How to transform your life with daily spiritual practice - Caitlín Matthews
Episode 529, released 4th December 2025.
This week’s show is with Caitlín Matthews. Caitlín is an internationally renowned author, a teacher of shamanic training programme, a facilitator of Systemic Ritual® and the co-founder of the Foundation for Inspirational and Oracular Studies (FÍOS).
Listen or watch on:
Or if you prefer to read: Scroll right down for the transcript
Caitlín is the author of over 80 books, including Diary of a Soul Doctor, Singing the Soul Back Home, the Art of Celtic Seership, Celtic Devotional and The Celtic Book of the Dead. Her books have won a number of awards. She is known internationally for her work on the spiritual, mythic and ancestral traditions of Britain and Ireland. She teaches and works with communities and spiritual institutions worldwide from Iceland to Portugal and from USA to Australia.
Caitlín is a co-founder of the Foundation for Inspirational and Oracular Studies (FÍOS), which is dedicated to the sacred arts that shape the landscape of the soul, via vision, dream and memory. FÍOS hosts masterclasses with exemplars of living, oracular sacred traditions that are rarely recorded in writing or given an honourable place in modern society. Caitlín has had a shamanic healing practice in Oxford for the last 30 years, working in the community to deepen connections to the ancestral traditions which are our heritage.
In this conversation, Lian and Caitlín explore what a real, living spiritual practice looks like in the midst of modern life, touching on the way people become porous when they have no spiritual resource, and the jittery fear that grows when we only trust material safety.
They share what actually helps in the every day: small repeatable practices, honest prayer that uses different prepositions, and rooting myth and archetype back in the land beneath your feet so you stay human rather than trying to become a god.
Listen if you have ever longed for a daily practice that feels real, wondered where to begin, or worried that you are somehow “not authorised” to walk a spiritual path.
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 simple, daily gestures of attention to body, land, weather and soul can turn spiritual practice from a guilty obligation into a steady resource that stops you feeling like that unglazed china cup
Why Caitlin’s way of praying for, with, from and to reshapes responsibility, dissolves the fear of “doing it wrong”, and widens who and what you understand yourself to be in relationship with
What happens when you root archetypes, myths and personal practice in actual soil, seasons and place rather than abstract psychology: the stories come alive, your own life steadies, and you remain a person in service to the myth rather than being swallowed by it
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
For Caitlín’s books & courses see: www.hallowquest.org.uk
For more of Caitlín’s writing on a range of topics, including a year-long course, Blessings of the Celtic Year, see her Hallowquest Sanctuary at https://substack.com/@caitlinmatthewstigerna
Join UNIO, The Community for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
Episode on the 3 cauldrons with Rhonda McCrimmon
How to cultivate a sacred relationship with life - Sara interviews Lian
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan
Episode Transcript:
Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.
Lian (00:00)
What if the most powerful spiritual practices are the ordinary day-to-day ones that we've forgotten how to honour? Hello, my beautiful souls and a huge warm welcome back. In this episode, I'm joined once again by many time past guest Caitlin Matthews, an internationally renowned author and a teacher of shamanic training programmes Together we explore what a real living spiritual practice looks like in the midst of modern life. We look at how so many people become porous when they have no spiritual resource to lean into, and how fear grows when all of our trust sits in material safety alone. We also dive into what actually helps in the everyday, from small repeatable gestures of connection, to honest prayer, to rooting myth and archetype back into the land beneath our feet, so we remain human rather than trying to become gods.
This conversation is an invitation to anyone who has longed for a daily practice that feels real, wondered where to begin, or worried that they're somehow not authorised to walk a spiritual path. And before we jump into all of that good stuff, if you've just arrived here, welcome. And if you've come back, welcome home. If you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing. So honour the call go ahead and subscribe.
And if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and would benefit from guidance, kinship and support, come join us in Unio, the community for wild sovereign souls. Unio is the living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to BeMythical.com/unio or you can click the link in the description.
And now back to this week's episode. Let's dive in.
Lian (02:14)
Yes, here we are again. this, as we were saying, just before we started recording, this idea of having a daily spiritual practice feels so timely, so important. One of the things that perhaps is both a kind of symptom and a cause of where we find ourselves in this modern lifestyle.
And so, yes, I'm really happy we're having this conversation, but let's begin with, and we both agree, kind of defining things, even sometimes even the most obvious things are the things that most could benefit from defining. What do you mean by this idea of spiritual practice and particularly even daily spiritual practice? What's that mean to you?
Caitlin Matthews (02:53)
Yeah.
Indeed.
Sure,well, I mean, we expect to get up every day and we expect to have food. We expect to comb our hair or bathe or shower or whatever it is, all those things. But what does the soul do? Yes, and I think that the soul also needs care. And a spiritual practice is an essential care of the soul so that the body, which is the vehicle of the soul, and the soul can get on well together and work in concert because I think we're seeing throughout the world more and more that the body's doing one thing and the soul's just kind of going, what do I do now? What do I do now? Yeah. So if we kind of bring things together at the beginning of ⁓ the day and check in during the day so that we're reconnecting with the larger world or what
Lian (03:44)
Hmm. ⁓
Caitlin Matthews (04:00)
people used to call the macrocosm. So the microcosm we know about it, we live in the everyday world, that's where we are. But that larger world we also belong to, so we are beings among many other beings who inhabit this world and this larger reality that in Shamanism we call the other world. So how do we, you know, how do we align ourselves so that that
Lian (04:22)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (04:28)
you know, that sort of infinitesimal, which for us can become a very big gap if we leave it out, how we sort of narrow that gap. So that again, that, you know, the fabric of the universe is not ⁓ just what we see on the outside. It's also the internal fabric as well that is together and that where the joining of those two sides of reality ⁓ make one reality. They're not.
Lian (04:49)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (04:58)
separate realities. We think of them as such, but they are interwoven and it's that how can we be interwoven every day?
Lian (05:04)
Mm.
That's such a great way of saying it. I always appreciate your way of using metaphor and analogy in the way that you do. think it really helps make these things that can seem complex or hard to understand in that kind of everyday human way. You've got a real gift for making these things clear and simple. So just appreciating that about you.
So you mentioned body and soul. Where would you say mind fits into that, human mind?
Caitlin Matthews (05:44)
I think the mind is the of the toggling together part of it, isn't it? Because, you know, we are, we can be a bundle of passions and desires and ambitions, but the mind is the, you know, is the controller, the one that receives ⁓ the wisdom ⁓ and then finds ways of coordinating that with the body. So I think those are really important. ⁓
Lian (06:08)
Mm-mm.
Caitlin Matthews (06:12)
control. mean within my own tradition we talk about the three cauldrons, which is, you know, ⁓ three cauldrons are sort of the vessels of soul and they're seen to be in the belly, in this sort of middle part of the body and sort of including the head. ⁓ the connection between those
Lian (06:36)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (06:42)
those three is very subtle. There's a very important 16th century Irish text which I've translated ⁓ which talks about these. ⁓ each one of those cauldrons has its own light and you know in the Irish tradition there's a triad which is a sort of the encapsulation of wisdom which says that ⁓ there are three candles that ⁓
Lian (06:56)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (07:10)
illuminate every darkness and they are truth, nature and knowledge. And so that lower cauldron is kind of like, you know, nature, the world in which we live. It's called the cauldron of warming. It's our life. It's, you know, it's the vessel of our actual physical life. ⁓ But this sort of middle cauldron is a different case. sort of has, ⁓ it's called in Irish, it's called the Coire Ernmae which translates as the
Lian (07:16)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (07:39)
cauldron of vocation, which is not a very easily translatable term, but it's like the cauldron of our gifts and how we respond to those gifts and how we give them to the world. And also it's a cauldron that can be overturned by emotion. So that it has sort of an ancestral quality to it then. And that upper cauldron is one of knowledge, which is the, you know, the knowledge of that greater world again.
Lian (07:54)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (08:07)
which is also part of us. The calibration of those cauldrons is a sort of an everyday thing for some people. It needn't be that complicated, it can be much more simple. Even if we just looked at the words truth, nature and knowledge, because the world is around us, we have to live by our guiding principle, which again is part of our mind and our soul.
Lian (08:17)
Mmm
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (08:35)
So how do we respond to the world? Do we respond with truth? Do we try and deceive? What is it we're doing? And then that greater knowledge, which we're trying to always be in contact with. So I think these are pretty basic things for us all to look at. But I think the problem now is ⁓ spiritual practice is seen as something that only beginners do.
Lian (08:55)
Mmm
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (09:04)
Yes, and as a friend of mine, Audrey Stewart says, there is no advance, there's only practice.
Lian (09:13)
Oh, I love that. really do. One of the things that was occurring to me as you were talking is, at least in the way that I define it, spiritual practice can both be something that we do on a daily basis, let's say, and maybe if we were watching from the outside, we might describe it as a ritual that could involve
Caitlin Matthews (09:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lian (09:42)
I don't know, lighting a candle every day, praying, making offerings, these things that kind of have this ritual ⁓ nature to them, however elaborate or simple. But there's also the ⁓ ways that we can move throughout our day as a spiritual practice, which have also two aspects to them, the way that...
