Death Reverence in Ireland
A Pilgrimage Journey
New week added! Oct. 3-10, 2024 Sign up soon, only a few spaces left!
October 12–19, 2024 (This week is sold out)
West of Ireland
Our Irish ancestors walked with death in a way that has dramatically changed in modernity. An understanding of how we as humans have honored death through the ages and how we have grieved can offer wisdom for living, dying, and grieving in these times.
Join us for a unique and reflective pilgrimage in the west of Ireland, deepening into the wisdom and traditions that these people have honored through the mists of time. We will visit ancient neolithic sites of ceremony and burial, unconsecrated graveyards, and do grave rubbings. We will visit workhouses, where people often went to die, in hopes of a proper burial. We will learn about waking traditions and banshees, keening practices, and herbs and trees that carry us through these threshold times of death and grief. We will ally an Irish goddess as a death guide for this time and beyond.
Please note this is not a retreat to focus on your own grief process, although we certainly will delve into how our modern approach to death and grief is not serving us and discuss ways to honor these essential life transitions by learning from our ancestors.
Price: $1,895
$200 single supplement (if you wish to have your own bedroom and bath) Sold out!
$150 discount per person if you come with a friend/partner and share a double/queen bed
INCLUDED: Accommodation in a traditional Irish home, with a shared bedroom and bath, or in an Irish B&B. We will stay in Kinvara, a quaint seaside village in southwest County Galway with cafes, pubs, traditional music, craft shops, and more. Single occupancy en-suite available upon request for an additional single supplement fee of $200. Self-catered breakfast and one meal per day (either lunch or dinner) will be included. Also included: designated ground transportation within Ireland, site entrance fees, guides, and ritual supplies.
NOT INCLUDED: Airfare and travel expenses to Ireland. We will collect you on the arrival date (October 12) in Galway City (if you fly into Dublin you can take a coach to Galway) or Shannon Airport. Also not included: travel insurance, one meal per day, dessert, all drinks including alcohol
To register, a $500 non-refundable (transferable) deposit can be paid HERE and the Tour Conditions (click HERE) must be completed (electronic signature is fine) and emailed to Tonja at tonjareichley@gmail.com.
Only one space left as of 1/30/24!
Proposed Daily Itinerary
Day 1: Arrivals and collection at Shannon Airport or Galway Coach Station (for those coming from Dublin). We will get settled into our home for the week and have time for a rest, a walk to the sea, or into the village. In the liminal light, we will have our opening ritual at a sacred well tucked into the mystical hazel groves of the Burren and collect holy spring water to bless our journey.
Day 2: After an easeful start to the day and morning ritual to meet our death guides, we will venture into the mystical Burren landscape where we will visit a sacred Neolithic site for rites of passage and death rituals. We will honor one of our death guides, Sheela Na Gig, in her native place at an ancient Celtic church, then visit a Celtic monastic site for grave rubbings. We will honor the death of the day at a beach, collecting hag stones and watching the sunset before a life-nourishing feast at a local seafood restaurant.
Day 3: We will greet the new day in sacred circle before we traverse into the misty wilds of the Burren. We will chant with ancient echoes in an abbey and harvest herbs from the hedgerows. We will explore hidden beaches, fairy forts, sacred springs, and keen to the Earth, awakening ancient rhythms within and without.
Day 4: We will travel the short distance to Brigit’s Garden to explore the amazing Celtic Festival-themed gardens dedicated to this Goddess and Saint of Healing, midwife to life and to death, the first one to invoke the keen. Then we journey into the blue mists, bogs, and stark beauty of Connemara. We will seek healing, honoring grief with the ebb and flow of life and death, from the sea and perhaps take a baptismal dip into her waters. We will close the day, the death of the day which is also the beginning, in our ancient Celtic way of being, at the hearth with Compline.
Day 5: After our ritual to begin the day, invoking our death guides, we will visit a place that has manufactured clay pipes—a token of Irish wakes—and continue on to the famine museum, paying respect to the beloved ancestors. We will journey together to the place of an Irish workhouse and learn about the history of this shadow-side of our Irish ancestors and why they would have desperately sought these places. We will have a quiet evening at home to integrate the gifts and wisdom of the week.
Day 6: We will greet the new day in sacred circle before we traverse to the wild edges where we will visit a pilgrimage place and a grotto/sacred spring/holy well that holds healing for the living and the dead. We will add our lights to the candles that are lit here to honor the dead. We will gather at the hearth in the evening to have a conversation with a dear Irish friend who has kept funeral and waking rites alive to this day.
Day 7: Gathering at the hearth, we begin the day together. We will visit a cillin, a cemetery for unbaptized children, and offer healing with our keening. We will grieve with the earth and find joy and nourishment with the healing herbs that support this grief. We will return home for a closing feast prepared in community!
Day 8: We depart ever-changed from an experience of how we can live deeper, remembering how death has been revered by our ancestors and how we can live more fully in this life.
Your guides for this journey are Tonja Reichley and Charlene Ray.
Tonja has been living in the seaside village of Kinvara, in the west of Ireland, for almost 20 years, connecting to the wisdom of the land and their sacred places: the holy wells and sacred springs, the beloved trees and hedgerow herbs. She has been leading sacred journeys to Ireland for many years, weaving in myth, ritual, and herbal co-creation.
Charlene divides her time between the beautiful landscape of the Pacific Northwest of the US and her soul’s home, Ireland. She is a grief tender and student of the Art of Dying where she guides others to access their inner wisdom in sacred relationships with the more-than-human world.
