Archetypes of Avalon
New Monthly Offering within this Substack Newsletter
A year of archetypal exploration for your inner work!
Every month I will send paid members a specific archetypal pattern and introduce you to my work of mythopoetic alchemy. For you to discover these characters and much vaster energetic patterns within your own psyche.
Activate their strength in your life and utilise insights and shadow sides for breaking through patterns that have held you back from claiming your power.
The archetypes I choose are linked to characters and deities from European folklore and Celtic mythology (and yes I will also go into what Celtic actually means as opposed to the surface understanding most have of it as encompassing myths of the British isles and Ireland). As my expertise lies in Arthurian Legend and Avalonian Tradition we will work with their specific representation and look at relatives from Welsh, Irish, Germanic cultures and beyond to trace them back as far as the Palaeolithic.
While archetypes may emanate through us for short periods of time, in what we call numinous experience, no woman can emanate an archetype continuously. Only the archetype itself can withstand such projections such as ever-able, all giving, eternally energetic. We may try to emulate these, but they are ideals, not achievable by humans, and not meant to be. Yet the trap requires that women exhaust themselves trying to achieve these unrealistic levels. To avoid the trap, one has to learn to say 'Halt' and 'Stop the music,' and of course mean it.
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
The work with archetypes is not to cling on identity but to free yourself from your conditioned view of Self and find many faces and facets at play in your life - honouring the multidimensional aspect of yourself!
The aim is not to identify a certain number of traits per archetype, label it and box it away but to recognise and respect their changeable nature. Each archetype has shadow and light, can be acted out of weakness or strength and moves within collective and individual consciousness. My work is to give a bigger picture, explain more intricate and nuanced aspects and support you in realising how they can play out in your thoughts, feelings and actions.
The aim is for YOU to become the curious observer who can start a conversation with their personal archetypes within to stop self-sabotage, alchemise destructive behaviour and co-create your future.
You can start anytime! Every month you will receive archetypal patterns and characters at play within the astrological tides of the zodiacs and moon phases.
For £55/year you will get research, life-applicable guidance and introduction into mythopoetic alchemy for your personal transformation.
You can choose to align your practice with the Western tropical astrology or Vedic sidereal astrology. I personally orientate myself towards the Vedic as it looks at the live sky like our ancestors would have done and I love that
suggests it is the closest to what (we can guess) the Celts would have used as a system due to the connections between the Sanskrit and Gaelic languages.We start with the Hero: A Fool at Heart, followed by the Wild Woman: Activator of Sovereignty and the High Priestess: Earthing the Vision. You can access all published archetype in the archive or choose to follow the ones you receive at any point of when you begin your journey.
Further archetypes in order:
The Warrior: Passionate Fighter for Justice and Peace
The Lover: Restoring Balance and Kissing the Earth
The Sorcerer: Messenger from Source and Trickster of Change
The Mother: She who invites support and remembers the Mother Culture (Plus an excurse on matrilineal societies and our matriarchal heritage)
The Queen: Anointer of Kings and Keeper of the Faery Accord
The Healer: Becoming Whole through Embracing Change
The Companion: A Mentor and Guide to yourself
The Psychopomp: The Initiator of Rebirth
The Great Goddess: The all-encompassing Water of Life and Illuminator of Pathways.
Everyone is welcome, we will work with both male and female characters. As the Avalonian Tradition originates from Goddess Tradition (as does the Arthurian legends by the way! The men are initiated and guided by women in basically every adventure) I will mainly write about the female characters but these are just one expression of an archetype, truly an archetype is not gendered and contains all within itself as we do ourselves!
I am looking forward to a year of breaking patterns to step into our most magical potentials and powers!
Thank you for the mention Laura. Research suggests that the ancient Irish, as well as the broader Celtic cultures, practised a form of predictive astrology that closely paralleled early Hindu astrology, now referred to as Vedic astrology. By examining linguistic concepts, cosmological themes, and calendrical systems, scholars have traced a shared Indo-European heritage underlying both Celtic (including Old Irish) and Sanskrit/Vedic traditions.
Ireland, among European cultures, has preserved particularly strong links with the Hindu branch of Indo-European culture. These connections have been explored by scholars since the 19th century. Adolphe Pictet, in his 1815 work De l'affinité des langues celtiques avec le sanskrit, was one of the earliest to highlight linguistic and cultural parallels. Later, Professor Myles Dillon (1900–1972) expanded this field by identifying shared elements in mythology, social practices, and law. Significant similarities were noted between the ancient Irish legal system, known as the Brehon laws, and Hindu legal traditions.
Dr Calvert Watkins, a prominent scholar, observed that Old Irish retains remarkably archaic features within the Indo-European linguistic tradition. Its grammatical structures, dating to the eighth century CE, provide a more accurate reflection of early Indo-European languages than even Latin. Watkins further noted that the syntax of Old Irish bears striking similarities to Vedic Sanskrit and Old Kingdom Hittite.
Cosmological links have also been recognised. As early as 1895, Dr Heinrich Zimmer identified parallels between the Coligny calendar, the oldest surviving Celtic calendar, and Vedic cosmology. This connection was later reinforced by Dr Olmsted’s detailed analysis of the Coligny calendar.
The suggestion of a shared astrological tradition gained support from a gloss in a 9th-century Irish manuscript found in Würzburg. The word budh was glossed as ‘point of fire’ and ‘planet Mercury’. Similarly, Cormac’s 10th-century Glossary explained that budh referred to ‘Áine’s fire’. Áine, an Irish deity associated with the moon, appeared in both male and female forms. The association of budh with Mercury closely aligns with Vedic cosmology, where the planet Mercury is also called Budh.
The linguistic root budh is widespread in Celtic languages, carrying meanings such as ‘victorious’, ‘gift of teaching’, and ‘enlightened’. In Breton, boud means ‘to be’. The same root appears in the name Boudicca (or Boadicea), the Iceni queen who led a rebellion against Rome. This root is also central in Sanskrit, where Buddha (derived from budh, meaning ‘to know’ or ‘enlightened’) refers to Sakyamuni Gautama, the Enlightened One.
These linguistic, legal, cosmological, and astrological connections suggest a shared Indo-European origin for the ancient Irish and Vedic traditions.
I'll be posting more on this matter over the year, but also will share a video I made for students on the three zodiacs in use - Tropical (Western), Sidereal (Vedic) and Draconic (Nodal) - at some time in the coming days/ weeks.
Blessings to you and your writing and inspiring. A
The timing for this year’s journey is perfect for me. I am linking my curiosities and passions together in 2025. I am ready to reclaim and step into my power after being praised and encouraged to stay small and quiet. At 52, its time to connect within to source my inner radiance. Thank you for offering this journey!