The Witching hearth:
Storykeeping for the Wise and Wicc'd
Some stories are wicked. Some tales are beastly once-upon-a-times that disturb our dreams, stalk our sweetness, hunt our hope, and bite our bitter selves into being. These are the wonder stories that sleep in our marrow, waiting for an initiatory moment to stir them awake. These are the stories that cast a spell upon the teller's tongue, that crack open the red door and usher us over the threshold beyond all certainty. These are the stories that sting us alive.
The Witching Hearth is a 3-part (un)training for anyone who feels called to join. Space is limited to 30 participants. Together, we name 9 old and “wicked” stories medicine, oracle, and teacher, following the plotline of our own personal myths and allowing our own unique recipe of archetypal medicine to find us and mark us with our new secret name. Here, as we circle ‘round the midnight fire, we become the wicked stepmother, hungry hag, feared mage, and warrior-shepherd, inviting the stories to trouble us in just the right places.
Each of the three levels includes supplemental instruction for circle-workers and those who weave story-keeping into their healing practice; this includes ritual, rites, council ceremonies, and spellwork. When we tell a story, we ask to be met in the wild place. We tend the tale, having a fidelity to its old bones, and we share it in order to transform self, other, and world.
The Witching Hearth Level I
Behind the Red Door: Shadow, Poisoned Thorns, and Fairy Tale Death ~ March 23rd, 2024
The Witching Hearth Level II
The Story-Keeper’s Box of Shadows: Secrets, Rites of Passage, and Trickster Encounters ~ April 20th, 2024
The Witching Hearth Level III
The Beast Without: Ritual Storytelling, Dream Drama, and the Hidden Passage ~ May 25th, 2024
RECOMMENDED MATERIALS FOR ALL Levels:
A sizeable journal or sketchbook you can dedicate to our Witching Hearth
A writing utensil
Any art materials you like (optionally)
(Totally) optional reading list for all levels:
The Beast and the Blonde by Marina Warner, The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise Von Fronz, The Fairy Tellers by Nicholas Juber, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
to Note:
All is recorded for those who are unable to join live. Note that the “Join Live” links are different from the recording links. At the end of the meeting days, all “join live” links will be replaced here by the recording links. In the event of technical difficulties, please email TheHagSchool@Gmail.Com.
Introductory Work:
The Witching Hearth Practices
These practices are optional invitations to begin exploring what “story-keeping” means for you and your calling. You are welcome to begin this work in your “Witching Hearth” journal if you like.
Practice I: Box of Shadows Inventory
Consider this: What if the stories you loved as a child were not shared with you accidentally? What if fate was at work? What if a hidden intelligence was afoot, orienting you even then to the unseen magick buried in “fairy tales?” Take an inventory of the “wonder stories,” the fairy tales, you remember from childhood and ask: Why those stories?
There is a seed of the old magick tucked inside every fairy tale. Every fairy tale is a box of shadows. What spell, ritual, or “old way” is locked inside those particular childhood stories? Knowing what you know now about who you are and who you are becoming, what conclusions can you draw about these stories and their connection to your personal, lived-out-loud story?
Practice II: Fairy Tale Council
Choose a fairy tale to work with for this practice that houses a villainous shadow for you. This is a fairy tale villain to whom you seem to have a visceral reaction. If you’re able, read a few different versions of this story. Build a small altar to it. Let it brew for at least two weeks, ideally while the moon is waning.
When you’re ready, make a list of all the important characters in this story, naming only those you feel are essential to the tale. You might also name magickal objects or the seductive settings as characters. Try to get at least 5 but you can have many more.
Now, ideally when the moon is new, bring a particular problem or source of conflict in your life to this fairy tale council. Imagine you are seated around a table with these characters. Grant them mythic names if they don’t already have these. Out loud in the “heart voice,” a whisper, tell the council about the source of conflict or problem. It can be vague or specific. Express to the council what you’d like them to know.
