The land, the story, the soul: How to reclaim what was lost - Stephanie MacKay

Episode 513, released 31st July 2025.

In this week’s show Lian is joined by Stephanie MacKay. Stephanie is a mythologist, wilderness guide, and cultural craftswoman devoted to the long, slow work of remembering how to belong—to land, to lineage, to story, and to each other. As founder and director of Fianna Wilderness School, she has spent the past 15+ years guiding rites of passage, seasonal myth circles, and nature-based mentorship rooted in the wilds.

Listen or watch on:

Transcript is here: episode513transcript

Stephanie’s work braids together her Celtic ancestry, years of deep study with Martín Prechtel and the Animas Valley Institute, and a fierce love of story as medicine. She is dedicated to uncovering the vestiges of intact cultural origins within the body of ancient European stories. Drawing from the wellspring of these old mythologies, she seeks to uncover the hidden pathways that lead us to our cultural origins—reviving traditions long forgotten and reawakening the deep cultural wisdom carried in our bones

Whether she’s guiding wilderness quests, tending seasonal myth circles, or walking the long road of cultural regeneration, Stephanie’s devotion is to the deep remembering of who we are and how we belong—through mythic threads that call us back into sacred relationship with the world.

In this episode, Lian and Stephanie explore the deep, woven threads that bind our personal myths to the land beneath our feet. Together, they journey through the ways in which stories live within us… ancient seeds waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Stephanie reflects on how her own path led her from disconnection back into a living relationship with land and story, and how myth can offer us both memory and medicine.

They explore the longing many of us feel to recover our cultural roots, and how stories act as carriers of ancestral wisdom across time and place. From childhood connections to the land, to the rediscovery of myth as a portal into belonging, they speak of how both land and story hold the potential to restore us to ourselves. Along the way, Lian and Stephanie reflect on myths such as Cinderella and Iron John… tales often dismissed yet still holding profound keys for our times.

At the heart of this conversation is a reverence for the slow, relational work of remembering: tending to the land beneath us, listening for the stories that call us home, and understanding that these are not separate acts… but parts of the same ancient dance between earth and soul.

We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation…  please leave a comment below.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• How reconnecting with the origins of our surroundings… even something as simple as a table or a weaving… can begin to restore our relationship with land and story.

• Why stories carry ancestral memory and wisdom, offering us a way back to belonging even when our cultural roots feel severed.

• How working with myth both psychologically and spiritually invites us into deeper relationship… with ourselves, with the land, and with the unseen.

Resources and stuff spoken about:

• Visit Stephanie’s website

• Fianna Wilderness School website

• Join UNIO, the Academy of the Soul: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.

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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan