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OUR STORY

Think you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?Think again. Katrice Horsley offers a wholly original take on this classic tale. It’s a coming of age narrative that invites us all to come into relationship with the wildest parts of ourselves.

OUR GUEST

Katrice grew up in the slums of Birmingham. Whilst her family were poor in the pocket, they were rich in the mouth and this laid the foundation for her love of words and stories. In her early years she struggled to be understood due to a speech problem and this resulted in her becoming a selective mute - in fact she did not speak in school until she was about 8 years old and her teachers judged her to be 'educationally sub-normal.' She went on to become the UK's National Storytelling Laureate and an internationally known narrative consultant and performer. Katrice believes that this was not, 'in spite' of her childhood but because of it. She is passionate about the power of story in enabling people to know that their voice deserves to be heard and their story deserves to be told.

Website - www.narrative4change.com

Substack The Wildling's Path https://katrice.substack.com/

• This story was crafted as an homage to the late British writer Angela Carter
• Katrice’s key themes: duty, desire, and death.
• Inhabiting the liminal space between the feral and the acceptable, she questions what is allowed by the dominant narrative and explores what within the individual nature that needs an outlet.
• The myth of separation, at cultural and personal level
• The desire to make menstruation and what it means into something beautiful
• Biomimicry: “a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by living organisms to solve challenges comparable to the ones we face as individuals and societies.” Katrice recommends this interview with Janine Benyus on biomimicry.
• On Katrice’s TBR list: To Have Or to Hold by Sophie Pavelle
• Katrice’s newest project “Mythcilium” explores how myths work as the mycorrhizal networks that connect humanity
• Oral storytelling is action driven while written storytelling is character driven.

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next mythically inspired online writing retreat on June 25!

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

OUR STORY

As part of our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, the artist Rónán Ó Raghallaigh takes us on a tour of the landscape and storyscape of his native County Kildare and neighboring County Wicklow. This area was home to Fionn mac Cumhaill (AKA Finn McCool) and his legendary band of warriors, the Fianna.

OUR GUEST

Rónán Ó Raghallaigh is an artist and researcher who received an MFA from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2021. He has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in Ireland and internationally.

Working through painting and performance, Rónán’s practice engages with pre-Christian Ireland as a means for contemporary postcolonial action. He visits sacred sites and researches their archaeology, history and folklore, providing a spring for new work. Paintings are made in the studio, while performances on site are filmed or live. He is re-learning the Irish language, and uses it during performances, for work-titles and in written texts interwoven with English and his vernacular dialect.

Rónán’s work is a constant act of remembering and cultivating alternative ways of being in response to colonialism, Christianity and industry. Storytelling and ritual become a practice for befriending our environment, considering identity and encouraging healing.

Find Rónán on Instagram: @ronan.o.raghallaigh and at ronanoraghallaigh.com

OUR CONVERSATION

• Rónán’s approaching to creative visionary art work includes accessing the consciousness through channeling and trance work. It’s a form of DIY spirituality and decolonization work.
• Logainmneacha: Irish placenames
• The power of well-visited sacred sites where others are also engaging with spiritual work, and also being with folks who are simply out enjoying a beautiful day
• The research and revival of imbas forosnai and other druidic practices to access inspiration
• The power of naming. In 1972 Brian O'Doherty staged a performance called Name Change, in which he changed his name to “Patrick Ireland” in protest of Bloody Sunday in Derry.
• The role of ritual, and Rónán’s performance art piece: Bealtaine Baptism
• Amergin’s Song with its proclamations of “I am” as a form of pre-Christian prayer.
• A recent performance art piece An Tobar agus an Chloch

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

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next mythically inspired online writing retreat on June 25!

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine

Our Story

What if the first day of summer arrived with the icy grip of the Ice Age? Join one man on his quest for truth as he seeks answers from Ireland’s animist wisdom keepers—encountering Eagle, Otter, and Salmon along the way.

Inspired by an account shared in Gearóid Ó Crualaoich’s The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer, this story reimagines the tale of The Cailleach Bhéarrathach and the cold of May-Day Monday.

Our Guest

As KnotWork’s 2025 resident storyteller, Erica O’Reilly is devoted to facilitating experiences where souls feel seen, held, and heard. She believes deeply in wisdom of the human body and spirit; as well as the powerful medicine of storytelling.

Over the years, in coming home to the bones of her Irish ancestry, Erica has discovered that her dán [soul work] is interlaced within the sacred embrace of the Irish Mná Feasa (the Wise Women), the Mná Leighas (the Medicine Women), the Mná Chaointe (the Keening Women), and the Áes Dána (People of the Arts).

