The Last Sovereignty Goddess | S4 Ep 8

KnotWork Storytelling

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Our Story

In Ireland’s Forgotten Goddess Queen-Queen-Witch (S4 Ep7), you met Mongfind. She’s best known from her role in the story of Niall of the Nine Hostages.

In “The Last Sovereignty Goddess” I imagine Mongfind’s divine origins and tell a story about power, sacred union, and the disruption of the balance between spirit, nature, and so-called civilization. We explore the intersection between the divine and the human and the frailties that are at the core of this story of goddesses and kings.

Our Guest

Laura Murphy, @everose on Instagram, is a poet, activist and healer from Ireland whose work centers around the ancient

Irish poetic practice of Imbas Forosnai. She has shared a trinity of stories here on KnotWork, reweaving the tales of the Irish goddesses Bóinn, Brigid, and Danu.

This time, I have asked Laura, a true soul sister, to sit with me as I weave a new story.

Our Conversation

• A longtime theme in my work: how we tell goddess stories in order to tell our own human stories. While at University College Dublin, I published a paper in New Voices in Irish Criticism 4, “Dethroning the Goddess, Crowning the Woman: Eva Gore-Book and Lady Augusta Gregory’s Mythic Heroines”
• Channeling a story that is bigger than myself and also exactly the size of my own experience
• The power of choice and consent; the Irish tradition of the Sovereignty Goddess who chooses the king, and how that tradition was disrupted
• This story explores sacred sexual union, but also the terrible first kiss
• What it is to be in relationship with our younger self and younger body, without buying into the toxicity of “anti-aging”
• Some background on the connections between the Irish and Palestinian people, including the British Israelites and attempts to excavate the sacred Hill of Tara in a quest to find the Ark of Covenant in 1900
• The ongoing struggle with the word and concept of “Sovereignty,” particularly with the far right’s use of the term.
• Considering relationship to ancestral land through the lens of America, a country built on the disrupted sovereignty of indigenous peoples.
• This Last Sovereignty Goddess story is the tale of an ending, and this feels like a “Tower moment,” the liminal space between what’s dying and being born.

Join Melinda Laus's Seasons for Healing Community

My dear friend Melinda Laus holds space for a grief support community that blends the healing power of nature with wise and inspired grief education. Her wisdom and compassion are soul medicine, and I highly recommend her work to anyone experiencing collective grief or personal loss. Learn more at thenatureofgrief.com

Our Music

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.com
• Find more of Marisa's writing and get a copy of her book, The Sovereignty Knot: www.marisagoudy.com

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