Keening
A Living Tradition
An educational and experiential course to honor the Keening traditions of Scotland & Ireland with stories & songs woven of grief & love
8th October - 26th November
Tuesdays @ 10:30am PT / 6:30pm BST
May this open us deeper into our hearts,
to touch rivers of grief & love,
and enrich our connection with life & the unseen realms.
In this experiential course we will be exploring themes of keening, grief, love, loss & honouring life.
There once was a time when we had deep & meaningful rituals surrounding initiations & rites of passage. Communities gathered and grieved together.
Just as at birth, souls were midwived from this world into the next at the end of life.
The women were the grief tenders, and keening was used to help release grief and suffering – to clear the way for the next generations.
Love, joy, loss and grief were all a part of the raw expressions of life.
However, as patriarchal systems swept across the land, these rituals and traditions were banned. Expressing grief in all its rawness was shunned, and perhaps, we learned to hold it all inside.
Yet grief is a river and rivers need to flow…
Though severely diminished, the old ways have never died and are now being repaired and revived. We are reweaving the broken threads.
This course brings together a few special elders from Ireland & Scotland who are working deeply with the revival of these ancestral keening and grief-tending traditions.
It includes learning and receiving historical teachings, keening songs, stories, Celtic perspectives, and grief tending ritual.
May this series touch our hearts and awaken remembrance of our original ways.
This Course Is For You If
- You feel called to connect with ancestral keening traditions from Ireland & Scotland
- You desire to participate in a course that blends ancient practices with modern insights for healing
- You are seeking a sacred space to explore grief in a welcoming community
- You're moved by the healing power of vocal expression and communal lament
- You wish to deepen your understanding of grief as a transformative and spiritual journey
Participant Reviews
Honouring Traditions
Personal use
The songs and stories shared in this course are intended for participant’s own personal education, healing and enrichment. In the traditional way, may we receive them, integrate them and allow them to live through us, before we consider sharing with others.
Preserving
We honor the path that each teacher has walked to cultivate and carry these songs, stories, crafts and traditions that they share with us. By joining the course you agree not to replicate, alter or dilute the content. Understanding that in doing so we lose the essence of that which we are wanting to preserve.
Respecting
We welcome the ongoing exploration and conversation around the appropriate ways to receive and honor these teachings. We see this as part of the education this course aims to provide – bringing awareness to the respectful ways to connect and learn from these traditions.
Presence
As if we were gathering together around the fire in the old way, may we come bringing our full presence. We invite you to have your video on and make a space where you can fully be with us, receiving the gifts of this wisdom.
Why This Program?
THE FOUNDER
Greetings, I'm Hanna Leigh
For the past several years I have been on an inspired journey to reclaim ancestral wisdom and connect with the indigenous spirit of the “Great Sacred Motherland of Europe” – a term I first heard from activist Lyla June.
This longing for reconnection was the impetus to create a program last year called “Songs of Mother Europe”, which features song carriers from all over Europe who still carry the old songs. In the past year we have had over 700 participants in the course, which speaks to me of a collective impulse to remember and preserve ancestral wisdom.
COURSE CO-WEAVER
Welcome, I’m Lana Lanaia. I was born in England, live in the Scottish Highlands, and have spent much of my life exploring the landscapes and sacred places of these Islands.
I am a singer, sound healer & weaver of bridges between the ancient & new. My inspiration flows from my deep love for the Earth; of wild landscapes, forests, mountains, rivers, oceans, sacred sites, and the stars. Over the years, I have been learning from indigenous & healing traditions, ways that we may rekindle our relationship with self, Nature and our origins.
I am passionate about re-awakening the ancient, living wisdom within our hearts and lands; weaving remembrance that we are all children of the Earth.
Program Overview
Through the songs and stories shared by our guest teachers, may the living reality of earth and ancestral belonging be rekindled within you.
Classes are on Tuesdays @ 10:30am PT / 6:30pm BST
Week 1
8th October
Opening Call
w/ Hanna Leigh & Lana Lanaia
The Story of the Ancient Irish Keen
w/ Mary Mclaughlin
Week 2
15th October
The Irish Keen and the Great Rite of Passage
w/ Mary Mclaughlin
Week 3
22nd October
The Scottish Keening Tradition and the Pibroch Laments
w/ Madge Bray
Week 4
29th October
Cultural Retrieval – Creating a context for ancient traditional grief tending practices in our lives today
w/ Madge Bray
Week 5
5th November
Weaving the Seabhean Into Contemporary Living
w/ Phyllida Anam-Áire
Week 6
12th November
Break & Integration Week
Week 7
19th November
Teachings from the Cauldron
w/ Phyllida Anam Áire
Week 8
26th November
Closing Call & Community Sharing Circle
w/ Hanna Leigh & Lana Lanaia
Program Deep Dive
Many may have forgotten the old ways, though gratefully there are those still keeping the skills and songs alive, and others of us who are relearning them.
Week 1
The Story of the Ancient Irish Keen
w/ Mary McLaughlin
The word ‘Keening’ has gone mainstream in recent years but what does Keening actually mean?
The verb comes from the noun ‘Keen’ which in turn comes from Gaelic and the full Gaelic title is ‘Caoineadh na Marbh’, (pronounced ‘Keenoo na Mariv’) which means ‘Lament for the Dead’.