Then- and this is about to get stranger- begin to embody each character one at a time, allowing the character to gift you their wisdom about your particular problem. Even the villainous shadow, if you named their character as important, is on your side here. Let each character resource you. What would the golden egg or the heathen queen tell you? Channel the fairy tale wisdom and write down the important words or phrases each character says.
You might do this with many stories or just one. In reflection, ask: Which characters did you feel a peculiar kinship with? Why might that be? What else did you notice about this practice?
Practice III: Befriending the Wild Bitter
This practice is simpler than the other two but can be even more potent. Without putting any deadlines on this work, allow stories to step forward and demand to be noticed. These might be remembered tales such as those from Practice I or they might be new stories you had not explored until now. When the story steps forward, name it oracle and ask: Where is the bitter taste in this story? Where is the wound, or the poison? Once you’ve named the bitterness- and know that it won’t feel perfect- find an object in nature that represents this bitterness, this poison, this wound. Place it on your altar for a time. Learn from it. Bring questions to this object as you did to the Council in Practice II and notice what you see. Each time you look at this object, see it as if for the first time. In your journal, track any realizations or strange epiphanies you have.
The Witching Hearth
The Witching Hearth Level I
Behind the Red Door: Shadow, Poisoned Thorns, and Fairy Tale Death
March 23rd, 2024
11am ET- 12:30pm ET: The Wicc’d Witch Storyteller
~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session I ~
In this first, foundational session, participants will name their “storyteller’s ecological position” the lore they were born to. We will befriend our “teller’s trinities,” our key lenses we work with throughout the training, and sense the monsters that lurk behind key, mythic, shadow images common in wonder stories. This first session essentially provides an overview of the full (un)training, reviews key (minimal) materials, and offers various pathways for incorporating the work into both the participants' personal healing practice as well as facilitating this work for others in circle.
Resources Mentioned: Celtic Cauldrons Resource
1pm ET-2:30pm ET: Ashes, Bleeding Keys, and Silver Trees
~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session II ~
In the second session, participants will dive deeper into dark and bright shadow work. Working with our first, three, guiding stories as medicine, we will meet several “shadow archetypes” and walk with them for a time. Participants will learn and adapt three storytelling techniques to their sacred work practice, considering the ritual containers they wish to create and their personal calling as teller and/or healer.
Template II: Poison Story I: Gold Tree and Silver Tree
Ritual: Clarity for Self
Name three questions
Allow three images from the story to speak.
Match the questions with the images’ wisdom. How are the mythic images answering your questions?
Template III: Poison Story II: Bluebeard
Ritual: Clarity for World
Allow three images from the story to speak before the story is told.
Pause when that image emerges in the story and invite a question about the story to come forward. Once the “small story question” is named, amplify it. Make it bigger, and turn it into a question about the world.
Match the images’ wisdom with the questions. How are the mythic images answering the questions about the world?
Template IV: Poison Story III: The Ash Fool
Ritual: Cinderella’s Banishing and Manifestation
Before the story begins, write a present tense description of the “shining vision,” the big dream.
When the wicked stepsisters enter into the story, write three “critical statements” about the vision.
When the Ash Fool speaks “I am the true daughter” after her dream about the hazelwood tree, burn those statements.
When the Ash Fool buries the branch, bury your “shining vision” while chanting (Shiver and shake, little tree. Silver and gold rain down upon me!) then bless with the ashes of the critical statements.
Collected Version of Gold Tree and Silver Tree
Collected Version of Bluebeard
Collected Version of The Ash Fool
Interim Work: Invitations to Move Through Before Level II
Find 3 “natural” objects, one for each of our first stories: Gold Tree and Silver Tree, Bluebeard, and The Ash Fool. Put them on your altar.
Notice which of the three stories we worked with calls to you. Consider mapping that story, naming the important “plot points” using images or words so you can follow it during your initial tellings of this story without writing the whole story down. Use the templates for each story if you feel called where the potent images are already named but attend to images you sense are important, too (These are more important than the ones I think are important).
Perform a “daily teller’s rite” where you go to your altar, name each of those three objects teacher, and speak aloud, “I welcome the stories I’m meant to tell. May they find me here, whole and well.”
As part of your teller’s rite or separately, allow your three “helpers” from the three stories to speak through you. Bring them a question or ask them for clarity, then invite the helper to step into your body and write through you. What do they have to say?
Notice your dreams. Are the stories participating in any way? If so, take note. We’ll have a “dream-share” at the beginning of Level II.
The Witching Hearth Level II
The Story-Keeper’s Box of Shadows: Secrets, Rites of Passage, and Trickster Encounters
April 20th, 2024
11am ET- 12:30pm ET: The Red Secret
Password: BriarRose
~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session I ~
In the first session for Level II, participants will frame a “fairy tale” as a box of shadows where the old magick was hidden, tucked away just for them in a time long-gone and yet, strangely, still here. This session traces rites of passage and other forms of initiation in fairy tales, opening participants to discover, animate, and amplify the rituals they see inside stories. Danielle will share our 4th “Night Hearth” story here, and each participant will consider a ritual practice for carrying the medicine of the story forward.
Resources Mentioned: The Archetype of Initiation by Robert Moore, Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell, Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw
(Free) Fairy and Folktale Database
Ritual: The Shadow Twin
Invite participants to consider their “sinister shadow.” Feel free to use the questions named in this Shadow Work Template. Have them name three different “sinister shadow” traits.
Pause at three different parts of the story that you, as the teller, feel are the right ones. At that point, invite participants to name the “gift” or treasure that may lay buried beneath the “muck” of their sinister shadow traits.
At the end of the story, have participants consider a daily action that may move them toward shadow integration. See the “Shadow Work Template Above.”
1pm ET-2:30pm ET: The Otherworldly Road
~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session II ~
Password: BriarRose
In the second session, we will discuss the trickster archetype as existing on the fringes of what is acceptable. Here, in these peculiar borderlands between who we are and who we are becoming, we will consider what it means to walk the otherworldly road, to leave offerings at the crossroads and work with a story as an oracle. This session includes recommendations for designing initiatory ceremonies for self and others.
Resources Mentioned: Trickster Makes the World by Lewis Hyde
Ritual II: Rescripting the Initiation
Invite participants to name a past initiation that does not feel too charged and give it a “mythic title.”
While telling the Briar Rose story, pause at three different places and give participants writing prompts. You are welcome to use these or create your own:
“Once, I was blessed by the old wise one, given the gift of…
“When some strange fate found me, I pricked my finger and fell into…”
“In the dark, I dreamt of…”
“There, I heard a voice say…”
“Only then could I wake, only when the blooms came back, only when..”
After the story is over, invite participants to circle words or short phrases from their writing, stitching together a poem, making art, or co-creating a story from all the circled words.
Ritual: Initiation in the Underground Forest
Invite participants to set an intention for the ritual. The story has its own intelligence, so the intention does not need to be incredibly specific. It might be “to gain clarity on…” or “to feel a sense of…” Their intention should be secret and not shared if possible.
On a small, central altar, have all four elements represented by a dish of water (west), dirt (north), smoke/incense (east), and ash (south). Begin telling the Handless Maiden story and pause at four points, passing the bowl of that participant element around the circle so participants can bless themselves with it. After they bless themselves with the water/dirt/smoke/ash, have them write a single word down that comes to them. The points of pause are: When the maiden is at the ancestral river (water), when she is covered in dirt before the devil comes for her the second time (dirt), when the smoke is rising from the fire when her father is there (smoke), and when she plants her face in the ashes and heads into the forest (ash).
At the end of the story, invite participants to reflect on their five words and their original intention.