Caitlin Matthews (09:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
Lian (10:07)
we work in the academy that I teach in is we kind of we talk about this as in ritual in the way that we just spoke about, but then also to daily practice that just happens in those everyday interactions in conversations and the choices that we make, but then also in contemplation when we, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean we're drawing to the world, we can contemplate as we walk, let's say, but being this kind of
Caitlin Matthews (10:21)
Yes.
Exactly.
Lian (10:35)
contemplation of ourselves, our soul, the world. And I think all three of those different ways of being in practice are things that we have lost contact with to a large extent in this modern world. But for me, are kind of like what we would could describe as spiritual practice. So there's a couple of there's a kind of follow up or two follow up questions that
Caitlin Matthews (10:43)
Hmm.
Lian (10:59)
Would you agree, would you define spiritual practice in a similar way to how I've just described that can be kind of both that sort of ritual like nature, but also other ways? And what do you see are the ⁓ consequences of us not having those orientating kinds of practices in our lives in the way, again, many of us don't in this modern world?
Caitlin Matthews (11:24)
Yeah. Wow, there's a tube of questions. So yes, ⁓ Spiritual practice can take all kinds of different forms, ⁓ which again, know, people looking at it from the outside will say, yeah, that's a ritual. ⁓ But, you know, the prayer and in my case, the singing, so I wouldn't be able to have any spiritual practice without song, ⁓ as I suppose that no one who plays a guitar could have spiritual practice without their guitar. ⁓
Lian (11:53)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (11:53)
or their dog, if they walk their dog. So, you know, there are companions to this as well. But those daily connection points are the things that keep us together and the lack of doing them is now everywhere. mean, I have a client practice, so I'm seeing shamanic, know, clients for shamanic healing all the time and I mean, and just in everyday courses and things like that and in everyday life, I'm just seeing so many people now who are porous. They're like a china cup that hasn't had a glaze. So you pour boiling water in and it all just comes out the cracks. ⁓ And, you know, with the increased ⁓ anxiety that there is in the world, ⁓ you know, there is no resilience.
Lian (12:34)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (12:52)
There is no belonging, there's no rootedness, there's a lack of groundedness. And we can see all over the place that when people just go back into just this side of reality, ⁓ the resources that they might, I mean, I was just talking to someone yesterday and she was, ⁓ she's someone who's European, who's gone back to... USA and of course she's on the west coast so where all the rioting and the crackdown is there and she was saying to me but you know I can't even swim in the sea because the wildfires have been you know all the you know the debris and the dirt that that's caused has gone into the sea and so people are warned not to even go into the sea ⁓ you know so there
Lian (13:44)
Gosh.
Caitlin Matthews (13:50)
the strange exigencies of everyday life in different parts of the world. I think these are the things that drive us more and more into fear and into a lack of resourcefulness. To not have a spiritual resource with you ⁓ is like going out into the rain without a raincoat on one level.
Lian (14:04)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, gosh, the way you just said that, you know, not to have a spiritual resource with you. We're so focused. Again, with there is a kind of vicious circle here in that the less we have that spiritual resource, the more we focus on material resources, you know, what's going to keep me safe. And again, that's not to dismiss them. We do need things that are going to, you know, feed us, keep us safe. But we
Caitlin Matthews (14:36)
actually.
Mmm. Well, yeah, essentially. ⁓
Lian (14:46)
with the lack of understanding of how important that spiritual resource is, we become even more focused and even more fearful on how much of those primal material resources we need, which then become mean that we're becoming even less connected to that spiritual resource. That word, I think, really puts that into sharp relief.
Caitlin Matthews (15:07)
Yeah, but I think it's not just people who do spiritual things that need this. mean, we see it at a level of, know, why do children need to take knives into school? But there's a lack of some spiritual resource in our community ⁓ because, yes, there have always been school bullies, let's be clear, that's, know, they've always been there, ⁓ you know.
Lian (15:19)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (15:32)
older children who will exert their authority in very mean and horrible ways. But there is something really seriously wrong when children need to take knives into school as the resource that will protect them. ⁓ So from that sort of level, through to the person just muddling through their daily life, ⁓ who's got various problems going on, which may be work related or family related, whatever. ⁓
Lian (15:46)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (16:01)
And this is the thing that is very worrisome because when we have these challenges around us, we need more spiritual practice, not less. And it's really hard for people to begin a spiritual practice when they're in these times of panic.
