Reclaiming Celtic Lineage: Ancestral Healing & The Root System of the Soul | S2 Ep.5

The Wound is the Doorway: Aries New Moon conjunct Chiron Embodied Astrology | Reclaim the Wound of Ancestral Trauma and Awaken The Root System of Your Soul | My Celtic Ancestry Story, Epigentics & Celtic Spirituality

The story your body tells about belonging is rarely only yours. I’m sharing a vulnerable piece of my own ancestral reclamation, from Irish immigration roots and family rituals to the felt experience of standing on ancestral land, where grief and wonder can exist in the same breath to feeling the faeries in the otherworld. If you’ve ever felt a quiet severance from where you come from, or a strange pull toward a landscape you can’t explain, this is a place to bring that longing without needing to make it “make sense” first. 

I also discuss how theological differences of ancestors doesn't have to diminish the connection and how I found common roots in my priestess identity and ancestral roots through reclaiming Mary Magdalene as priestess and divine feminine archetype. 

We also ground this work in real psychology and biology. I break down epigenetics and intergenerational trauma in plain language, exploring how stress and survival patterns can shape gene expression across generations, and why the Irish Great Hunger offers a powerful example of how scarcity and displacement can echo forward. The point is not to get stuck in what happened, but to understand why certain fears, coping strategies, and grief responses can feel bigger than your personal timeline, and how somatic healing helps unwind them. 

From there, I widen the lens to Celtic spirituality as a living tradition rooted in reciprocity, land-based spirituality, and the “thin places” where the other world feels close. We end with a guided grounding practice to root into the earth and connect with the whole and unbroken ancestors, the ones who knew the land, tended the sacred, and can support you without asking for your theology. If this lands for you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

Transcript

Welcome And Season Intention

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey Dunn, educator, priestess, and professional somatic therapist. In April 2025, I went through a priestess initiation of old and launched the Priestess Initiations podcast six months later. Whatever brought you here today, I invite you to drop into the spiral with me. Let's begin. Welcome back to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey, and today we're talking about ancestral trauma, intergenerational trauma, and reclaiming my own Celtic lineage. And this episode really sits at the heart of why this season exists. So this Celtic earth and ancestral reclamation arc I'm talking about in season two isn't just thematic, it's personal. I actually am in the process of reclaiming my Irish citizenship as well. I have my foreign birth certificate in hand, and that feels like a really big piece of reclaiming this lineage for myself. And so this episode is vulnerable. And I'm going to name that that it feels vulnerable to put this one out there. And it also feels really important. Because all of us, no matter where your ancestors come from, we all have wounds that we carry, intergenerational wounds, wounds that are older than even the ancestors we remember.

Aries New Moon On Chiron

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And this week is really asking us to heal. And so there's a lot of astrology happening this week. And toward the end of this week, we're entering one of those really intense fire and air moments. Um, that's essentially the 19th through the 23rd of April is going to be a lot of fire and air. But this week, uh the new moon is in Aries. So we're getting an Aries new moon, and that conjunction is happening with Chiron. So the new moon in Aries is going to be conjunct Chiron on Friday. So what that means is new beginnings are being seated directly on the sacred wound. We're not beginning something new. Despite our wounds, we're beginning something new through them. This is the astrology of ancestral reclamation. The wound is not in the way, the wound is the doorway. And interestingly, even though this episode is on intergenerational and ancestral um reclamation, I'm going to be talking a lot more in my personal life about the positive sides of my Celtic ancestry. And I think that's important because the sun is also conjunct Chiron on Thursday. So there's two Chiron conjunctions happening. And there's the moon, and then there's the sun. Both are really personal energies, right? The sun is even self. And so that's our solar purpose this Thursday illuminating the sacred wound. And that's asking where your deepest healing is also your greatest gift. Your ancestral wound. There's probably severance in there. There might be immigration. Colonization is for sure in most of our ancestral wounds, is also your lineage, your medicine, your path back to yourself. And the through line this week is that the sky is asking us to begin something new, not from a healed place, but from an honest one. What are you willing to begin precisely because you are healing?

