KnotWork Myth & Storytelling

Marisa Goudy
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KnotWork Myth & Storytelling

On KnotWork, we explore the mythology and folklore of Ireland, and beyond. Episodes begin with a story, followed by a deep dive conversation about how this age-old tale still resonates today. Our guests include oral storytellers, writers, artists, musicians, and spiritual leaders. Occasionally, in our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, our guest offers a song, a meditation, or another bit of creative magic. We talk about what it means to live a myth-inspired life. These conversations explore our relationship to land and to identity, particularly related to what it means to be Irish and a member of the Irish diaspora. Whether you’re drawn to Celtic culture or the mysteries that linger at ancient sacred sites, or whether you just like a good story and expansive conversation, you’re in the right place. Welcome. Fáilte. Your host is Marisa Goudy, author of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic. She is a myth worker, a story healer, a writing coach who lives on the lands of the Lenape people (New York’s Hudson Valley). She holds an MA in Irish literature from University College Dublin.

  1. HACE 1 DÍA

    Myths Are a Blueprint for Balance, A Cailleach Story for the Spring Equinox by Nicole Marie | S6 Ep7

    Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Get the stories behind each episode and stay connected between seasons. Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. OUR STORY In time for the spring equinox, a story of the gods and goddess of Ireland, Tuatha De Danann and their land of eternal youth, Tír na nÓg. We meet the Cailleach who is marked by curiosity and a craving for change. For a time, she finds herself in a world where there is cold and death and grief.  Looking for a story of Saint Patrick on March 17? Check out S1 Ep8, The Unlikely Friendship of St Patrick and Oisín. OUR GUEST Nicole Marie is a ritual storyteller and facilitator in the United States and Europe. She learned the art of storytelling through her years in film and theatre and spending time on the mythic landscapes of Ireland and Norway. She was part of the ritual team of Lucid Dance in Berlin Germany where they curated ritual performances for the Wheel of the Year and led ceremonies for collective and personal transformations. Nicole is currently working at the Wilderness Awareness School where they teach nature connection to both youth and adults and she offers many rites of passage storytelling circles for the programs and community.  Check out Nicole’s Embodied Storytellers Podcast OUR CONVERSATION The power of relating myth to our own individual journey. What it means to feel your own internal Samhain (autumn/winter) even when the rest of the world might be wrapped in spring or summer. Nicole’s story of being in Ireland for the first Brigid’s holiday, surrounded by fiery, vivacious women, but she was in a different place, physically and energetically. Storytellers get their inspiration from everywhere - the land, personal story, the season of the year, academic sources, translations of the manuscripts, and contemporary creative work. Nicole’s story was inspired by Ellen Ryan’s Girls Who Slay Monsters Daring Tales of Ireland's Forgotten GoddessesThe complicated figure that is Patrick - he outlawed imbas forosnai, the druidic practice of connecting with the “inspiration that illuminates” and, he also gave us the beautiful nature poem, “The Deer’s Cry”  (also known as St Patrick’s Breastplate)Looking at masculine myths that need to be healed.The yearning to belong, and seeking cultural identity as a white American. Martin Shaw episode of Jawbone, HOW A STORYTELLER’S MADE: The Salmon, The Crocodile & The Selkie Sophie Strand’s new book, The Body Is a Doorway, a memoir about her own chronic illnessA closing ritual, and an invocation of the season, rooted in this story, calling on the elements of water and fire Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com WORK WITH MARISA 1:1 Writing Coaching:...

    49 min

  2. 5 MAR

    She Will Be Heard, Sheela Will Be Heard | S6 Ep6

    Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Get the stories behind each episode and stay connected between seasons. Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. OUR STORY Did Saint Patrick have a wife? Irish folklore of the 18th and 19th centuries declared he did. Sheelah was celebrated on March 18, the day after Saint Paddy's Day. KnotWork host Marisa Goudy imagines a one-sided bedtime conversation between the couple. The story also weaves in two other women of the Celtic Otherworld - Cailleach and Sheela Na Gig. We released this story last year to offer an alternative narrative for Saint Patrick’s Day. This year, we ask this story to speak to International Women’s Day.  In 2025, it feels as if we need to mark a day that focuses attention on the unique needs of women, girls, and femmes as much as we ever have. And, that means that we also need symbols that inspire and empower us to claim and protect more than 50% of the population. We need to source our energy in divine feminine power - like that of the mysterious Sheela Na Gig. Who is Sheela Na Gig? We don’t really know, but hundreds of sculptures of a figure with a skeletal head holding her vulva open wide were set into the walls of churches and castles. Some claim she was apotropaic (intended to ward off evil spirits). Others decided she was a fertility charm. Now we see a sacred symbol of the twinned nature of death and rebirth. Special thanks to past guest Dee Mulrooney whose Instagram post “Free Síle” inspired me to return to this story. You’ll also hear a clip from future KnotWork episode with Ali Isaac.

    35 min

  3. 26 FEB

    Stars, Stones, and Shadows: A Heroine's Tale | S6 Ep 5

    Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Get the stories behind each episode and stay connected between seasons. Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. OUR STORY Saoirse has lost everything except for her dog, Bear. As they wander through The Burren of County Clare, a rainstorm hits and they seek shelter in the caves.  Along their journey, they meet Macha, the Morrigan, Brigid, and the Cailleach.  Originally told at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2023, Erica’s story invites listeners to remember the wisdom of the body, the power of the voice, and the magic of the spirit. OUR GUEST Erica O’Reilly is KnotWork’s 2025 “Storyteller in Residence.” She’ll join us regularly with tales from her extensive repertoire. A sacred storyteller, spiritual counsellor, Depth Hypnosis practitioner, and ordained minister (through the Sacred Stream Foundation; in Berkeley, California), Erica is dedicated to creating spaces where souls feel seen, held, and heard.  She believes deeply in the wisdom of the human body and spirit; and the powerful medicine of storytelling.  Erica’s Into the Circle Theatre project honors the tradition of the seanchaí in a modern context.  Through the inspirations and weaving of Irish culture, history, folklore, and mythology, Into the Circle Theatre shares hallowed tales of women, focusing on the reclamation of their embodied wisdom and sovereign power.  She also shares her creative voice regularly on her Substack, Weavings of the Wise & Embodied. Subscribe to her newsletter to follow her current work in progress, De thír mo mháithreacha: Of the Land of my Mothers. OUR CONVERSATION A story about both safety and freedom. The heroine’s name, Saoirse, means freedom in Irish. The heroine's journey is one of reclamation and remembering.Seeing with what previous KnotWork guest Jen Murphy calls “the otherworldly eye”Allowing stories to work you over time before you tell it. Tad Hargrave, in his Substack, On Culture Making, talks about courting stories.An experience telling this story at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2023 that speaks to how interpret women’s rage in this culture.An exploration of the four goddesses who appear in this story: Macha, Morrigan, Brigid, and the Cailleach Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com WORK WITH MARISA 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at writingcoachmarisa.comLearn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups Find more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: a href="https://www.knotworkstorytelling.com/episode/www.marisagoudy.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