Lian (16:15)
Yes. ⁓
Yes, yes, it seems like the last thing to focus on and yet it's when it's most important. So what you've just said there about the example of schools brings me to a question I was pondering, which is how do you see that our own personal spiritual practice might in some way impact, influence, benefit the collective?
Caitlin Matthews (16:51)
⁓ But I think that's always the case that, ⁓ I mean, let's take Glastonbury as a case in point. Now we all know Glastonbury has extraordinary landscape and extraordinary myths and legends. And it once had a huge Abbey where people prayed all the time from very early times through to the Reformation. And then this enormous abbey was completely destroyed. And so a lot of other spiritual practices are going on at Glastonbury, but there's not a lot of stability in it. So it's just like, it's a spiritual place where the prayer has not been continuous ⁓ there, and continuous prayer sort of makes things stable. ⁓ And so you get to the bottom of Glastonbury High Street and you see...
Lian (17:31)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (17:47)
happening to people, they just completely go off the rails or behave aberrantly. And it's like everything sort of slushes to the bottom of the high street. And there's not that sort of, ⁓ there's not that sort of powerful prayer that's ⁓ a continuous ongoingness. And I think that when you live near to something like that, you know, that you're aware of that, both the need for that stability and the instability that's all around you.
Lian (17:56)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (18:16)
just taking that as a random, know, because Glastonbury is considered to be this holiest earth, you know, in ancient legend. ⁓ And at one level it is, and at another level it's kind of disorderly because there's not a lot of coordination in spiritual effort. And I spiritual belonging brings with it, in the same way that I think of sort of the legends of the Grail, where, you know, knights go on quest for the Grail, which is sort of to restore things as they were, to bring back the waters. We were talking earlier on about, you know, our current drought. ⁓ When the waters dry up, whether it's physically or in our soul, people need to go on quest. And ⁓ they do a lot of wandering about and meeting odd and strange things and having all sorts of encounters.
Lian (19:02)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (19:15)
they occasionally come across in a clearing, there'll be a hermit who says, that dream that you just had, I can tell you all about the dream you just had, explain it to ⁓ you. So it's like everywhere, even in the sort of the most sort of spiritually redundant places, if I can call them that, that if there is someone who is holding integrity and ⁓ they're like a little beacon in that area that is
Lian (19:23)
Hehehehe
Caitlin Matthews (19:46)
having effect upon ⁓ the land can remember what it is and the people around them can remember who they are. And ⁓ there is an opening and an ⁓ enlightenment in the sense of ⁓ it's not all dark and dreadful going on. So I think, yes, that these things are important, but
Lian (20:06)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (20:14)
I'm just thinking also about this very ⁓ subtle this world, other world thing, which I think is another problem here. ⁓ I was talking this week to ⁓ a chaplain from the US, and he was telling me a story about ⁓ meeting up with some trainee chaplains. And he was teaching them and talking about the various things that chaplains need to do. put up their hand and said, you're talking about this as if it's all real, meaning the spiritual world. I suppose at that point it might be, you it would be like, maybe you have chosen the wrong profession. But I think that there is a, I don't think this is all real going on, which stops people engaging with spiritual practice, which I think is, and of course we're going back to the wound of
Lian (21:09)
Yes.
Caitlin Matthews (21:15)
not having your own tradition. Whatever your tradition is, whether you're one of the big five religions or a bunch of people who go and worship a tree, which of course in Hinduism would be regarded that you would just be a Hindu. Yes, that's not considered to be a strange thing to do that. But whatever it is that you hold holy or sacred. ⁓
Lian (21:18)
Yes.
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (21:41)
And if you're not one of those, if you don't fit into one of those official boxes, ⁓ then, you know, what are you? You're not authorised is what people very often think. I'm not authorised. And I hear these words so often. ⁓ But I don't know how to do that properly. know, so properly properly means ⁓ no one showed me how to do this. But, you know, and often you find people who've discovered their own
Lian (21:59)
Mmm, yeah.
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (22:10)
spiritual way, they're doing their own spiritual practice and at the same time they will diss it, they will say, you know, I'm not really authorised to do this, whereas in fact, you know, the world is showing you this, you know, it's doing it. Yeah, exactly.
Lian (22:17)
Mmm.
Yeah, or your own soul or yes, one way or another, we are called back over and over. there's, gosh, there's about five different places I want to go from here. So ⁓ the first is ⁓ maybe a slight dichotomy in what I was hearing in what you were just sharing. This isn't
Caitlin Matthews (22:35)
I know. There's a lot of windows here.
