Holy Wells in the Ocean, and Other Mythic Miracles Come True
Fintan mac Bóchra of Ireland, a Wampanoag Creation Story, and a Stroll Into Cape Cod Bay
On Sunday, I knew I had to go walking on water.
August 13 was the Venus Cazimi. We’re in the midst of Venus Retrograde, and I admit I never even knew this was a thing until last month, but as is the way with the art of astrology and these mysteriously predictable skies of ours, you start paying attention when the universe is trying to get your attention.
A “cazimi” is when a planet and the sun are close enough to kiss. The Venus Cazimi is a day that Kathy Scott of The Trailblazery describes as a “cosmic crescendo.”
I needed to do something I’d remember all year long, and so I set out as the tide rolled away.
When Everyday Responsibilities Put You On the Unexpected Mythic Path
I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Cape Cod Bay. I was supposed to be in a church in Woodstock, NY celebrating
’s launch of The Madonna Secret. But, my kids needed me, so I was here on the land where I was born and raised, nearly a mile from dry land.When we planned on a long trip to their grandparents’ place for two weeks of theater camp, I knew that there was a very good chance my husband and I wouldn’t really get all that time at home together (or actually accomplish the audacious goal of painting the entire downstairs of the house).
Ultimately, we had less than forty-eight hours before I headed back to the Cape to do the magic only Mom can do.
So much for the book event, the dinners out, and long nights of watching grown-up TV. So much for recording the first chapters of the audiobook version of The Sovereignty Knot. So much of so much ended with “maybe next year we’ll get the time.”
So, here I am, in the midst of an unexpected week, hearing the call of Mother Ocean. But really, where else could I really reckon with—and relax into—the beautiful, exhausting, unpredictable calling of modern human motherhood?
Mother Ocean holds all the joy, disappointment, confusion, and peace for the mother soul like no other element on the great blue planet of ours.
(Note: Everyone was doing their absolute best to make this theater camp adventure work, but being away from home while also doing the hard work of meeting new kids and having a speaking role in a play was just too much for our nine year-old, so I’m here to firm up the foundations so the show can go on!)
Instead of ten days of wild (and deeply domesticated) freedom, I have been able to steal a few hours here and there. And the best place to do that is at the ends of the earth.
The Magic (and the Science) of the Ocean Spring
As any of my frequent readers and KnotWork listeners will know, I am always engaged with the question of what it means to live and work three thousand miles away from the source of the Irish ancestral stories that shape so much of my spirit and my worldview.
I long to be rooted to the everything of Turtle Island, this land beneath my feet, the place where I was born and the continent where my family has lived for 150 years and more. I am learning about the plants, the animals, the fungal networks that support my modern American life, but I know there’s so much I’m missing because I do not know the stories or the language of the people who lived here for thousands of years before Europeans tore those ancient cultures from the soil.
This particular day, I’m caught in the mystery of being on Wampanoag lands–and in Wampanoag waters–while also dreaming of the lore that flows from a rocky coast on the far side of the ocean.
On this little strip of shore here in Brewster, Massachusetts, the twice daily tides work overtime. Depending on what the storms have done to the seascape over any given winter, you can walk at least a mile across dry sand and water that’s no more than knee deep. These are the largest tidal flats in North America, and honestly, they’re incredible.
Every element is present in earth, water, sun, and wind. It all teems with life in a way that feels like you’re walking through a nature documentary. (That’s a terrifyingly revealing statement about the alienated, de-natured state of everyday life, I know—the real world shouldn’t remind us of TV!—but come to the flats with me, and you’ll instantly know what I mean.)
The part of low tide that the kids (and the kids in all of us) tend to love best, even more than the sea slime, the horseshoe and the hermit crabs, the darting minnows, and the tremendous snail colonies by the rocks, are the “cold spots.”
You don’t want to find these sinkholes the hard way —if you aren’t paying attention, you could suddenly be thigh deep in freezing water. The good news is that the occasional bubbles that rise to the surface easily give them away. And, of course, the fact that the water is so much colder than the rest of the shallow sea water that washes around them.
These watery holes in the sand, generally no more than six inches wide, are traces of underground springs sending streams of water from the Cape’s abundant fresh water underground aquifer. (And, I assume it is no surprise that this geological miracle is under threat. Learn more at https://www.capecodgroundwater.org/learn-more/cape-cod-aquifer/)
An Origin Story from the Wampanoag People
Something this remarkable, which allowed people to live on a sandy arm of land with abundant fresh water for the last 10,000 years must have been part of the first peoples’ lore. I’m only just beginning my studies of the myths of the original tribes of Turtle Island, but I did find a Wampanoag story of a benevolent being named Moshup.