    1 h y 1 min

  4. 19 FEB

    Bid the Unbiddable, a Story by Fiona Doris | S6 Ep4

    OUR STORY The story of a wild and wonderful girl named Bid, who was born of a long, powerful line of Brigids. Love, loss, and magic all woven together that becomes a song of Ireland itself.  Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together. Get the stories behind each episode and stay connected between seasons. Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine. OUR GUEST A self-described lapsed botanist, Fiona Doris is a mythologist and a storyteller. She is a member of the Bard Mythologies team, acting as a storyteller and facilitator since 2020.  Find Fiona on BlueSky: @fionadoris.bsky.social OUR CONVERSATION  In these dark times, we’re looking for answers, but it’s all there in the stories. It’s just a matter of remembering and telling them, not just in Ireland, but across cultures. The answers are in the land, when we connect to our roots.Cré na Cille by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated as Graveyard Clay - a 1949 novel that captures conversation between a number of the newly deadFiona’s story of discovering her father was a fluent Gaeilgeoir (Irish speaker)Botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s work, To Speak for the Trees, the last to receive druidic trainingThe beauty of orality, and the tricky dance with written culture. The grandmother in the story, Biddy O’Leary embodied three great expressions of Irish women’s culture and magic: bean feasa, the wise woman; bean ghlúine, the handy woman or midwife; and bean chaointe, the keener.Fiona’s dream: revive the tradition of collecting folklore, as they did with the 1930s Schools’ Collection, and gather stories from every generationPeople are storied. The stories have always been there, and we mine them. The work is to get out of the way of the story, acting as a midwife.   Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com WORK WITH MARISA 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at writingcoachmarisa.comLearn about our global creative community, The Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writers-knot-communityFind more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: www.marisagoudy.com Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and a...

    53 min

  5. 12 FEB

    Maggie’s Doll by Dee Mulrooney | S6 Ep3

    Write with us! Join the Authors’ Knot Program Marisa is leading an intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.” There are just two seats left! Registration closes February 10, 2025. Learn more about the Authors’ Knot. OUR STORY Dee Mulrooney tells an original story based on her own mother’s childhood in Dublin in the late 1940s.  OUR GUEST Based in Berlin, Dee Mulrooney weaves a rich tapestry of experiences, emotions, and insights into her creative practice. Rooted in the complexities of inhabiting a female body, her work emerges from the profound influences of her upbringing as a working-class Irish woman in the patriarchal, misogynistic landscape of 1970s Catholic Ireland. Her background profoundly shapes her identity and informs her artistic journey, where she fluidly navigates drawing, painting, writing, performing, filmmaking, and music. Through her alter ego, Growler—a vibrant, full-body vulva costume—she channels the voices of women past, transforming pain into powerful storytelling and performance. A nod to her ancestors. Growler embodies the spirit of resilience, connecting generations and facilitating healing. With over two decades of experience as an educator, Dee champions community and empowerment, drawing inspiration from celebrated artists and the potent power of women's narratives.  OUR CONVERSATION A story about childhood based on a true story that speaks to all of us. Dee is the granddaughter of two midwives who also served as “death doulas.” Dee’s own art continues to explore these themes. Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993, and it would have been notable and even dangerous for “Uncle Billy” to come home from London with his partner in the 1940s. The pressure to have so many children “for Ireland” in de Valera’s Ireland in the midst of so much abuse and secrets. At the same time, women were coping with Infant mortality and the spectre of the Mother and Baby homes.This culture was captured in Small Things Like These, the book by Claire Keegan and the film with Cillian Murphy.Ownership and belonging in the sacred sense rather than the materialist senseBeginning in the 1930, the Irish social welfare system guaranteed a home - security of tenure - for all people, which would have transformed people’s lives, particularly for working class women. This changed within a generation, and the current housing crisis in Ireland is the worst it has ever been. Dee’s family lost their home in Dublin and she and her family emigrated to Berlin where collective housing arrangements are part of the culture. Issues of housing are connected to ancestral trauma, particularly the famine and evictions. Accepting and working with the grief that’s part of the experience diaspora. Time seems to stand still after you leave a place and the diaspora plays a vital role in preserving culture.We recorded this conversation on Nollaig na mBán, “women’s Christmas” which Dee celebrated by making a drawing for her mother-in-law based on a 1913 photograph of a young Galway woman who put on traditional garb for the picture.Something Dee brings through with her Growler work: “No one on this planet can claim ‘clean ancestry.’” We’re here to stand on the shoulders of ancestors, including the murderers and the genocidal maniacs. Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: a href="https://www.knotworkstorytelling.com/episode/billyandbeth.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

    58 min

  6. 5 FEB

    The Invitation: Song and Conversation with Amano | S6 Ep 2

    Write with us! Join the Authors’ Knot Program Marisa is leading an intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.” There are just two seats left! Registration closes February 10, 2025. Learn more about the Authors’ Knot. THIS EPISODE In this Myth Workers and Culture Makers episode, we begin with a song. Our guest, Amano, offers “Cuireadh Scéine (The Invitation of the Skane),” a song she wrote in response to a visit to the River Skane, a tributary of the River Boyne, in Co. Meath. OUR GUEST Amano is a songwriter, vocalist, poet, and performing artist from Killarney, Co. Kerry. She works bilingually in Irish and English to explore themes of changing identities, cultural fluidity, language(s) and animist ecologies across a range of genres including folk, pop, sean-nós, electronic and spoken word.  In summer 2024 Amano released THREAD, a collaborative Irish music project with Cork-producer Kalabanx. Songs from the record including HEART (featuring Liam Ó Maonlaí) have been played on BBC Radio Ulster, RTÉ Radio 1 and Raidió na Gaeltachta. Amano has performed at festivals and venues across Ireland since returning to the music scene in 2023 including Electric Picnic, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, and Brigid 1500 Festival. She is currently supported by the Arts Council in developing her practice in the sean-nós singing tradition.  Her next solo single, Burn, is set for release on February 19, 2025. Presave the song now. Find her at: https://amanoanseo.com, and @amanoanseo on Instagram, Substack, and TikTok. OUR CONVERSATION Amano’s journey, from academia and a future career in heritage museums, back to the music and language of childhood Blas: the Irish word for taste that also relates to your connection to the language and means something like “rooted sound”Questions about whether we need to be “pure” when it comes to how we use and blend language. What gets lost in standardization, and what gets lost when we try to be too precise?Sean nós or “old way” - a phrase first used in the 1940s to refer to particular types of Irish song and dance.The desire to name things that we revere as “ancient,” and knowing when it’s appropriate and not appropriate to use that term.“Complicated normalcy” is new in Ireland. As someone with Japanese and Irish heritage, Amano speaks to the experience of children who have origins and stories that don’t comply with the “typical”  Irish experience.Amano’s experience of embodying the Cailleach in a series of street performances - the way the crone goddess calls us to embrace simplicity, and into relationship with plants, animals, the elements.Seeing Brigid as “task master and the goddess of fire.” Amano sees her as the perfect figure to look to when you’re worried about how your work will be perceived.  Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com Work With Marisa 1:1 Writing...

    56 min

  7. 29 ENE

    Brigid’s Cloak of Light with Treacy O’Connor | S6 Ep1

    Write with us! Join the Authors’ Knot Program Marisa is leading an intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.” There are just two seats left! Registration closes February 10, 2025. OUR JOURNEY The season opens with an episode from our Myth Workers & Culture Makers series. Rather than telling a story of Brigid, Treacy O’Connor takes us on a meditative journey to feel the presence of Ireland’s mother goddess and matron saint. OUR GUEST Treacy O’Connor  is an ordained OneSpirit Interfaith Minister, guardian of Ireland's ancient ancestral wisdom, Mindfulness and Meditation teacher & Co-Founder and CEO of Creating Wellness. Her mission is to inspire and empower a return to right relationship with the self, others, the planet and the cosmos – connecting the dots through the passage of the heart.  Treacy initiated a campaign to honour Brigid with a public holiday in Ireland which was inaugurated in 2023 and she was honoured by her local town with a Balbriggan Town Award, for illuminating the hearts and minds of the 24,000 residents with a Brigid Procession of Light in 2024. Brigid continues to inspire and surprise Treacy with invitations to be an expression for connection with her qualities, in many different ways. One of those invitations is taking the form of a 6 day retreat.  Restoring the Heart of Brigid, a magical  pilgrimage and retreat to be held in Ireland  May 31st to June 6th 2025, will be guided by Treacy O’Connor in collaboration with Carmela Fleury and LeeYen Anderson:  https://www.leeyenanderson.com/heart-of-brigid Follow Treacy on Substack, Instagram, or Facebook.  OUR CONVERSATION The emergence of Brigid into the popular consciousness over the last several years, and what it means to introduce her as not only an historical figure, but as a spiritual presence.Brigid’s Day, now a national holiday in Ireland, started with a petition in 2019 and was made a reality in 2023.Treacy’s story of being called to the very diverse town of Balbriggan, or Baile Brigín - the “Village Little Brigid” and what it was like to create a festival, including an intimate fire procession at ImbolcBrigid’s connection to both fire and water. These elements temper and bring one another into balanceHow Brigid’s energy emerges in everyone. A story of how Maud Gonne, Irish actor and revolutionary, exemplified Brigid energy. Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com Work With Marisa 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more at writingcoachmarisa.comLearn about group writing opportunities: a href="https://www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

    52 min

  8. 22 ENE

    Best of KnotWork ~ Brigid: Rebirth of the Mother by Laura Murphy | S5 Ep20

    Join One of Our Group Writing Programs in 2025! The Authors’ Knot Program, February - November 2025 An intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.” The Writers’ Knot Community, January - June 2025 A creativity incubator for writers seeking camaraderie and connection. Mythic imagination meets creative expression in this long-running global writing community. Our Story The goddess Brigid is known to be a daughter of Dagda, “the Good God.” But who was her mother? Laura Murphy tells her own story of Brigid’s birth at Newgrange. The child comes from the milky way, the way of her mother, the goddess Bóinn. (Laura offered us Bóinn’s story in Season 2, Episode 7.) Our Guest Laura is a poet, activist, and healer. She is a passionate campaigner for Ireland’s Mother and Baby home survivors and other issues surrounding equality, environmental and social healing including the recent successful campaign to make Brigid’s Day a national public holiday in Ireland (February 3, 2025!) Watch the “Is Mise” Lightshow, Brigid’s Day in Kildare 2022. Follow Laura on Instagram. Our Conversation The first time Brigid is recognized with a national holiday February 1, 2023, a green comet crossed the skiesArtists who are with us in the conversation, Caitlin Matthews and Dee Mulrooney. See the images on Myth Is Medicine.Power of the sacred twelve and thirteen, and yet Brigid’s sacred number is 19 (the sisters who held the sacred flame in Kildare).The significance of the cygnus constellation in this story and in Laura and Marisa’s storiesDagda: sacred masculine as midwife. Echoes of a KnotWork episode with Perdita Finn, who describes Joseph as midwife to Mary. Brigid and Mary in Celtic Christianity, which was close to the Essene tradition. Kate Chadbourne in Season 1, Episode 1, the story of Brigid as best friend to Mary, creating a diversion with the flaming harrow on the day that Mary was nervous about being “churched” after childbirth.Imbas forosnai, the energy of creation, as well as “the inspiration that illuminates” and the power of prophecy and speaking things into creation. Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com Work With Marisa 1:1 Writing Coaching: If you are working on a spiritual memoir or wellness professional or a creative entrepreneur who wants to use stories to build your business, book a free consultation with Marisa. Learn more ata href="https://my.captivate.fm/writingcoachmarisa.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

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On KnotWork, we explore the mythology and folklore of Ireland, and beyond. Episodes begin with a story, followed by a deep dive conversation about how this age-old tale still resonates today. Our guests include oral storytellers, writers, artists, musicians, and spiritual leaders. Occasionally, in our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, our guest offers a song, a meditation, or another bit of creative magic. We talk about what it means to live a myth-inspired life. These conversations explore our relationship to land and to identity, particularly related to what it means to be Irish and a member of the Irish diaspora. Whether you’re drawn to Celtic culture or the mysteries that linger at ancient sacred sites, or whether you just like a good story and expansive conversation, you’re in the right place. Welcome. Fáilte. Your host is Marisa Goudy, author of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic. She is a myth worker, a story healer, a writing coach who lives on the lands of the Lenape people (New York’s Hudson Valley). She holds an MA in Irish literature from University College Dublin.

Información

  • Creador
    Marisa Goudy
  • Años de actividad
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodios
    85
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Marisa Goudy
  • Mostrar sitio web
    KnotWork Myth & Storytelling

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