As the Creative Visionary of Into the Circle Theatre, Erica is dedicated to reverently honoring the tradition of the seanchaí in a modern context. Through the weaving of Irish culture, history, folklore, and mythology, Into the Circle Theatre shares the hallowed tales of women remembering and reclaiming the wisdom of their bodies and the magic of their spirits.

As an Irish-Canadian, Erica remains profoundly grateful to the traditional spirits and keepers of the land—past, present, and future—of the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation, where she was born and currently resides. Míle buíochas for the opportunity to live, create, share stories, and walk alongside you.

Find Erica: Weavings of the Wise & Embodied [Substack], Instagram or her website.

Subscribe now and mark your calendars for the Sunday after Bealtaine.

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack,

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon on May 4 at 11 AM ET (via Zoom).

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

On the eve of the festival of Bealtaine (Beltane), three sovereignty goddesses watch a fleet approach Ireland’s eastern shore. The new arrivals were the Sons of Mil, the first of the Gaels. Their coming would unseat the race of gods known as the Tuatha Dé Danann and change… everything. The goddesses knew this, and welcomed them in anyway.

This truly is a Bealtaine tale: according to the Irish Annals the Sons of Mil arrive in Ireland on the eve of the festival: Thursday, April 30 1699 BCE.

This story is inspired by the final wave of migration described in Ireland’s Book of Invasions. Brian Walsh told his version, The Coming of the Sons of Mil, on the podcast last year (S5 Ep3). Marisa’s retelling gives us the story from the women’s perspective.

This truly is a Bealtaine tale: according to the Irish Annals the Sons of Mil arrive in Ireland on the eve of the festival: Thursday, April 30 1699 BCE.

Want to dive deeper into this story? Join us for the next Myth Workers’ Salon via Zoom on May 4 at 11 AM ET.

This open conversation is for folks who support the podcast through paid subscriptions to the Myth is Medicine newsletter over on Substack.

Subscribe now and mark your calendars for the Sunday after Bealtaine.

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon on May 4 at 11 AM ET (via Zoom).

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

The tale of Etain and Midir is one of the great love stories of Irish mythology, and our guest Amanda Verdery brings it to the podcast just in time for Bealtaine, the springtime festival that celebrates new life and fertility.

OUR GUEST

Amanda Verdery is a writer, certified shamanic practitioner, and initiated medicine woman in her Celtic ancestral traditions. A second-generation Scottish American with Irish, English and French ancestry, most of her learning hails from the Scottish & Irish mythic and mystical paths. She is devoted to helping women in particular remember and embody their dán— their soul's gift and calling.

In 2022, she founded the Wild Becoming Sanctuary, a modern mystery school guiding deep & holy women of all kinds into communion with their power and capacity for self-healing. Join her in the Wild Becoming Sanctuary.

She also offers 1:1 guidance to those undergoing a holy rite of passage in their lives, in her Wild Becoming Immersion. All of her work is led by the Path of the Goddess and the circle-wisdom of the Wheel of the Year.

Find Amanda at www.wild-becoming.com, on Instagram @wild_becoming , and on her Substack newsletter Wild Becoming:

OUR CONVERSATION

• The power of initiation and choice, particularly in women’s lives right now
• The way we look to myth for psychological insights, but also seek to understand our connection to the more-than-human world.
• Seeking your soul’s true name, your dán
• The Claddagh ring, the hands, crown, and heart - friendship, loyalty, and love.
• At one point, Etain is turned into a puddle of water. What does this teach us about our romance with water and our own essence? Water as the ultimate model for shapeshifting.
• True love is a great threat to the patriarchy.

Want to keep exploring ideas like these? Join us for the next Myth Workers’ Salon via Zoom on May 4 at 11 AM ET.

This open conversation is for folks who support the podcast through paid subscriptions to the Myth is Medicine newsletter over on Substack.

Subscribe now and mark your calendars for the Sunday after Bealtaine.

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot:

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon happening on Zoom on May 4 at 11 AM ET.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

This is the story of Macha, a goddess, a fairy woman, a woman of the Sidhe, who took a human lover for a year. This story, and Macha's race against the king's horses, sets the stage for the greatest epic in Irish mythology, the Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Marisa returns to this story which she originally shared in 2022 and looks at it through the lens of a “post Roe world,” in which the right to abortion and reproductive freedom is no longer part of life for all Americans.

She explores the many ways in which we also live in a post-privacy world, and how this influences everything from romantic to parent-child relationships.

Want to keep exploring ideas like these? Join us for the next Myth Workers’ Salon via Zoom on May 4 at 11 AM ET.

This open conversation is for folks who support the podcast through paid subscriptions to the Myth is Medicine newsletter over on Substack.

