IN BRIEF

RIVERS IN THE SKIN: a shamanic, initiatory, trance experience as harrowing as it is beautiful. Guided by indigenous Catuvellaun/Brigant and Celtic/Albanach elder, and attending traditional musicians.

Image: Rivers in the Skin, Evolve Festival, Nelson, Aotearoa,
just before covid lockdowns, 2018
PRESS

Intended date of next experience (to be confirmed)

SAMHAIN (the Saturday prior) APRIL 27th, 2024

RIVERS IN THE SKIN

Image: Yannick Germain

“Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered,” the great Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd wrote as she reflected on the relationship between nature and human nature. But what we call place — that unalloyed presence with a here and now, with the unfolding of time in a locus of space — penetrates more than the mind: it permeates body and spirit and the entire constellation of being. There is a reason why the original Latin use of the word genius was in the phrase genius loci — the spirit of a place. We become who we are in the crucible of where we are.
—Barry Lopez

ON BEING LOST—HIREATH

We live in an era of wanting to know ourselves. Many have sought the spirituality of other cultures, ashamed that we, as a pale people, do not have a heritage of rich mysticism within which to recognise ourselves, unable, as a pale people, to share our stories in mutual respect of the ways of others. Ashamed for what our forebears have inflicted on every indigenous nation they have invaded. Unable to claim family except from within vague societal and parental groups with ‘taker’ histories.

Based on de Angeles Whitehorse’ book Priteni | The Decimation of the Celtic Britons RIVERS IN THE SKIN is a shamanic, initiatory and trance experience will shatter your ideas of spiritual and kinship isolation. We indigenous priteni Celts are invariably written off as being a past tense people, mistakenly assuming that we have died out.

The invasions and slaughter, and subsequent colonisation of indigenous people and their lands, worldwide, have seen the attempt to eradicate the lore, law, customs, language, culture and spirituality of us all. In many instances through attempted forced assimilation, removal from family or a breed-them-white erasure program.

To people of other cultures this is an offering of cultural healing; mutual recognition. Finally. All cultures are invited, and welcome, to participate. The sharing of deep story and acknowledgment of injustice adjusts a seeming inability to communicate a true and honest accounting of the intergenerational behaviour that has separated us with what is called Shifting Baseline Syndrome, a sad and intolerable forgetting. Of calling us home.

20 SACRED TREES

1. Ogham fire smoking ceremony.
2. Once indoors, find a space to lie down, get comfortable with pillows, blankets & water.
3. Audio/visual understanding of deep, ancestral time, before experience proper.
4. Tatuage ink dot (optional), meet, questions, dinner, discussion, fireside conversations.

ERASURE OF CULTURE

A gruelling but astonishingly rewarding and life-changing experience, you are firstly guided through the smoke of the twenty ogham associated with the druid alphabet before finding your lying-in space, claiming it and setting it up with water, cushions and whatever brings to life your intention to go the distance of this journey.

Your initial experience is that of understanding the meaning behind the many megaliths that cover the lands of Albion and beyond, to realize the vast distances your ancestors are able to travel for trade and how knowledge of this has been hidden or ignored as inconsequential under the regimes of genocide or erasure in the years following our humiliation.

You will be assisted to relax. To enter a theta state of semi-consciousness. To become fluid. Then Whitehorse will take you directly to the experiences deep within your genetic pattern. What you do not consciously know that has caused you inexplicable feelings of grief and loss throughout your life. Not only so that you know it, but so that you can also advise your young. The experience of being Celt, based on a true story.

HOST

Some of us wander. We carry dust on our boots, from place to place, with stories of ships drowning and the tragedies of confused forest ghosts. We tell history from the raggedy strands of exploration and if we are awake, we do so with awareness of what is received alongside—lovers in a way—with land and sea and sky. Nothing is without purpose. Remember.

Lore de Angeles Whitehorse is published under the name Ly de Angeles and has been in print for over thirty years. She is a linguistic hair-splitter, poet, animal rights activist (that includes humans), international advocate for the rights of the child, and rebel. She has studied the history, lore, mythology, customs and cultural affiliations of the priteni (painted/tattooed) Celts for over 40 years only to be informed, through extensive genealogy, that the strongest taproot in her own genetic heritage links her directly to an ancient grandfather, Caradoc ap Cunobelinus, chieftain of the Catuvellaun. She also has a two thousand year long Brigant ancestry, Scandinavian, Breizh and Alban Gypsy (she has no problem with the word). With this information she has encapsulated the knowledge of years into a concise, albeit brutally honest personal experience, never taught in schools but hidden in plain sight, written of by both Caesar and Tacitus.

Whitehorse has worked in all aspects of film and live/street theatre, as a silversmith, trained with hounds and horses from a very young age. Is a healer and a animal-cousin whisperer. Adept at draíocht and is also drú-wit trained (erroneously called, in a modern-day parlance, witchcraft. Her work in this field is rarely seen by others. She is heavily inked with ancestral stories and her own liberaion from ownership, within the reign of an alien monarchy and commonwealth. Now into her seventieth cycle around the sun, she continues to be inked by master tattoist Luke Sabbath (Melbourne). She also tattoos herself, and a select few others, with sigils and stories of power, through her boutique domain called Skin Spells. She is an environmental 3D artist, building stone people into landscape protectors. She knows the so-called dead don’t go anywhere and forests communicate in many languages. She is constantly listening.

Whitehorse is a high-functioning neurodivergent. She was born to be a problem.

Full CV

PREVIOUS PRESENTATIONS

Previously Rivers in the Skin (also, earlier, titled Blue People) has been presented and experienced at

Byron Spirit Festival, 2016
Blue Flame Dreaming First Nation Indigenous Festival, 2017
Evolve Festival, Nelson Aeotearoa, 2018
Motueka Communal Living Collective, Motueka Aeotearoa, 2018
Conjure Tour, Piyura Kitina, Page and Cup, Tasmanian Pagan Alliance, Tasmania, 2019

Based on the best-selling book Priteni | The Decimation of the Indigenous Celtic Britons

purchase

THE RIVERS IN THE SKIN EXPERIENCE 2024

VENUE:
DATE: TBA
TIME: 1130 hrs to approximately 1500 hrs
COST: Early bird $180, Full $200, Concession $150

LIMITED TO 20 PEOPLE

Small tatouage (dot) offered to those who recognise their connection to this culture or, as in the case of First Nations, those who claim. Whitehorse utilises handpoke under strict health vigilance for these purposes. See TATOUAGE for further information.

OTHER

Wheelchair access available
Alcohol-free event
Your own food is necessary (there are cooking facilities)
Religious or personal spiritual affiliations and dogmas to remain absent
No scents to be worn or exhibited
No rubbish or desecration of any kind
No hate-speech