To Dare, Together. Truth Seeking for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation!
Hello friend! I’m so grateful you’re here. I created this space for you and I to spend some time together. To Dare, Together. To seek the truth in the depths. To Dare to tune into the wisdom and pleasure of our bodies. To honor the places that hold pain and renewal. To Dare to descend and arise, transformed in the never ending cycle of death and regeneration. To reenchant the world around us from a more embodied and integrated place. To Dare to join in honest connection where liberation, love, equity, beauty, joy, gratitude, sensuality, dignity, and reverence for all life on earth is at the heart of our sacred space.
I am your host, Erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor, and dare I say, witch, and if you are willing, your friend. Together we will descend into the mystery, into the exquisite darkness because true liberation starts with healing from the inside out. And it happens when we dare to go there, together.
Where are we going, you may ask? Well, we are delving into all the realms of our experience. We will move through our body, heart, mind, soul, spirit, original and chosen family, relationships, communities, cultures, dominant systems in society, intergenerational patterning, ancestral wounds and wisdom, and the great expanse of our collective. Because when we are together, we will seek to know what is true. We will alchemize and transform, knowing that our fates are inevitably intertwined with one another. So let’s will it together.
My offering here will be a combination of solo explorations together, and deep dives with other like-hearted therapists, healers, intuitives, activists, magickal practitioners, artists, abolitionists, astrologers, visionaries, witches, and more. This is a place that will weave together the relational, social, and sacred sciences, because oh yes, they are all connected. I want to support our journey of transformation by sharing practices that we can facilitate because ultimately we are our own wisest guide, healer, and teacher. Our body holds so much intelligence if we just slow down enough to listen. When we know how to keep silent and just be, just breathe, just listen, we know how to summon our greatest powers of transformation.
We will explore practices that focus on increasing our somatic awareness, trauma integration, and nervous system regulation. We will work with our shadow to illuminate what needs to be alchemized or released. We will dismantle our internalized systems of dominance and extraction so we resonate with the reciprocity and abundance of life. We will deepen our understanding of intersectionality and how our social location in the world shifts our experiences of power and disembodiment. We will strive to relate with others in ways that are embodied and promote connection, celebrate differentiation, and respectfully move through rupture or conflict so that all beings preserve their dignity. We will conjure the wisdom of our ancestors to strengthen our communal spaces. We will create rituals to attune with the cycles of nature, lunar rhythms, astrology, and the wheel of the year. We will do pathworkings and divination to deepen our relationship to our Higher Self, Spirit Team, Intuition, Magick, Soul’s purpose, and so much more.
We are all here on Earth right now. It’s time To Dare to take a stand for healing, transformation, and collective liberation. And the first step starts from within. Let’s take it together.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” – unknown
To Dare, Together. Truth Seeking for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation!
Lughnasadh Blessings and Harvesting Wisdom for Our Time
In today's episode, I'm recording outside to honor Lughnasadh (Lammas), which is the Gaelic pagan holiday that traditionally honors the first harvest, when communities would gather to celebrate their collective abundance. It wasn't merely about collecting crops – it was about recognizing how each person's unique contributions sustained the whole community. They celebrated through games, crafts, poetry, dance, and sharing food, displaying the rich tapestry of skills and gifts that made their community thrive. This ancient practice embodied a vital lesson: being in right relationship with the land means honoring its abundance, taking only what you need, and sharing what you have with each other.
Lughnasadh is one of the eight sacred holidays (Sabbats) on the Witch’s Wheel of the Year. The astrological energies of this week support the deep remembering of generational wisdom and wounding. With Chiron retrograde in Aries until January, we're called to reflect, return to, and regenerate – all those "re-" words that invite us to slow down and tune in. Meanwhile, Leo season encourages authentic self-expression and discovering how our unique gifts serve the collective. These cosmic influences align perfectly with Lughnasadh's message of harvesting not just abundance, but awareness of our interconnectedness. We are powerful when we come together and take care of each other.
As I felt the wind rise up around me during this recording, the message coming through feels both ancient and prophetic. Our path involves right-relationship with the land, ourselves, our bodies, our community, and our Earth. Though we may seem insignificant individually, when we move together with harmony and purpose, we become an unstoppable force of nature that is divinely guided by a potent Irish Sovereignty Goddess herself, The Morrigan.