Subscribe now and mark your calendars for the Sunday after Bealtaine.

https://mythismedicine.substack.com/

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the Writers’ Knot: www.marisagoudy.com/writing-groups

Follow the show on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

The old myth is well known: King Lir’s four children are turned into swans by their jealous stepmother Aoife. This retelling brings us deep into the motivations and nuances of an old Indo-European story that came to Ireland with the Normans in the 12th century.

OUR GUEST

Ellen is currently a member of the Council of Europe's Expert Group on Violence Against Women. She is a qualified psychotherapist and group analyst. She was CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre from 2006-2016. She gained a wealth of experience in lobbying government, designing and commissioning research studies and overseeing and publicly presenting national awareness campaigns about sexual violence, including the highly successful #AskConsent campaign.

Her interest in Mythology grew out of her work as a Jungian Psychotherapist, especially her dream analysis work with clients.

For 30 years she and her husband Sandy Dunlop (S5 Ep6) have organized and run the Bard Summer School on Clare Island Co. Mayo where with the group of participants, they explore the contemporary relevance of one of the wonderful Irish Myths. Ellen is also Guardian Chieftain of the O'Malley Clan.

Find out more about Ellen on Instagram @‌bardmythologies and https://bardmythologies.com/

OUR CONVERSATION

• Folks tend to recall this story as being lovely - "oh, the swans!" - but it’s really about abuse of power, abuse of children, and abuse of women
• Ellen’s translation work with Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, professor of Irish folklore at University College Dublin
• Transforming the archetype of the “evil stepmother” and looking at all the archetypes present in this story.
• Her work as a Jungian psychotherapist who worked with clients’ dreams, which often called on mythic figures
• The Children of Lir sculpture by Oisín Kelly in the Garden of Remembrance, created to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rising in Parnell Square Garden
• The Magdalene Laundries, 1922 - 1996, where women were incarcerated for anything from perceived promiscuity to being considered a burden on their families or the State
• “There was no sex in Ireland until the Late Late Show”: the late night talk show hosted by Gay Byrne played a role in transforming Irish culture.
• The change within Ireland that came with Marriage Equality and Abortion Referendums.
• Ellen’s ancestor, the story of Grace O’Malley taught her that she could do whatever a man could do.

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 www.marisagoudy.com
• Learn about our global writing communities, the Authors’ Knot and the

Please Support Our Show: Join us on Substack

Love KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.

With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon.

Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.

OUR STORY

The Irish goddess Boan has a sacred thirst for knowledge, and she is ready to claim her share. This classic story includes the sacred well with its salmon and hazelnuts, the good god Dadga and Aengus, the god of love, as well as the creation of the River Boyne and the Milky Way.

OUR GUEST

Ali Isaac lives in Ireland with her husband, two sons, and daughter, Carys. She graduated from Maynooth University as a (very) mature student in 2019 with a degree in English and History, with a Special Interest in Irish Cultural Heritage and followed this with a Master of Arts degree in English Literatures of Engagement.

BC (before children) Ali worked in retail management, with a short spell in the military. AD (after degrees) she worked as an education officer in her local county museum. But at heart, Ali is a writer. She has been blogging about Irish mythology since 2012, and now is the founder of H A G on Substack, a newsletter that braids female senescence with landscape - natural, archaeological, and mythical.

Her writing has been published in Irish literary journals, The Stinging Fly, Sonder, Paper Lanterns, and Catatonic Daughters. In 2020, she was awarded a mentorship with author Sara Baume by Words Ireland in conjunction with The Arts Council of Ireland. In 2021, she was the recipient of a Literature Bursary Award from The Arts Council of Ireland.

Her first book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in March 2026.

Fing Ali: H A G on Substack and on Instagram

OUR CONVERSATION

• Ali has long been concerned with the way society seeks to control women, and she has a sense that “it’s all happening again,” particularly regarding the controversy over the removal of information about women’s contribution to STEM from the NASA website.
• At the same time, women are rising up and coming together, which is clear in the emergence of Brigid energy.
• The ravages of toxic masculinity and the craving for the beautiful care that is also part of the masculine. The power of Dagda’s love, and the way in which he was protective of women, holder of the cauldron
• Our past Bóinn stories by Laura Murphy Bóinn Re:membered and Brigid: Rebirth of the Mother
• A sense in Ireland that people want to move forward rather than look back. To many, the myths seem irrelevant, but that’s just further proof that we need to bring the stories back to the light.
• Boan is sometimes considered Ireland’s Eve because she reached for forbidden knowledge, but this story would have been told before Christianity came to Ireland. Her desire is older than that tree in Eden.
• The various elements that came together to inform Ali’s story of Boan including her thoughts about women’s power, as well as the willows and the waters of County Cavan.

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: