The Old Antlered One by Jude Lally

I am a product of the land I was born on. If you were to cut me open you’d find my bones are made from bedrock, my lungs are made of heather and moss and my heart beats in tune with the heartbeat of the old ones.

For as long as I can remember I have had conversations with the land. Not a conversation of words, a conversation of sensation, the brush of a crow’s wing, the power of twilight, and the invitation to rest by a familiar tree trunk.

These things evolved over the years alongside deep grief in burying relatives in her soil as well as the unbridled joy of experiencing the the body’s familiarity with the beat and tempo of walking an undulating landscape. The squish of bog and star moss islands, a high step through bracken, stepping stones over the stream. Wading through the swimming dance of high grass, following the sheep trails through bouncy clumps of heather and the heart-beating scramble up mountainside scree – these are all sensations that my body remembers. Even though my father’s family are Irish they are also intimate with the land of Western Ireland.

I have listened intently to this landscape all my life, sat by the boulders at the edge of the Loch (Lomond) marked by the striations of long gone ice ages and drew my fingers across the rock scars like they were an ancient language.

“If myth really was the power of place speaking, then I had to bend my head daily to its murmurs’”

— Martin Shaw. Scatterlings. Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia

A Disappearing Act

When I was young my dad used to take us walking up around the local hills up above Loch Lomond, Scotland. Among the stones at the top of Carman Hill I would sit ever so quietly, scrunching up my eyes and in my imagination, I ripped up the roads, made all the cars disappear and with a final blink  I removed the houses and the streets. I always wanted to see what this place looked like a long, long time ago. Then I would hold my breath to see if I could see the old ones that I knew used to live here, the ones from the times before the roads and the cars and the houses.

Even though I never saw those ancient people, I felt them. I felt the presence of the energies of the land, sensing that these lands were sacred and up by the stones at the top of the hill was a place where this world flowed into the other worlds. 

Years later I began to see those original people on the move and it took a while to realize that they were following great herds. Probably more years before I realized these herds were reindeer. While studying the Geology of the area at University I came across an article which described the finding of a reindeer antler not too far (as the crow flies) found in glacial moraine unearthed in the building of a railway line. Proof that reindeer really were in the area. 

This is a story about ‘The Old Antlered One’ as I call her.  She is the spiritual bedrock of this place. I encountered her before I knew anything of antlered goddesses or antlered women and at that time my main source of an antlered creature was Herne the Hunter from UK kids programs such as Robin of Sherwood and the Box of Delights. 

In her essay ‘Elen – Goddess of the Ways’ Caroline Wise recalls: 

‘Thinking of Mascen’s  dream journey, and my idea that this may connect to shamanic flight, I decided to try an experiment. Not having fly agaric to hand, I induced a method of astral projection and invoked Elen. I visualised myself  walking through snow, in a bleak landscape. Soon I was ‘astral travelling’  now above the land and completely in the moment and no longer needing  to consciously invoke the images. Looking down I saw a pathway littered with bones and antler. It had the appearance of a simple rail track, laid out on the snow, and I realised that this represented the migratory  route of the deer. I was following this track that had seen millions of beasts over millennia. I knew it went back aeons, before the Ice age, a memory that was in our genes and in the land itself. The bones  and antlers represented the ancestors of the beasts who still, where  they could, walked these paths today. I was ‘told’ that these were the ‘oldest pathways in the world’. I felt a huge rush of energy, and the path suddenly rose up, looped out and back on itself, and the bones  and antlers formed into a skeleton of a giant elk, rearing up in front  of me. It twisted around and started to move forward. This was so dramatic  that I snapped back form my astral journey, much to my frustration – if I had stayed with it, I am sure it would led me to discover more.  I have never been able retrace that track!

While meeting a great elk figure was the end of that story for Caroline, meeting a great skeletal figure is where my story begins.

My first experience with the Old Antlered One was meeting a huge skeletal figure. I knew she wasn’t an elk as she was female and her tall branching antlers pointed towards a link to reindeer as they are the only cervids with antlers.