Lian (22:51)
saying you were contradicting yourself. think this is the kind of, know, part of the challenge that an example you gave of Glastonbury. We've got all of these kind of, you know, different practices and beliefs and it's kind of, it doesn't have that cohesion. And I was comparing it as I was listening to you talk. At the moment, my shamanic teacher is a traditional Mongolian shaman, which comes from, you know, many thousands of years unbroken lineage. So it has that cohesion of ⁓ rituals and prayers and beliefs and cosmology. And as you're saying, you know, that's no longer the case in what was once this kind of cohesive spiritual center like Glastonbury. And yet you also gave the example of both that hermit where they're, you know, one person with that kind of true
Caitlin Matthews (23:26)
Yes.
kids.
Lian (23:50)
spiritual practice, being in integrity, can be this light in the dark. And then also, as you were saying at the end, know, someone finding their way. In fact, that's that's very much an aspect of my own story, kind of finding my way literally to a tree and recognising what was there that you know, our culture hadn't told me. you know, we can we can wake up to these things seemingly spontaneously as well.
Caitlin Matthews (24:09)
Yes.
Yes.
Lian (24:19)
which is completely outside of a teaching and lineage, as it seems to us at least. So what's your sense as to kind of what's the way for us for those of us that aren't currently in a traditional lineage, but are feeling this call to a spiritual practice?
Caitlin Matthews (24:22)
Yes.
Lian (24:43)
What's your sense of navigating that? You know, as you say, we look at somewhere like Glastonbury and you can feel there is this kind of, you know, chaotic nature where things aren't coming from a cohesive place, from a lineage. ⁓ And yet on the other hand, you know, for many of us, that's kind of like the best we've got, you know, it's a starting point, but I'd love to hear your sense.
Caitlin Matthews (24:59)
Well, just to go back briefly to Glastonbury, I should have sort of also said at the same time that, you know, that places that have very strong energy and need sort of a bit of spiritual, you know, guardianship going on there in terms of that cohesion, that things come to sacred places that have, ⁓ you know, been slightly off-piste because they're not fulfilling what they used to do.
Lian (25:22)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (25:29)
whether it was Druids who were there before or whatever you want to call them. But there's something that when something is kind of slightly off true, it begins to warp things. so very often I think of very sacred places. It's so powerful that it acts like a burning glass. so I've seen it very many times that people come with, ⁓ we're moving to Glastonbury. And my heart sinks because I know that there are family problems or
Lian (25:41)
Because of the power of that place. Yeah. Yeah.
Caitlin Matthews (25:58)
or that one of the children is slightly on the spectrum or whatever it is. And I think, well, how is that going to play out? Because it tends to accentuate. So very happy people become maniacally happy, slightly depressed people become very depressed. And so that sort of intensification of things. I I'd say it would be the same if we went to several other places that were a little bit chaotic in that respect.
Lian (25:58)
Mmmmm
because it will be amplified.
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (26:27)
But ⁓ I think it's the everydayness of every day that we need to work with. And ⁓ that's not difficult material. In fact, it's spurned because it's very ordinary. I'm sort of thinking back to ⁓ currently on Substack, I'm sort of writing a course called the Golden Verses course, which is based upon the teachings of Pythagoras as an everyday, the Pythagorean sort of lifestyle.
Lian (26:40)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (26:56)
how to keep in harmony with the universe. Now that's been going on for 25 centuries, which is quite a long time. And one of the practices that they did was the salutations of the sun, which was like, you got up in the morning, you saluted the sun. You see it in the symposium, ⁓ Plato is in the porch and he's thinking in the porch all night and people think, is he still there?
And then the sun comes up and he venerates the sun. So it's a very common practice in the Greek world. ⁓ So you do it at sort of, you know, the beginning of the day when you get up. You have to be up quite early to be seeing the sunrise at the moment because we're near midsummer. And again, when you stop at midday, you salute the sun again at midday. You do it when you come home because the sun is going to the West. back to your home unless you're on night shift. And then when we go to sleep, you know, when we lie down before we start going to sleep, we do it again. So the sun for us in our hemisphere is at rest when it's night. So just even those four places of just touching into whatever's sacred to you is really a good thing. So we've got that daily round. We've got the monthly round of the moon.
Lian (28:18)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (28:23)
more into moon things. ⁓ And then we've got the yearly cycle of the sun, which of course gives us all our seasons and all those things. So we've got these three very natural cycles already going on which we are living out. So calibrating those within religious calendars has always been a very great challenge because the year doesn't come round in a tidy.
exactly 365 point whatever it is days and we have to have these extra days to make things up. So I think that's a good place to start and I think another good place to start is where we're living. You you get up in the morning and it's like where is the wind blowing from this morning? You know this is this I know people will see this is this strange British preoccupation with weather.