Recorded on 8/3/25
Hello, hello, get ready to dare together, truth-seeking in the depths for healing, transformation and you know it, collective liberation. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch. Well, I'm recording this episode today from a different place than usual, and it's August 3rd and it's the weekend that is historically celebrated in Irish pagan druid Wicca circles as Lunasa or Lammas, and so typically this is one of the eight holidays around the wheel of the year, or Sabbaths, and this is a powerful time of year, and so historically it's celebrated around August 1st, give or take, you know, within 10 days or so. And I am recording today from our camper, so I am sitting outside. It is a beautiful morning, I'm looking out at this abundant green field and farmland, surrounded by the sounds of nature, and I spent a lot of time this morning in my nature practice of offering song and chance and swaying and sitting and observing the is there and opening myself up to divine guidance and downloads and messages and channeling, and so a lot came through. But before I go into all of that, I want to back up a little and acknowledge that I haven't been able to put out any new episodes in a little while. My last recording was on the full moon and that was several, maybe three weeks ago at this point, and I took two weeks vacation with my family and lo and behold, as it were, when we returned into our regular routines and rhythms, I started to feel a bit under the weather and realized that both me and my partner had gotten sick, and so at first I thought, oh, this is just maybe summer allergies, or you know, I spend a lot of time in my practice working with couples and relationships and doing intensives and thought, oh, maybe this is just because I've been really in my communication, my voice has been used a lot, and that was not the case. Definitely we are. That was not the case. Definitely we are sick. So we decided to spend the weekend at our camper in nature, outside, not around lots of folks, to minimize who gets. Whatever it is that we're dealing with.
Speaker 1:So I want to also speak to the rhythms of the cosmos and the astrology, and there is a lot that is happening right now. So I want to back up a little bit and I want to name that, on July 30th, chiron, which is that incredible astrological influence that is a generational planetary influence. It orbits the sun in 50-year patterns, so it has lots of generational influence there and it's the wounded healer and it currently went retrograde on July 30th and it will be retrograde and it's in Aries. It spends a lot of time in Aries Think about nine years and it will be retrograde there until January 2nd or 3rd. So there's a lot of those RE words here for us to tune into Remembering, reflecting. To remembering, reflecting relating, refreshing, retreat, reinvigorating, returning all those delightful slowing down, going in, being still and really allowing what's there in our body, in our environment, in the subtle body, to emerge and provide us with healing and information and deeper awareness. So another planetary influence was that Mercury, which is also retrograde, had its conjunction with the sun and it's in its inferior position right now, being retrograde, which means that it's the closest to the earth and the Kazemi means that it's in the heart of the sun and the sun is in Leo.
Speaker 1:We are in Leo season, that amazing fire energy, and Leo has that energy of self-expression and authenticity. It is an amazing time to really consider who you are and who you are becoming and how you can meet this moment with all of your wholehearted, beautiful, authentic self, because we need you. You are here with unique offerings and gifts and lessons and teachings for the collective. So the more you tune in to who you are, the more you can meet us all and we need you. So powerful Leo season the sun is in its home in Leo, so another interesting aspect that's happening is the quarter moon happened on August 1st in Scorpio. So, again, powerful energy around regeneration and procreation. This is powerful, deep energy to create what you want, and not just what you want for yourself, but what you want for us all, want for us all.
Speaker 1:And I'm now going to return back to Lunasa, which is the first harvest in the ancient Celtic world, ancient Irish and Scottish. They celebrated the first harvest and they honored the land and they would, you know, pick the blueberries or the bilberries and the corn and they would make bread. And it was a time of Lunasa games and it was a festival celebrated over, you know, periods of days and maybe even weeks where they would delight in a range of skills and offerings and gifts and dance and poetry and weaving and crafting and baking and, you know, athletic games together. So it was a real buffet of buffet, if I said that right. It was just a display of what the community holds in terms of everybody's unique role and gifts and offerings, and it was a real celebration and coming together of everybody here as an individual has strengths and power and gifts for the community and it was on display and it was celebrated, and it was this time of reverence for the land.
