The Celtic Cauldron of Creation
A Shamanic Retreat Exploring the Spirit-Powers of Dana

Facilitated by Tom Cowan and Frank MacEowan
Assisted by Susan McClellan

Long before the arrival of the Gaels, an ancient race of people inhabited Ireland known through oral traditions and written history as the Tuatha De Danann, or the Shining Ones. This mystical race may have originated in the primal forests of Old Europe, somewhere in a Celtic Otherworld manifesting along the Danube. The Dananns were highly attuned to the mysterious elements of nature, possessed advanced spiritual powers, and may have been attempting to bring forth an enlightened society on Earth, as other mystical races around the world are thought to have been attempting in the dreamtimes of their own cultures.

In this weeklong retreat we will delve deeply into the ancient mysteries surrounding the Dananns and look at how their unique culture and spirituality shaped the beliefs and practices of the later Celtic peoples of Ireland and Britain. Our intention will be to prepare ourselves to be skillful recipients of the potent spiritual forces the Dananns tended in their own lands and within themselves, and which are still accessible to us. It is our belief that the Dananns are initiating people in our own day to preserve and carry forth their wisdom and spiritual knowledge for the sake of humanity and the nonhuman communities of life on our Mother, the Earth.

We will trace and track the dana energies as they reveal themselves in the Three Cauldrons of the Soul, as they help to shape the Wheel of the Four Airts, and as they originate in the Primal Mother Spirit called Danu or Dana by those earliest Celtic peoples. Through ritual and ceremony, we'll contact the dana life-force behind the spirits of nature in our own lands so that we may become better healers and seers. By drumming, dancing, and dreaming we will spend intimate time with the dana energies and allow them to initiate us into the mysteries that the Shining Ones are calling back into the visible world for its renewal and transformation, not to mention our own.