Ever heard the Irish/Scottish lore of the selkies? Despite it being a story passed down by my own linage, I first encountered it in the book Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Esté about a year ago. It gave me chills! 

For the purposes of efficiency I wrote a brief recollection below, however I strongly recommend you read Este's rendition as it is much more eloquent.

It is told, that a lonely man fishing off the coast came across a group of women dancing and singing in the moonlight. Unclothed, each has casted a magical sealskin cape next to her. Of course, all in Ireland knew of the seal people, selkies, and this lonely fisherman was no different. The fisherman is so entranced by one of the women, and the moonlight glinting off her sealskin coat that he cannot help but steal the coat off the beach into the boat.

At the end of the goddess’ dance, the women one by one, slip back into their coats and dive into to the sea. But one realizes hers is nowhere to be found. She weeps. Without it she cannot return to her true form. 

The fisherman approaches her, promising to return the coat if she spends her life with him (gross). Without the coat selkies are known to become very docile and malleable. She makes a deal with him: she will marry him and remain by his side for 7 years. After 7 years, he will return her sealskin. Because he is not completely heartless, he agrees to her terms.

Year after year passes. The woman finds love with the man & eventually gives birth to a son. She tells her son the stories of underwater worlds, singing him songs only she and the other seal women know. She can be found each night, standing where the waves kiss the shore-entranced by sea, as if it is calling her. 

As her son grows, so does the call of the sea grows. The woman becomes frail and ill. Eventually, the boy discovers where his father hid the seal skin, returning it to his mother. She slips into her coat with gratitude- breathing a sigh of relief.

The selkie returns to her true seal form, answering the call of the sea. Intuition tells her to leave her human child on land. When he begs his mother to take him, she simply replies “not yet, but you will always have the sea inside of you”. It is said you can see her visiting him at the northern most point of the coast, singing him the song of the sea.

It is a bitter sweet story about being of two worlds, a story of both/and. Part of the selkie woman’s heart is always divided between the two, and the little boy is also torn between the two worlds of his linage. Like the selkies, we are both of this earth and something beyond. Few things in life are black and white, and we must learn to tend the space between. Our hearts are spacious places where we hold many truths at once. It takes great skill to honor your truth and an opponents truth simultaneously. It is a pilgrimage of positive peace. And what a beautiful, messy, courageous journey it is.

I wanted to create a place to do this soul work.

Welcome to Of Earth and Sea.

xx

image by Josephine Klerks