Template V: Poison Story IV ~ Tatterhood
Template VI: Poison Story V ~ Briar Rose
Template VII: Poison Story VI ~ The Handless Maiden
Collected Version of Tatterhood
Collected Versions of Briar Rose
Collected Version of The Handless Maiden
Interim Work: Invitations to Move Through Before Level III
21-Day Shadow Integration: Look to your three sinister shadow traits and find or make a doll that reflects those traits back to you. You might write the three “gifts” that you wrote on your paper doll poppet during Tatterhood on the doll. Look to your three small actions of integration and do one every day for seven days before moving on to the next. Each day, anoint your poppet with water or otherwise bless it to mark the moment. Notice any shifts that occur, particularly in terms of any old beliefs you let go of (or new ones that come in).
The Teller’s Wheel practice is much more simple. Arrange your three helpers from the three stories in three directions: “Land” is north, “Sea” is southwest, and “Sky” is southeast. It might not seem like it fits exactly, but just go for it. Decide when and how, but, when you feel called, bring a question to your three helpers and see what they say. Your question can be anything. Let the helpers counsel you and write their wisdom down.
Keep tracking your dreams. Are any characters from the stories participating?
The Witching Hearth Level III
The Beast Without: Ritual Storytelling, Dream Drama, and the Hidden Passage
May 25th, 2024
11am ET- 12:30pm ET: The Found Pelt
~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session I ~
Password: WildPelt
Level III begins by discussing the weaving of ritual with story, including the possibilities, boundaries, and necessary creative work involved in this particular form of story-keeping. Participants will design a ritual that meets a specific intention, based on either one of our Night Hearth stories or a story of their choosing. Participants will be invited but not required to share during this session.
Ritual: Pelt Scrying and Threshold Ritual
Invite participants to bring or make their “pelts” and name their “inner wild self”
Pause at different parts of the story (When the fisherman steals the pelt, when Ronan finds the pelt, and at the end) and have them move through the “pelt scrying” process: Whisper the name of the inner wild one into the pelt three times, exhale into the pelt three times, toss it, name the question about what you see, and ask what is the obstacle and desire tucked inside that question.
Invite them to choose ONE of their obstacle and desire pairs and move through a threshold-crossing ceremony where they are moving from the obstacle to the desire (from “knotted” to “free,” for instance). In this example, they could be slowly untangling a knot as they cross the threshold, or they could simply state: I move from knotted to free as they cross the threshold. It can be as simple or as intricate as you like.
Ritual: Beloved Dead Storytelling
Invite participants to sense a loved one who is close, one of their beloved dead, and name a lesson they learned from them while they were alive. As the facilitator, you might write these lessons down and read them during the story when Deer-Woman rejoins the herd of grandmothers.
After the story, you might invite the circle to share a story of their loved one in-spirit with the circle or in pairs.
1pm ET-2:30pm ET: The Teller’s Underworld
~~ Click Here to View the Recording of Session II ~
Password: WildPelt
Our final session is a ceremonial ever-after, as we come to our timely end. We will move through our final tale in a ritual that amplifies our vision work and animates the spirit. Danielle will end by discussing possibilities for carrying the work forward, for continuing to add to the “teller’s story bundle,” and for tending to our nine stories ‘round our Witching Hearth. May we keep these fires burning, from now until forever.
Ritual: Wedding the Uncivilized Self
Invite participants to write their vows to the four directions and name their inner wild self (Optionally, you can leave this step out and have them spontaneously arrive at their vows and name during the ritual)
After the Wolf King and the Wildflowers story or another story of your choosing that houses a good “wedding,” have them face the North, speak the vow to the North aloud, then the same to the East, South, and West. At the end, they pronounce themselves wed to (the name of their inner uncivilized one).
Template VIII: Poison Story VII ~ The Seal Wife
Template IX: Poison Story VIII ~ Deer Woman Dreaming
Template X: Poison Story IX ~ The White Wolf and the Wildflowers
Collected Versions of Selkie Stories
Collected Version of The White Wolf