Lian (28:53)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (29:20)
When we're on an island, know, where the weather comes from is very much about how we are today. When we talk about the weather, we're saying how we are. ⁓ You know, so that sort of that daily noticing of, you know, what the weather is, how am I today? I'm feeling pretty grumpy, you know, whatever it is. ⁓ But now I'm going to sort of come into sort of, you know, one place with where I'm living. ⁓ it's a it's a nice way of sorting.
Lian (29:26)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (29:49)
those things out. But this is a very elderly metaphor, so I have to apologize to those that weren't living in these times. But analog television used to have ⁓ horizontal and vertical hold, meaning if the television wasn't, if the screen went round like this, you'd have to adjust which of the holes would, and if it was going zzzz from side to side, you would adjust the button and you adjusted the horizontal and vertical hold.
And I think for me, those are also quite, it's an important metaphor. It creates this, which is the land where on the ancestors I come from. So, and that works wherever you are in the world. So if your family have emigrated to Australia or you're currently living in Burma as part of an embassy or whatever you're doing. ⁓
Lian (30:23)
Mmmmm ⁓
Caitlin Matthews (30:43)
or you're travelling, you can always do that. You're always in touch with your ancestral traditions and still with the land that you're on, where you are. And I think those are two very nice ways of starting a spiritual practice.
Lian (30:53)
Mmm.
Yes. You read my mind because I was about to say to you, thinking about the conversation that you brought up that we're having earlier about the lack of water in our gardens and the way these, you know, the more that we have, and it doesn't necessarily have to be tied to the cycles of the land and the seasons, moon and sun. But I think
Caitlin Matthews (31:14)
Yes, yes.
Mm-hmm.
Lian (31:27)
that is a kind of helpful way to almost like hook on to something that's already happening. But it's fascinating to me the way that it changes, it changes our perception of so much, it changes our perception of time even and our understanding of kind of, ⁓ this time, know, just a simple example where we were talking about, I look back at photos of this time in previous years and I'm, the grass wasn't as
Caitlin Matthews (31:32)
Yes.
Yes.
Lian (31:57)
dried up and yellow looking this time in previous years. That's kind of a metaphor for what I notice we start to realise about ourselves. It's like it gives us this sort of positioning in time where we can kind of go, oh, this time last full moon, this was happening for me. This is what I was being called to this time, you know, know, whether it be midsummer, this was.
Caitlin Matthews (32:20)
Yes.
Lian (32:25)
happening for me at this kind of soulful level. I'd love to hear your sense of that because I think this is again something that we're really, it's kind of building on this idea. I think this is a really good sort of starting point for people looking for a spiritual practice. But what have you observed kind of comes downstream the more that we, and as you say, this is part of our ancestral ⁓ heritage, isn't it? Across the world, all of our ancestors worked with these cycles.
Caitlin Matthews (32:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Young and trade. Young.
No. Exactly.
Exactly.
Lian (32:53)
What do you see happens as we start to align more with them and see that kind of deeper, know, going back to the topic here, daily spiritual practice, what unfolds from that daily spiritual practice built into or built upon those cycles?
Caitlin Matthews (32:58)
Mmm.
Yes.
But I think that, know, just say one of the very first things that if you keep any kind of journal about how you're doing or what you've realised, and if you look back through your journal and look, five years back from when you've just recorded some marvelous revelation that you've just had, it's quite humiliating to notice that you just discovered it five years ago. Sometimes, you know, it's like, you know, human beings you know, remember and forget and sometimes we're in alignment with something and sometimes the season reminds us that we need things, you know, like where did I put my swimming costume? I've no idea where it is, you know, not done any swimming for a while and so on. But I sort of think, you know, that what we're also talking about is time and timelessness here that we, you know, yes, the year goes round in a circle, but actually our life in our life experience, we're actually going round in a spiral.
Lian (33:48)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (34:10)
So we come around, say, Christmas or New Year or whatever, you know, on the different parts that which actually resonate with different times of our understanding. And I think some things become things change. think, you know, the spiritual practice changes and evolves over time. And so there are some things maybe we did seven years ago that now are not so helpful to us, or we learnt something from someone else or from a different tradition, which we thought would be quite helpful as a little sort of like a scaffolding for what we're doing. But then you've discovered something else. So I think that there are the subtle changes in your practice. But if you continue doing your practice, whatever it is, ⁓ on some days you'll have more time for it than other days, of course.
