Dear ones -

What’s so special about a round house? Why does it matter that we connect with its energy or imagine ourselves gathering within one?

Circles have always been sacred and there’s evidence from nomadic tents to the earliest houses - humans almost always built round.

Birds build nests. Beavers build lodges. The celestial bodies dance circle dances across the sky. And there's evidence some of the earliest forms of human craft were woven baskets. Why wouldn't humans learn from the birds, beavers, and planets and weave their shelters like baskets, probably using similar materials?

5,000 years ago and even further back than that, our ancestors were observing the world around them and developing sophisticated understandings of the relationship between themselves and the different components of their ecosystems.

These were oral cultures, not written ones. For them wisdom and knowledge most likely weren’t understood to be intellectual exercises. To steal from Rilke: “the point [was] to live everything.”

Most likely for them, to live, gather, and practice ceremony in round houses, with the fire in the center, was to live their cosmology.

Daily, they would have mirrored back to the world their understanding of it. And in doing so, they would not only have affirmed and passed on their sense of their place in things; but they would have also mirrored the world back to itself - helping it remember its own roles and cycles.

Most of us don’t live in round houses anymore. And we rarely sit in circles.

We’re increasingly disconnected from fire and hearth. Our cars keep us isolated and moving too quickly to notice much of what’s happening in the natural world. We don’t tell time by the moon’s phases or the sun’s position in the sky. Electric lights overpower all but the brightest stars.

How we design our world probably does still say a lot about our collective priorities, but it no longer seems to reflect values like: connection, relationship, deep listening, giving back, honoring endings and beginnings, leaving room for mystery; making things with our hands; skillfully tending the sacred fires of hearth and heart, etc.

No wonder we feel so deeply lost, disconnected, and burned out.

A handful of years ago now, when I realized it was time to deepen the congruence between what I believed and what I practiced regarding connecting with the land; one of the first things I did was put a daily ritual into place.

I went outside every morning with an offering and greeted the sun and then each of the directions, as well as thanking the house for holding me safely while I slept. It felt awkward at first. There were a lot of voices in my head wondering if I looked silly, wondering if I was allowed to do it, wondering if I was doing it “right”, wondering if it would help. But I kept reminding myself I didn’t need to do it perfectly, and I didn’t need to know what the outcome might be. I just had to show up with humility and devotion. And I had to do my best to stay present; to not let it become a rote, empty gesture.

Although there are periods where I’ve drifted from the practice, it remains one of my most long-standing (and grounding) rituals. And it reinforced for me the validity of going through the motions as a way to awaken somatic memory.

I applied the same principle when I started learning Irish Gaelic and when I tried singing songs in Italian, Gaelic, German, etc. - letting my mouth make the shapes my ancestors’ might have made as they expressed cultural views uniquely expressed in their language.

I applied the same principle when I began weaving,

when I tanned salmon skin to make leather,

when I made a wool felt hat.

I applied the principle when I went on my ancestral pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland in 2023 and again from late 2024 to now. I go stand in the places where they would’ve gathered (including the ruins of the cottage where my great-great grandfather grew up).

I try to put myself in their shoes (or foot prints might be more appropriate an analogy) and imagine what those places might have taught them about being alive and being human. I ask the stones and trees and wells and waters if they have anything they’d like to share with me.

In a 5,000+ year old burial cairn, I cried as I descended into the Earth. It made no logical sense but my body knew it had been there before. And had a clear sense it was returning home to The Mother, entering her womb/tomb.

Then, only a few weeks ago, knowing that the Round House seemed to be wanting to come through my offers, I stood next to the ruins of one and asked if she was willing to share a transmission with me, to attune me so she might come through me when we gathered.

What followed was a beautiful energy and sensation. Beyond words. But a sense of being held. Of the ebb and flow of life. Of humanity in all its mess and beauty. It was mundane and deeply sacred.

Written tradition would have us believe that only that which we can put into words has value. The understanding of knowledge which has come about since the Enlightenment would have us believe only facts which were recorded and can be traced or otherwise proven are valid.

But looooong before written culture, our ancestors conveyed deep understandings of the world through stories and simple shapes carved into stone. Through what they built and how. Everything took longer, took more care. Nothing was done just to be done - that’s the sign of a throw-away society. Just because we don’t always remember the codes, just because what’s left behind looks simple to us doesn’t mean they were simple.

So we let the stones talk to our bodies and see what we find.

Based on all this, do you imagine there's some pattern of behavior or way of viewing the world connecting with the round house might reinforce/ support for you? I'm curious to hear.

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with Love,

Kate

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P.S. This transmission of the round house will come through in the Seasonal Round House gatherings, as well as Sanctuary when it returns. Perhaps you’d like to join us?