Tired from a long journey, he dragged his foot across the earth and then “a silver thread of water trickled in the track.” Eventually, this trench grew so deep that Noepe, now known as Martha’s Vineyard, was separated from the mainland. And so, we have a sense that humans might have been here before the islands off the southern shore of what is now Cape Cod were born.
Stretching further into conjecture, since mythology exists to explain our relationship with the more-than-human world and how to be in right relationship with it, I wonder if there might be some original wisdom held in the image of the first thread of water - the fresh, sweet water that would exist in the lens of the aquifer and make life sustainable on a small sandy island.
Fintan Mac Bóchra and the Salmon of Wisdom
When I was out walking my prayers into the rushing tide, however, I was not thinking of Moshup (who I only discovered in writing this piece). I was thinking of the stories and the language that I do know well enough to weave into my day-to-day experience.
There once was a shape-shifting being named Fintan Mac Bóchra whose story threads through five thousand years of Irish mythological history.
If you heard my story of Cessair, you have heard me say Fintan’s name with something of a sneer. Cessair, the first human to set foot on Irish soil, died, along with her three boatloads of female companions, when the great flood overlook the earth. It was only wily Fintan, who conveniently discovered he could transform into a salmon, who survived to tell the tale to the successive bands of people who made their way onto Irish shores.
As is the way with my storytelling, a singular perspective tends to flow through me as I see and craft the tale through one character’s eyes. But then, as further research and my own experience demand, I have chances to revisit the narrative and give the villains (or the blessed immortals) another chance.
Fintan’s aquatic life is connected to the famed Salmon of Knowledge and Connla’s Well, the Well of Wisdom.
Connla's well, loud was its sound,
was beneath the blue-skirted ocean:
six streams, unequal in fame,
rise from it, the seventh was Sinann.The nine hazels of Crimall the sage
drop their fruits yonder under the well:
they stand by the power of magic spells
under a darksome mist of wizardry.
- "The Metrical Dindshenchas, Part 3"
During my walk far into the bay, I found new bubbling circles in the sand. While the dozen or so cold water spots that emerged just a hundred feet from the high tide line are jumped in and poked at on any sunny day that brings kids and curious grown ups to the beach, finding these secret springs so far from shore felt like a gift. Portals to the otherworld, in fact.
Or, perhaps, portals that could take me into the earth and then, somehow, spit me out on an entirely different world. I was out in the waters with Venus magic on my mind, after all.
There’s precedent for such things. Sort of. They are at least portals back to the fresh water of the land.
In a recent episode of the Blindboy Boatclub podcast, Manchán Magan mentioned mysterious sacred wells that were storied to bubble up not in the usual holy grotto or enchanted grove, but in the Atlantic Ocean itself.
It always seemed fanciful that there were sacred wells in the ocean. But here, Manchán describes the work of the geologist Robert Meehan who discovered that the wells of County Clare were linked not just to one another, but outleted to the ocean.
Just like they do in Cape Cod Bay.
I love the question that Manchán asks at the close of his social media post: if you manage to swallow one bubble and not retch from the sea water, would you gain enlightenment?
Enlightenment, Revelation, Inspiration, Imbas
On Sunday, I didn’t taste the waters.
Now, I wish I had been so wild and free as to risk the salt on my tongue. Maybe next Venus Cazimi (June 2024), when the goddess planet is again “in the heart of the sun,” I will have the courage to trust instincts that are just emerging in me now.
I like to imagine someday soon I will sip from the sea and taste the very magic that gave the bradán feasa, the legendary salmon of knowledge, the gift of imbas forosnai, the inspiration that illuminates.
For now, I would say that I am gratefully trying to follow that path of light, in spite of all the disruption and destruction that may make storytelling and the pursuit of old myths feel like a distraction.
And, one last note as I press publish, which must be include as the synchronicity is just too divine…
Sister of my heart and two-time KnotWork Storyteller Laura Murphy just shared an image of her own footsteps on an Irish shore on Instagram. She is a luminary poet, bring the gift of imbas to our world in this moment.
And no truer words could be spoken than these, which Laura quotes from 12th century manuscript from her own county of Laois, The Book of Leinster.
“Poets ever believed that the brink of water was a place of revelation.”
Agus fagaimid suid mar ata se.
And so we’ll leave it here, at the place where the land meets the sea, and this world meets the next.
I would love to hear your thoughts
This sacred summer detour will soon draw to a close and I will be back in the Hudson Valley working on a new season of the KnotWork Storytelling podcast, my 1:1 offerings, and new group programs.
Your insights and feedback help me shape my art and my work, and I would be so grateful if you’d spend five minutes on this survey about your needs and interests.
Beautiful post!