The Old Antlered One

One night, under a dark moon, with the invitation of the the the rhythmic heartbeat of the drum I sank down. Down into the earth, through many layers holding the bones of ancestors, both human and animal. There in the darkness of that place between the worlds, I emerged at the top of the mountain.

In that magical place I wasn’t simply myself, I was part me yet part ancient being. Skeletal, tall with huge branching antlers – her skeletal frame hidden behind a tall ragged cloak shimmering with galaxies and nebula’s, we were in a place time had no hold.

I watched as she held out a bony hand – my hand – and commanded the sun to rise, and as it did she traced its path across the sky, leading it over to the west. As day changed to night she summoned up the moon guiding its path, – over and over she danced this dance setting the play of the constellations. 

Land masses danced across oceans the world reforming and reshaping, then ice ages: ebbing and flowing, She ushered a thaw and a great greening covers the land, she dances to bring in life – dancing to bring in great clouds from the west, who released their rain when they meet the great mountain, flowing in small tributaries, gathering in streams until they poured into the loch. This is the dance of creation. 

I watch as the greens intensified, then transform into a burst of orange and browns before dying down and returning to their roots before the white takes over again. Green, golds and white, the seasons play out over and over. One by one she brings the insects, fish and birds, wolves, bear, auroch, and elk and the reindeer. Then people came, the people who followed the reindeer. They walked from mainland Europe following the huge herds. As they walked and camped they wove their own stories to the land, following the luminous strands this great antlered one had embedded in the earth. The paths the reindeer follow trails to sacred lands.             

Once everything was in place, this great creatrix bounded off to the west coast to the small islands that keep part of her story alive. Then she lay down, old and weary, sinking into the earth. Great trees grew from her bones, including the great tree that joins the worlds.                                                                                         

Among these people that followed the women who wore antlers, around a fire they give thanks to both the reindeer and the old antlered one. They are the wise woman of the reindeer, those who know the presence of the old one. They are the ones who tend to her bone and stone shrines in high places, shrines they tend to on dark and full moon nights where they following her steps, shapeshifting, following the herd that leads them to the Otherworld and a dance in which they dance their intention out into the star patterns, and down into the luminous strands which carry out in a great network out over the earth.         

In times of need they adorn themselves with reindeer skins and antlered headdresses and ask the Old Antlered One for her wisdom.

Antlers are the symbol I use to honor my female lineage – which stretches past Celtic peoples back and back to a most ancient ancestor who lived in Europe at the time of a great ice age in 25,000 BCE. She and her clan followed great herds of reindeer and other animals over the tundra. (mDNA analysis by Oxford Ancestors/Seven Daughters of Eve).

Reindeer Return to Scotland

A few summers ago I got to head north and visit the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd. There are roughly 130 reindeer, 80 are kept at the Glenlivet estate while the females are free roaming.  It’s highly likely that indigenous reindeer died out after the last ice age with brief introductions by the Vikings. Reindeer don’t thrive in the UK but one place offers them a hospitable arctic ecosystem – the Cairngorm mountain range.

The Cairngorm herd were reintroduced in 1952 and believe me, I was as excited as a little kid to meet them! Visitors get to visit the males who are kept in an (huge) enclosure while the females and their calves are free roaming. 

That night after visiting the reindeer I dreamt that the Old Antlered One appeared on the crest of the hill, tall and towering – The protector of the herd. As she moved there was a shimmering to her great cloak, a rich grey and brown mix of reindeer. Then I noticed movement and as I peered closer reindeer where flowing like a river. They flowed out from her cloak in one fluid movement pouring down the hillside. Each and every reindeer that ever lived on this land sheltered in the presence of the Old Antlered One. The herds still live and walk this land in spirit.

The Old Antlered One is a story of place, a very ancient story who hangs on in the human imagination by very thin threads. I find great comfort in tapping into the rich inspiration of my foremothers – whose wisdom is knitted into our bones and whose songs sing in our blood.

Meet Mago contributor Jude Lally