Speaker 1:And being in right relationship with the land means you honor the abundance of the land, you don't take more than you need and you share what you have. And so these are deep lessons for our time and for this moment in our world, where a small percentage of people have the most amount of abundance and they are hoarding that and, you know, giving these messages of scarcity and fear and the classic playbook divide and conquer from colonizers, turning we, the people, against each other other, fighting for what we believe are very limited resources. And that is just a lie. It's not true. And what's coming through for me on this weekend of lunisaw and this is my ancestry and I am grateful because I am deeply connecting to it and I am deeply reconnecting to a powerful energy, a powerful deity that shows up for me a lot and has for a long time. Only she shapeshifted and first came to me in the form of a wolf and I was very connected to the energies of that sacred animal and how there's such deep wisdom in the the wolf and the wolf understands that the pack can accomplish more together than they ever can alone and they're able to feed everyone in the pack when they work together and they are loyal and they are tender and nurturing and loving and also protective. They stand up for justice and they have a, you know, intricate, established interdependence where everybody knows their unique role and contribution for the health and well being of the whole and it is celebrated and the leadership is honorable and there is a sense of sovereignty.
Speaker 1:And when I was, you know, researching Wolf and I'll, you know, I did some divination. I have a deck of cards. It's called the Call to the Morrigan and it's a newer deck to me and I'm still developing a relationship with it. But I was sitting outside on my, you know, outside my camper, looking out at the field and I did a divination yesterday and I shuffled my cards and all of a sudden there was a gust of wind and my cards were sitting in front of me and this gust of wind and the leaves, and it was so amazing and I felt the energy and the cards got blown and the only one that flew off the deck was the top card and it turned over and it was the wolf card. And I thought, yes, of course, because this card keeps coming up for me. Every time I sit down and do a divination with this deck. It's the first card I pull, no matter how many times I shuffle. So I am really deeply in touch with this energy that's coming through and this divine guidance.
Speaker 1:And one of the deities, the Morrigan, is an Irish goddess, a sovereignty goddess, and this deity has been working. I've been working with her for a while and have been for a while, and she's a shapeshifter and she takes form as a wolf, and so I really feel into that. I've been connecting with an aspect of her for years. I've been connecting with an aspect of her for years and she is here to, I think, support and guide us in this moment as a collective, to remember our ancestors' wisdom that we have to be in right relationship with the land, first and foremost with each other, with our community, with our body, and when things are in imbalance, when there is dominance, when there is hoarding, when the sovereignty of the land and each other is not being honored. This is a deity that arises to help us rebalance, and this is a deity with some pretty fierce energy and energy of calling us in and confronting our shadow and our generational patterning that lives in all of us. And so this is a moment where, in my felt sense of Lunasa, of harvesting not just the abundance and the awareness that is here for us and all the gifts and blessings that we forget to honor and we fall out of right relationship with the land and our surroundings and our environment and our bodies and each other, but also this is a time to really return to this sacred moment of acknowledging the generational patterning that continues to perpetuate the very thing that we consciously want to end, which is inequity, imbalance, being in disharmony, in dis-ease, right All the things.
Speaker 1:And so, as I was sitting here this morning and feeling just really present and observing the rhythms around me, I heard the crows, I heard the ravens, and these are more animals that are connected to the Morrigan and they are also omens, and they are also connected to the divine realms, the other world, and prophecy and seership, and I started getting this incredible feeling of prophecy, really a download. I began watching this flock of birds and they were small, these small birds, but there were so many of them, so many, and I feel emotional just acknowledging how small they were. And I watched them and they came in in cycles and they landed in the field and I'm sitting on my on, you know, outside of my camper and I'm just watching and I'm seeing how, in turn, one flock landed and then the next, and then the next, and it was beautiful and I kind of was suspended in time in this liminal moment and I was observing that they landed and there was space in the field for all of them to land and they came in, kind of landing one after the other. I watched, maybe I don't know, seven or eight kind of flocks of these birds and they sort of disappeared in the field and I held my breath and I waited and all of a sudden the wind kind of started to blow and I felt this energy and the flock of birds all together, in unison, rose up from the field, so beautiful, and flew in this pattern across the sky and it was just, it took my breath away and brought me to tears and I felt the lesson in that because I was slowing down and I was just learning from the teachers of nature, of the animals, of this moment, of Lunasa and what came through for me as I started hearing the raven and then the crows, I started understanding on a very deep level that we have to work together.