My Celtic Lineage And Ireland

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Okay, so normally I start an episode a little differently, but I'm going to start with my personal story this episode. And yeah, there's a deep Celtic claim to me in a few different ways. Um the first is through blood. And so through blood, I, according to ancestry DNA, right, am like 40% Irish, but if you include other Celtic nations, like over 70 to 75% Celtic. And the rest is basically northern Italy. So northern and southern Italy. So Mary Magdalene land and France. Um, and so so really my lineage is in those areas. It's very European. And my parents, my you could call them my adoptive parents, but to me, I just call them my parents, also have Celtic lineage, um, especially through my father. So my father's ancestry DNA actually comes back 100% Irish, which is pretty funny. There's, I know there's Irish people that don't even have that comeback that strong. But both of my father's parents are off the boat Irish Catholic. And when they arrived here, um, they were newly married young adults immigrating to start a new life. And so my grandfather, um, he was from County Clare in Ireland, and he used to share all these memories of summers herding sheep on his uncle's farm. And he, there was like some sort of community program where the community banded together to send um one kid off to college. And he was the one that was selected, and he went and got his degree in engineering, and that's how they started a new life. And my grandmother, she was raised in Dublin, primarily by extended family, who was become her a lot of her primary family, while her parents traveled as musicians. And when my grandparents married, they were really young, and I need to confirm with my dad, but I'm pretty sure they'd only known each other like two, three months when my grandfather was offered a job in America. And so they married um quickly, decisively, the way young people do or did back then. Now we're much more hesitant about it. And then she waited. She waited in Ireland while my grandfather came to settle, came to New York, and to find a home, to make a place for her. And then she came. And my grandmother, um, she was an artist and a piano teacher, and that's really in our lineage. I did another episode on um creative practice. And my dad, now in his retirement, is a musician. He wasn't always, that wasn't his primary career, but he has reclaimed that. And he composed the intro music for this very podcast. So that music you hear at the beginning of every episode is my Irish lineage. It is my lineage carried forward. And my dad, um, his Spotify is linked at the bottom of every episode description, if you're ever interested. But but there's this music thread, right? That my grandmother's parents were traveling as musicians through Ireland. And then she was teaching piano. And now my dad's composing music for himself and for my podcast. The song survived. The lineage found its way into the work. And my dad, he is the eldest, um, the eldest of five, and he remembers going to Ireland frequently as a child. Um, I had a great aunt who worked at the airport and came to greet them personally at the terminal, which was always a fond memory every time we go through the airport. He he tells us that story. That image of welcome, that lineage showing up to receive you. And he got his citizenship after I was born. He's still close with his cousins. We have a lot of um extended family in Dublin. But, and I've been to Ireland a few different times, but most of my life I was raised here in the United States. And my grandparents never quite let that lineage go. Not really. And there were a lot of ways that I could explain. But the my my favorite piece of lineage that they brought with them is my my grandfather, he just loved dogs. He loved dogs so much, and particularly his Irish wolfhounds. And so they had Irish wolfhounds my whole life. If you know anything about dogs, Irish wolfhounds do not live that long. They're huge dogs, they're hurting animals. Um, well, they're not really, they're they're kind of hurting. They they are hurting adjacent. They're meant to protect the sheep from the wolves because they're so big and scary. And they are so big that they usually get hip and heart problems. So they only live on average like seven or eight years. But my whole life, my grandfather had Irish wolfhounds, and he he named them all Maeve, unless he had two at the same time, in which case they were Maeve and Mora. But if he had one Irish wolfhound, she was Maeve. And he used to say, all boats and dogs are she's and I don't know why. That was just his thing. But um, I remember my earliest clear memory of Ireland itself was around eight-ish, and we were there for my great aunt's 50th anniversary as a nun in the Catholic Church, and there was a beautiful rainbow over the fields. I remember that image. I remember the image of Rihanna seeing that somewhere, and I remember a cousin um who had given me a necklace. It was kind of a, you know, early 2000s kind of Pucelli necklace. And the rainbow and the land were already in conversation with me then, even at that age, right? It's and then my most recent visit was a few summers ago, and I went with my partner Matt and the whole family for my grandparents' burial in Chum on the family plot. And that was after my grandfather passed, but we actually buried both of them. My grandmother's ashes were saved to be buried with him. So they went in the earth together that day. And the whole family came. Uh, cousins from the US, people from Ireland. My great aunt made the drive all the way up, I'm pretty sure from Cork, which is far. And rain, as is right for burial in the west of Ireland, was pouring down. And so the whole lineage was gathered to return them to the land they came from together. And that's a that's a special moment. And that's a piece of ancestral reclamation when we return to the land together. And for most of that trip, we were in the Galway area um with family near Kilkogan, and it was a really lovely trip. But after my family left, Matt and I stayed a few nights on our own near Kinvara, and we had a rare sunny day. It was our last day there, and it was sunny, and Ireland does not get many sunny days, but it was it was sunny and it was still wet, like there was still dew in the grass in the morning, um, and it was shimmering in the sunlight and all the flowers, and the the you could just feel it. You could just feel where these legends come from, where these legends of fairies come from. You could feel them, and you could feel that fairy magic in in the air in that place. And there were these little secret woods that we walked down, and um, and there was a path we discovered to this old kind of abandoned castle ruins, classic, classic Ireland. And so it was really just this piece where just the two of us um were on ancestral land, and it was after the grief had been witnessed and after the family had gone home that the land showed us this other piece when it was quiet. It showed us this piece that's a rare glimpse into some of some of the magic in Ireland. And as I'm remembering this, right, like this is what ancestral reclamation feels like in the body. It feels grounded, it feels warm, it feels heart-centered, not abstract, not just historical facts. It's these key moments. A necklace from a cousin, a rainbow over a field, two grandparents returning to the earth together after a lifetime across the ocean, the fairies alive in the dewy grass

