The Earth Wisdom of Britain and Ireland
- Danielle Baker
- Aug 2
- 2 min read
For many of us born on the lands now known as Britain and Ireland, there is a quiet ache, a longing for something we can’t quite name. Beneath the concrete and modern rituals, beneath the rewritten herstory and renamed rivers, there is a pulse. An echo. A whisper of the earth wisdom once lived and known.
Before borders, crowns, and conquest, these lands were home to people who lived in deep relationship with place. They carved spirals into stone, aligned burial chambers with the sun and moon, and honoured the life-death cycle not as fear, but as part of the whole. Women held sacred roles as healers, midwives, seers, and storytellers. The feminine was not exalted above, nor cast below, she was central, cyclical, and sacred.
But this wisdom was not fixed in time. It adapted, merged, and evolved. Waves of migration from the Beaker culture to the Celtic-speaking peoples — brought both shifts and continuities. Then came empire: Roman occupation, Anglo-Saxon Christianisation, Norse disruption, and the feudal stronghold of the Normans. Each new arrival brought not just different rulers, but new systems of belief, ownership, and erasure.
Still, the earth remembered. And so do we.
The persecution of witches in the 1500s and beyond was not just religious hysteria, it was the violent attempt to sever women (and communities) from their ancestral knowing. But in lullabies, hearth songs, plant lore, and dreams, the threads remained.
Today, as we seek to reconnect, we do not need to replicate ancient forms, we are being invited to remember relationship. To listen to the land. To honour the wisdom that lives not in textbooks, but in bone, soil, and breath.
Let the ache be a guide. Let the remembering be your practice.
Further Reading:
If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
Celtic Women’s Spirituality by Edain McCoy
The Book of Druidry by Ross Nichols
Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton
The Wakeful Body by Willa Blythe Baker
Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici (for deeper understanding of witch trials and gendered oppression)
A History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hirsch
Documentaries and Films:
“The Celts” (BBC Documentary series narrated by Frank Delaney)
“Britain’s Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney” (BBC)
“Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain’s Holiest Places” (BBC)
“The Burning Times” (National Film Board of Canada) – Feminist documentary on the witch hunts
“Secrets of the Stone Age” (Channel 4 UK)
Love, Danielle
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