” Seventh Wave Music, 2014
www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk
[5] Carolyn Hillyer, Sacred House: Where Women Weave Words into the Earth, Seventh Wave Books, 2010
Neolithic-style Roundhouse at Lower Merripit Farm
Seventh Wave Music and Braided River Books
Photography by Kat and Russ Elliott
CAROLYN HILLYER and NIGEL SHAW, BRAIDED RIVER BOOKS and SEVENTH WAVE MUSIC, DARTMOOR www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk
 | Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change. Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon. |