Making Peace With Catholic Roots

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when it finally went quiet. And my dad is still Catholic, and I hold the sacred differently now. And I used to worry that that might matter, that the difference in what we believe and how we practice might create distance between me and my ancestors. But I I worry less about that now. And technically, I am confirmed in the Catholic Church. This is worth naming, I suppose. I took the saint's name Margaret for the family lineage. It's a common name in my family, and um, my grandmother's official name, too, though everyone went by their own version of it. Everyone had a nickname the way families do. So I carry, I carry that name. And so I'm held in that lineage, even as I hold it differently. And it was only years later, years after kind of being in my adult life on my own, really finding my own spiritual path, reclaiming the witch, that I circled back to make peace with this, with this difference. And that was really through Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene helped me make peace with this because through Mary Magdalene, I was able to reclaim this ancestral thread, to look at this wound and go through it instead of around it. And that's what the astrology is asking us to do this week. And the reason for that is because underneath Catholic roots are older roots. The Marian lineage, Mary Magdalene as Isis's priestess, as the sacred feminine that was never fully extinguished, even inside the church that tried to contain it. And it's just now, just this time, that I'm starting to realize that my confirmation and my priestess path are not opposites. Deep, deep, deep down, they're actually the same root system. And the whole and unbroken ancestors don't require a particular container. Love is love. The root system doesn't ask for your theology before it feeds you. And so I want to offer you an invitation, and it might be edgy, and you don't need Celtic ancestry to receive this episode. Um, but every lineage has been severed somewhere. Every root system's been cut. And I want to invite you in this episode to get curious about if there's a way back that's through. If there's a way back that's through instead of around your ancestry.