Lian (34:50)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (35:07)
there comes to be a consistency that you just drop into it. So a lot of people think, I haven't got time to do a half hour meditation, whatever they do. And it's like, yeah, no, a lot of us don't. That's not what we can do. But many years ago, I passed by a church that was having a series of talks and it made me laugh at the time because it was quite amusingly written, but it was a
minimum belief, a series of six talks on Christianity. And I sort of laughed my head off. But then actually, I've often thought back to that, that notice since because what is our minimum? What is our minimum practice? What is the, know, what is it that, you know, we know it's like, what are the essential vitamins that we need? And also what is our contribution to the world? Because we're not just here to
Lian (35:47)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (36:04)
Gimme, gimme, gimme, know, getting cups of sugar from the other world is not what we're doing, is it? So, I think that sense of ⁓ there's a maturity and a stability ⁓ which comes to the whole of our living, which shows itself. I people notice that, you know, that we're not yeasayers to this and that, that we don't like it when certain things
Lian (36:10)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (36:32)
happened, that we refuse to go and do something because of our principles, for example. And we're not just kind of yeasayers to whatever's going at the moment, whatever the fashionable thing to do is. So our practice is changing and also stabilizing ⁓ our own life ⁓ all the time, which of course does have effect ⁓ elsewhere. So
Lian (36:45)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (37:02)
You know, this is, it's not quantifiable on one level, yes? People would say, well, show me evidence of what happens from your spiritual practice. And you couldn't do that unless you were someone who was following someone for years and years. Yes? Like those studies they did with children in the last millennium, you know, following children from their birth through to forties, fifties and sixties.
Lian (37:19)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (37:32)
they didn't look at what changed, but actually what it is that we spiritually belong to always calls us home. I think that's the thing, that's one of the greatest inspirations of this, isn't it? So whether it be ⁓ a particular tradition or inspiration, that holds it for us.
Lian (37:32)
Mmm.
Yes.
Caitlin Matthews (38:01)
But when we're outside a tradition, it's quite difficult to get those, just the basic practices sorted out because things like the work of prayer, for example, is not quantifiable. But a lot of people sort of say, I don't do prayer, just like because it's to do with some other tradition. It's like, well, no, it's our heritage too. And so.
Lian (38:15)
Mmm.
I don't know if there is a heritage without prayer actually. I'm not aware of one.
Caitlin Matthews (38:29)
No, I mean absolutely. No, no, I know, but it's like, people's perception is that because, you know, the big five do, do prayer, then obviously it must belong to them because we, don't do that, you know. ⁓
Lian (38:38)
Mmm.
Yes. I certainly felt that way once upon a time. was, yeah, I think it's got so associated to organised religion, we forget that this is actually in our blood and bones as much as any other thing.
Caitlin Matthews (38:47)
Yeah, And so I actually sort of came up with something for my students because so many of them would sort of say, because I actually say to people, know, if you're not prepared to pray beyond a certain point in this, you know, in the teaching, it's like, I don't want you in the room because it's like we can't go on together. It's like the trainee chaplain who says, you're behaving as if all this is real. And it's like, yeah, if it's not real for you, it's just let's just stop here. Let's not do this.
Lian (39:11)
you
You
You're it.
Caitlin Matthews (39:25)
So I came up with this little aid memoir, is just a little ⁓ jingle to remember what our prayer responsibility is. ⁓ it's just a little five-liner. It's very simple for people to remember. And it's like, we pray for those who can no more. We pray with those who can restore. We pray from those who hold the door.
We gift our prayer to those unsure and we pray to those who I endure, meaning forever, endure forever. So I'll just break that down. ⁓ So it's like, we all of us should be praying for those who are absolutely at the limits of their endurance and don't know where to turn because they need extra help. So our job is not to prescribe what the help is, but it is to remember them before
all those powers that we belong with and say, look, they can't do it anymore, give them the help they need. I like praying with prepositions. I think it's very important because people nearly always say, so what do you pray to? And it's like, well, we're doing other prepositions. Yes, we pray for those who can no more. We pray with those who can restore.
We align ourselves with those because we don't know what people need. We don't know what the Rift Valley needs. We don't know what the Straits of Hormuz need right now. now. ⁓ We pray with those who can restore whatever it is that's needed. And then we pray from those who hold the door because very often there are people and situations in the world that are perilously near.
Lian (41:07)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (41:22)
you know, stepping off into something they don't understand or very purposefully ⁓ about to perpetrate something that's going to change everything for their people. And so those that hold the door, those powers that hold the door ⁓ are really important because they give a boundary to those things that ⁓ should not be overgone. And they also shepherd back those that are going too far.
wherever it is. And I like we gift our prayer to those unsure because I think that every day we should have, there should be a free prayer for whoever it is that needs it. And it may be that they need it now, maybe they needed it sometime when, and it may be they will need it. But it's, to my mind, this is like the little mountain shelter where any climbers who go up, that there's this little hut, it always has essential things. If you go to Switzerland or wherever, you know, they always have like a box of matches, some firewood, some tins of food. So if you get benighted in the drifts, you've got some means of continuing. And I'll tell a story about this afterwards. So that last one, we pray to those who I endure. We pray to those whom we understand.