The Keen is a sacred and ritualised chant which was sung within the context of a Wake and had specific functions. Although women are traditionally associated with the Keen throughout Europe, men sometimes played a part – more often speaking rather than singing.
In this class Mary will cover some of the history and context of this ancient practice and note the changes that have evolved in it over time.
Dr. Mary McLaughlin is internationally known for her knowledge of the ancestral Keening practice in Ireland. An acclaimed singer who has released five albums (one on Sony Music) and has had over a million hits on Spotify, she combines her artistry with an academic approach to the Keen, grounding it in its history and context.
Week 2
The Irish Keen and the Great Rite of Passage
w/ Mary McLaughlin
In our second class with Mary, she will discuss the Irish Wake and how it reached back in time and became a rite of passage, referring to ritual theory. Together, we will also look at the beliefs around death held by shamanic tribes, with reference to Druidic existence in ancient Ireland as far as we can tell – remembering that we know very little about the Druids as nothing was written down.
The spiritual element of the Wake was originally more important than the grieving element but the practices of the Keen and the Wake clashed with medieval Christianity. Mary will touch on the systematic attacks on the Keen and Wakes, the denigration of the Keen and how it went underground in the 1800s after the Great Famine – to burst back on to the stage in the 2020s – possibly as a result of Covid and the lack of spiritual support for many communities around the world.
Week 3
The Scottish Keening Tradition and the Pibroch Laments
w/ Madge Bray
Born into a Scottish Highland family of village musicians poets and storytellers , Madge Bray worked internationally in the field of childhood trauma, pioneering approaches to trauma resolution. Exploration of the sounds of dissonance in human suffering, led her to Georgian polyphony and ultimately to cultural retrieval of music as a container for grief within her own Scots Tradition – and the unfolding of a deeper journey into lamentation and keening.
She is currently sharing this on YouTube:
Week 4
Cultural Retrieval - Creating a context for ancient traditional grief tending practices in our lives today
w/ Madge Bray
In our second class with Madge, we invite you to come and be with us in this space where together we may learn and experience something of these living threads that can help us to release grief and bring healing to ourselves, our communities and to those who are passing from this world into the next.
Week 5
Weaving the Seabhean Into Contemporary
Living
w/ Phyllida Anam-Áire
As an indigenous Irish woman with the language, rituals, psychology, & spirituality of the ‘old one’s,’ Phyllida invites you to come into a story with her so that you can feel the grounding of the bronach. This is the ‘sorrowing’ of a people, proud in their earth bodies and faithful to the inherited belief systems of their clan.
Phyllida will teach you some Irish Gutha, translated as mantras or sacred sounds. In this cruinniú, (gathering) Phyllida will introduce you to great grandmother who delights in remembering and in weaving the memory of her line into my blood and bones!
Phyllida Anam Áire is an 81 year old Irish grandmother. She comes from an ancestral line of deep trauma. After boarding school in the 60s, Phyllida trained in Montessori, and then entered a convent. Her study in Theology and doctrine taught her a lot; not about God, but about dysfunctional patriarchal indoctrination.
Having finished her studies in humanistic psychology, Phyllida trained and worked for ten years with Elisabeth Kübler -Ross MD. After ten years working with Celtic Consciousness in Germany, she moved to Edinburgh to be with her son and grandchildren. Phyllida still shares her “Teachings from the Cauldron”, which is a combination of humanistic psychology and Spiritual wisdom.
Week 6
Break / Integration Week
A time to rest with the wisdom gathered thus far.
Week 7
Teachings from the Cauldron
w/ Phyllida Anam-Áire
In every clan and community the shadow will naturally be hiding in the stew. This shadow when acted out and not integrated grows into intergenerational bitterness and unfortunately, blame. Phyllida’s life has been one of inviting the Irish shadows into the open heart of love so that healthy integration can sing its own gutha (Irish soundings). In her words, “My own children’s children wont have to live them out in their lives. Their lives will be an invitation to look at the other side.”
Week 8
Community Sharing Call
w/Hanna Leigh & Lana Lanaia
Come and gather together around the virtual fire as we share our experiences of the course. Bring a cup of tea, a song, a story, or simply your presence.
Simple Pricing
Early Bird Pricing Ends In
Pay In Full
Pay in full for:-
6 LIVE Workshops on Zoom
-
1 Community Sharing Call
-
Weave with a network of like-minded folks
-
Connect with ancestral songs & stories
Payment Plan
Pay in installments-
6 LIVE Workshops on Zoom
-
1 Community Sharing Call
-
Weave with a network of like-minded folks
-
Connect with ancestral songs & stories
Payment Plan
Pay in installments-
6 LIVE Workshops on Zoom
-
1 Community Sharing Call
-
Weave with a network of like-minded folks
-
Connect with ancestral songs & stories
If you sincerely desire to join us in this journey and need financial assistance, please email us and share your heart & situation so we may see what is possible.
Please contact us at support@weavingremembrance.org to inquire about scholarship.
Frequently Asked Questions
This offering is happening online through Zoom, with teachers joining us from several different countries.
Yes. They will be recorded and sent out soon after each class.
No. The nature of the content delivery is that you purchase the entire course.
You will have access to the recordings for one year from the start date of the course.
No. Due to the delivery of course content, all sales are final.
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