Epigenetics And Inherited Trauma

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And so a big part of this episode that we have to talk about is the science, right? Um, epigenetics, intergenerational trauma, big terms in psychology right now. And I'm just gonna try to keep this a brief, mostly accessible teaching. I'll be using big words, but um I'll try to I'll try to translate for you. But epigenetics is the science of how we experience changes in gene expression without changing the DNA itself. And so this is the idea that trauma is not just psychological, it's biological. It lives in the body and it's passed down. It's passed down not just through learning, not just through the physical DNA, but both. And so when we have a physical gene, it gets passed down, there are a lot of genes that the easiest way to talk about it is essentially they need to be turned on. Like they need to be activated. And most genes are activated through environmental factors. And so when we talk about like nature versus nurture as a philosophical argument or a psychological argument, it's both. And the science of epigenetics and intergenerational trauma is really showing us that. Showing that their descendants carry measurable physiological markers of their ancestors' experiences. So I want to talk about the Irish famines specifically, which is worth naming. Um Gürtamour, meaning the great hunger. It was from 1845 to 1852. And over a million people passed from that, and another million people immigrated in the first years alone out of the country. And the body remembers that. The body remembers that feeling of scarcity, of severance from the land, from those you loved, of leaving. And many Irish descended people carry this wound without recognizing it, without knowing why. The hunger, the fear of scarcity, that might just not show up in food scarcity, that might show up in financial scarcity. The grief of departure and grief processing looks really different. Grief sometimes shows up as avoidant tendencies, as inability to be present with emotion, as escapism, right? Um, and escapism can show up in substances, substance use. Or this feeling of not quite belonging, right? Of where do I belong? And I think no matter what your descent is, most people in today's day and age can relate to that sentiment. Where do I belong? Because at this, at this point in time, so many of us have moved away from wherever our ancestral homeland was. And that creates this sense of where do I belong? And so we search for belonging in other people, in um in social acceptance, right? And we forget that we belong to the land itself, to the earth, which is a much more permanent sense of belonging, if you can find a way to reclaim it. And epigenetics also shows that healing is inherited. So we can we can when we do the work of reclamation, I'm gonna rephrase this. When we when we reclaim, when we do the work of healing in ourselves, what we change actually we pass forward. Like epigenetics has started to show this. There's some studies on it, they've done it um on a few different things, but essentially. When you heal, when you heal this wound in yourself, say it is the hunger wound. So you do a lot of work on teaching your body that food is safe, you have access to food, and you you don't need to continue operating from a mode of starvation and scarcity. We are able to pass that on genetically. So the way it's it's complicated, but essentially, like my understanding of it, so this is my understanding of it, is that the DNA we pass on in is selected based on what we've changed. And that's why one of the greatest markers of health of children is actually health of parents at the time of conception. It's not health throughout your whole lifespan, it's health in that moment. And so all the work you do up until that moment passes, changes the DNA that you pass on. And then the work you do as a parent changes the gene expression. So you have like two chances, really. You have two double the chance to change what you're passing on. And the reclamation happens in the body, in the DNA, because the ancestors live in the body, in the DNA. And this is why somatic work and ancestral healing are really inseparable. And this is also why Celtic spirituality, um, regardless of whether or not that's your ancestry, is such a potent container for this healing, because Celtic spirituality never separated the land from the body, from the sacred. So in Celtic spirituality and Celtic mysticism, land and body and sacred are all one.

Severed Lineage And Living Tradition

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And so I want to broaden this context a little bit to these wounds that most of us in the Western world are carrying. And most of us are carrying severed lineage, be that through colonization, forced immigration, religious conversion, um, cultural erasure being stripped. And what gets lost when lineage is severed is the language that carried the cosmology, the names of the old ones, the stories that taught children who they really were. The role of storyteller, the role of elder is so important in preserving these lineages for that reason. And for Celtic people specifically, the suppression of the Irish language, which has been had a massive reclamation, um, but the criminalization of Celtic spiritual practice, the famine as policy, um due to colonization, and the mass emigration, it forced, are all part of what we carry. And what remains even after severance for everyone is the body, the longing, the inexplicable pull toward certain landscapes, certain plants, certain myths, the feeling of recognition when you stand on ancestral land. That pull is not nostalgia, it's the root system reaching for water. Celtic spirituality is a living tradition, not a historical artifact, not costume or aesthetic that you can just dress up as once a year for Sawin, but it's a living relationship with land, with ancestor and the other world. And um, we talked about Anwin, but there's also on Sol Ila, Ila, Ila, On Sol Ila, meaning other life or the other world, and if people who are um trained in um Gaelic are listening to this, they will be laughing at me um in my pronunciations, but I'm doing my best. But but that relationship between land, ancestor, and the other world that survived suppression because it was never only written down, it was written down, but it also lived in the body, in seasonal rituals, in the stories told at the fire. And a lot of Catholic holidays, a lot of them, are based on the pagan wheel of the year. And so, and there's a reason for that because you couldn't erase those seasonal changes from the earth. You couldn't erase the rituals around them. So they gave them new purpose. And yeah, and my my grandmother's parents, I think about them traveling as musicians, right? That's an aspect of storytelling. And music, whether it has words or not, but a music is a form of spiritual transmission that survives colonization. The songs carry what the colonizers can't confiscate, the stories carry it. And so the concept of whole and unbroken ancestors, I mentioned that before, but not all ancestors carried the wound in the same way. And so some lived before the severance. You can connect to those ancestors, and some held the thread even through the severance, right? Some held onto their lineage through all the things that tried to sever it. And so we can call specifically to the ancestors who were whole, who knew the land, who spoke the language, who tended the sacred. Um, and it doesn't matter their theology. I think of my grandfather herding sheep in County Clare, knowing the name of every hill and creek, right? That's ancient. The tradition across many indigenous and earth-based lineages is that the well, like the healthy, and by well, I mean I mean like kind of psychologically healthy, but it's we use the word well and whole for a reason. But the well ancestors actively want to support the living in their healing. There's this belief. They're not passive, they're reaching toward us as we reach toward them. And so when I think of my grandfather herding sheep or my grandmother playing piano, um, music moving through generations, my great aunt who traveled up from Cork to stand at the graveside. Um, my other great aunt, who used to come personally to meet my dad and his siblings and my grandparents at the airport every time they visited, that image of welcome, of being received, of the lineage showing up. That is completion. That's the root system closing a circle. My grandparents going into the earth together and chum after a lifetime in America, return to the family plot, return to the land. That's a circle, right? And ancestry is often like this. It's we're weaving, we're weaving ancestry in in circles, weaving ancestral threads. The lineage is not behind us, it's moving through us, and my lineage is not behind me. Um, right now, this very podcast, the intro of this podcast, the fact that I'm talking about ancient, ancient priestess work that is actually going all the way back through Catholicism, not just despite it. I used to think it was like the witch wound despite Catholicism, but it's through it. And

Thin Places And Ancestral Threads

SPEAKER_01 31:09

that piece, that piece of my lineage is moving through me right now, into this work, into these words, into the ears of everyone listening. And so as I name all my ancestors, as I've been naming my ancestors, naming my lineage, the artists, the land workers, the ones who crossed water, who's the ones who stayed. My invitation to you is to begin to name your ancestors, not just by name, because you probably don't know that many generations of name, not just by what they suffered, but by what they carried, what they tended, what they loved. That's this piece of reclamation of recognizing where we're the same. And the Celtic worldview, the other world, on soul, is not separate from this world but woven through it. The thin places, na kuiel, where the veil between worlds is most permeable. Ireland's full of them. Um I really felt one in this forest that we passed. We were just walking down the road past it near Kinvara. And um yeah, there was there was definitely a naquil there. Um, the West Coast, especially, the ancient sites, the hills, the bogs that have held the dead for thousands of years. And there's another huge piece of ancestral reclamation that existed through my whole childhood. Um, it was a it was a Christmas ritual in my family to to burn peat. Um, and peat is not wood. It is, I don't even know what it is. It's like a, it's not a moss. I don't, I know what it is, I just don't know what to call it exactly. But it's it's like it's harvested from the bogs. It's essentially like boggy residue that you take out and then you dry it in the sun, and then you can burn it. And it's cheaper than firewood. They used to do this because Ireland was always short on trees, um, because a lot of them got cut down and harvested early. And so to survive winter, people would go into the bogs, they'd harvest all the gok from and the peat is essentially what it's called from the bogs, and then they'd dry it in the sun. And I think my dad used to order it from Ireland, I'm not sure. But um we always had peat burning throughout the holidays, and that was a piece, that was a homage to the really old ancestral lineage. There's the fairy folk, right? The people of the mounds, the um SEC, the older ones who were here before, not Disney fairies, but like ancient presences, the remnants of the true Tuatha de Danan, the divine people of the goddess Danu, who went underground when the Celts arrived. And yeah, that experience of Ankinvara, the land was alive. That's not metaphor, that is thin place contact. So when we talk about Celtic spirituality, we're talking about the relationship to land as living, conscious, reciprocal. You tend the land, the land tends you. You honor the ancestors, the ancestors support you. This piece of reciprocity, this cosmology that was never fully suppressed because it was never only doctrine, it was in relationship, and it's still in relationship when you go there. When when we visit family in Ireland, there's a tea kettle on. There's you came here to see us, let us nourish you. That's reciprocal relationship. There's relationship to to the land, and there's a warmness. There's a warmness to the people, to the culture that was never lost, that was never able to be erased. This is the root system of the soul, not just genealogy, not just culture, but a living web of relationship that extends beneath the surface in all directions. So the invitation of this season is to tend that root system. And for me, I'm doing it through the specific lineage, but you can learn it through any lineage that you have. And there are a lot of earth-based lineages. Celtic lineage is not at all the only earth-based lineage. In fact, if you go far back enough, most lineages are earth-based. But the invitation is to remember that you come from somewhere specific and that somewhere is still alive and is still reaching toward you.

Rooting Practice With The Ancestors

SPEAKER_01 36:45

And so for our closing practice today, I want to invite you to bring awareness to the soles of your feet or the base of your spine if you're lying down. And I'm going to give you a moment to find that stillness seated with your feet on the floor, standing outside on the earth, or lying down. And just feel into the weight of your body. Let gravity do its work and bring awareness to the soles of your feet. Imagine roots beginning to grow downward, not forcing, not fast, just allowing slow, patient, reaching roots. And these roots move through the earth if you're inside, through the floor, through the foundation, into the earth beneath you. Through topsoil, through rock, through all the way down to the deep dark water below the earth. Let them reach and let the earth hold you from below. Let yourself feel what it is to be rooted. Not rigid, remembering the roots are flexible, they move around obstacles, they find water in unlikely places, and they are patient beyond imagining. This is your body's birthright. You come from the earth and you will return to it.

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Right now, you are both rooted and alive.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

And so from that rooted place, I invite you to begin to sense the presence of those who came before you. Not the wounded ones. Call specifically to the whole and unbroken ones. The ones who knew the land, the ones who tended the sacred, the ones who sang. You don't need to know their names, your body knows them, your roots know them. Ask your whole and unbroken ancestors to make themselves known. Through sensation, through image, through scent, through a feeling of warmth or recognition. And just take a moment to sit with whatever comes.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Don't analyze it. Just receive it. And when you're ready, when you've made contact, close with gratitude.

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Spoken or felt. Take a moment to thank the ancestors who crossed the water so you could be here.

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Thank the land that held them and holds you still. Thank them for whatever it is that you haven't gotten to say. Express whatever gratitude feels true.

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And remember that the root system doesn't ask for your theology before it feeds you. Love is love, and the lineage is alive.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

You are the living root, and the reclamation happens in you. And

Beltane Preview And Closing Notes

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so next week we'll be diving into Beltane.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Pleasure, fire, and the window of tolerance for joy. We are going into the body and we're going into the felt sense of what it is to actually stay in the good. And Beltane is one of the um cross sabbats between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. And so we'll talk about that more. But it's on May 1st, it's a fire festival. And what I've decided is that for the wheel of the year holidays, they'll get their own episodes, but each one will be talking about an aligned, really deep somatic psychology piece. And so next week, that is the window of tolerance for joy. And I'll explain more what that means then. But thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to this story. Thank you for holding your own vulnerability, for holding mine, and um just supporting this podcast. Your support every week means the most every time you share this with a friend. Um that is why I do this work to reach people with this transmission. Reach anyone who needs to hear it. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode. Trust the spiral. This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider and in a mental health emergency in the US, call 988.