Speaker 1:We are small, yes, and yet when we are working together in harmony, understanding that there is enough for everybody, everybody, we can do amazing things together. And it's not. You know, I'm really tuned into the sense of the astrology and we're kind of in this moment and it feels like a battle, a cyclical battle. Of course, right, we've been here before this moment where the earth can come together. I mean, the earth is here trying to remind us and support us, and we are of nature, we are of the natural world and there's so much intelligence in our body, teachers around us, the you know the insects, the animals, the earth.
Speaker 1:If we tune in and we just slow down and we let that information come up from inside us, because it's a part of us, we are of the earth and we will know what the path is. We will also know what our unique individual contribution is for the whole, because we each have something to offer that the whole will not be able to accomplish as successfully without our own individual unique offering. And so, on this weekend, on this holiday of Lunasa, what is your unique offering to be harvested, to be offered to the collective? Because we need you, we need you, and I'm feeling that right now, and I'm feeling that the path is really one of love and respect and coming together and respecting our different ways of contributing and contributing. And I think you know I'm in a moment right now of a deep connecting to my body and honoring my body and my own shadow work, because this particular moment in time requires us to get real and to get honest.
Speaker 1:And in my work, my personal work with the Morrigan in particular, and other deities that are here to support all of us and you tune in because they're all around us. They are offering us signs and messages and divine guidance, and all we need to do is really just slow down and keep silent and be still. And even as I'm speaking, the wind is just picking up around me. It's like the words I'm speaking are being supported by air right, by communication that this is true, that this might be right, that this is the path of being in right relationship, that we need to trust the intelligence of our body of slowing down, of being regulated, of being in social engagement and emotional regulation. There is science here and it is relational and it is social and it is also sacred and it's interconnected and our ancestors knew it and this is a moment to return to that wisdom and return to that ancient knowing, that arcane knowledge. It's here for us and it's in the whispers of the wind and it's in the soil when we move our hands as we plant, it's in the cauldron that we brew as we're feeding our families and our bodies and our communities, and it is abundant when we share and we don't need to be scared because we can take care of each other. Right, we can and we will.
Speaker 1:I feel this moving through me as a prayer, as a prophecy, as a plan maybe, that the world can be on fire, but we can be the water, we can be the food, we can be the embrace, we can be the shelter, we can be the words of comfort, we can be the protective shield. Right, we can build this together and we might be small, alone, but when we are together, we can take flight, we can rise up, we can do anything, and that is what we need to remember when we are together, when we create care communities. We can feed everyone, we can shelter everyone, we can care for everyone, and we have to do it locally. First we have to look around and see what needs doing, but first we have to be. We have to be with the stillness to know the path and in my understanding of my Irish ancestry and my own, returning to my roots and the brilliance in my body and in my blood and in my lineage, in my body and in my blood and in my lineage that we know how to take care of each other and we know how to honor the land and we know right leadership and we know that it takes the whole to accomplish anything and if it's not right for one individual, then it's not going to work for the whole. And we know how to hold each other accountable through honest reflection and direct feedback filled with love, because when we don't speak from love, our truth isn't going to land. So we have to settle our bodies in order to offer what is true, to help people return to right relationship with themselves and with each other and with the earth. And so in my mind I pull lots of divine guidance from my Irish ancestry and from my Irish paganism and from the deities that are there, wanting to work with me and support me so that I can offer this message, because we are at a pivotal moment y'all we are and we can turn the tide. We can. And so what is the gifts that you are needing to harvest? What do you need to honor and express gratitude for? Because you have abundance surrounding you right now and when you open your eyes and you see it and I'm not trying to bypass the hardship and the suffering and the horrors that is Absolutely happening and we need to come together. So that is what is coming through today, on this weekend of ritual and the first harvest, and Lunasa, which is in my ancestry and which is one of the Sabbaths Lamas in the larger Wiccan community, and I'm wanting to end with this Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Speaker 1:So thank you for spending this time with me and I'm grateful for you. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years. Intuitive healer wait, who am I? Intuitive healer, counselor and, dare I say, witch. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe. So the soul Blessed Lunasa. Bye for now.