Lian (42:35)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (42:48)
those spiritual beings whom we understand, ⁓ as far as we can understand them. But I had a lovely example if we gift our prayer to those unsure. ⁓ I was doing a conference once and there were two very orthodox Jewish ladies who were actually playing hooky, they should have been somewhere else, but they'd come to this conference and they astounded us all and were very sweet and they
Lian (42:51)
Mmm.
Yes.
Caitlin Matthews (43:17)
They stood on stage and they said, we want to thank the people of Britain. And we kind of thought, why? We had no idea what they were talking about. And it turned out they were both descendants of people who had been brought to Britain on the Kindertransport. And so obviously their sheer existence was down to some people in Britain paid the 50 pound bond that brought one child on a train to Britain and to be looked after during the war. So they were very lovely. to cut a long story short, I did a session on the ancestors at this conference and afterwards two of them raced up to me, because I did a meditation afterwards, and they raced up to me said, we want to talk to you because we both saw something. So we went outside and sat under a tree and I said, what is it you both saw? And he said, We both saw the same thing. was like we were at the back of some older block of flats and we saw people being put into vans and driven away in this terrible sorrow. And I looked at them and they looked at me and I said, well, I think you know what that is. And they said, we have an idea, but we just want you to say. And I said, I think these were people who were rounded up when Jews were being rounded up. It happened in the sight of nobody. Nobody saw those people go. And so it's like they have now shown themselves to you. And so now we've witnessed them.
Lian (44:51)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (44:57)
So we just burst into tears and just held hands for about the next sort 10 minutes because we couldn't do anything else. But ⁓ that's exactly what it felt like to them.
Lian (44:59)
Mmm.
Yeah gosh such a such a potent example. Yeah.
Caitlin Matthews (45:10)
So we never know when or where our prayer may go or when it may go. And I think that's a
really important thing to remember. I offered the other day to put someone, I have a shrine, I put people on the shrine. I don't do anything except put them there. I inscribe their names and if there's a particular problem I might say what that is, but I just leave it on the shrine.
And the woman said, oh no, no, I don't want my mother to be prayed for. And I said, well, no, I'm not going to pray that anything should happen to her one way or the other. I'm just putting her in witness, in spiritual witness, because I don't know what she needs. And to pray for someone who's unwell, as it was in this case, you know, maybe a curse, because, you know, for someone to get better, maybe a curse, because it may be that they're dying.
Lian (46:03)
you
Caitlin Matthews (46:08)
We shouldn't be praying for the increased and improved health, if that's the case, because that would be an awful thing to do. ⁓ I think prayer responsibilities are on all of us.
Lian (46:23)
Mmm, gosh.
Caitlin Matthews (46:24)
I don't know what you would say. mean, you know, please, you know, this is a part of it because the more we're a part of it, the more the more we're together.
Lian (46:40)
Yeah, absolutely. We're kind of out of time, but there's two questions that I really want to, maybe there's three actually. If we can quickly go here because they feel important. So the first is one to you personally.
Caitlin Matthews (46:50)
That's fine.
Yeah.
Lian (47:02)
Talking about this idea of kind of like minimum belief, minimum practice, if you were to kind of let go of all of the different things that you've been taught, you believe, ⁓ you've written, all the different ways that you practice spiritually and you had to kind of go, okay, this is gonna be my absolute kind of minimum daily spiritual practice, what would that be?
Caitlin Matthews (47:29)
They'll be breathing and singing probably. ⁓ The three quadrants practice is very important to me, I have to say. That's something that I always go to bed with every night. it's like those, may those three candles illuminate every darkness, ⁓ is that prayer. But our relationship with truth, nature and knowledge.
Lian (47:32)
Hmm.
Thank you. And then again, this is not a quick answer at all, but it feels, we've touched on this and so it feels an important one. So going back to what you're talking about, that kind of axes of the ancestors and the land. And I've been pondering the essential role of the land in our spiritual practice.
Caitlin Matthews (48:08)
I'll do my best.
Mm.
Lian (48:31)
a lot recently where the reason for this pondering and I'll give the reason for it because it might help illuminate what I'm asking. So I'm in the midst of preparing to teach a course on the menstrual cycle and the way that I've learned and taught this before is through four archetypes. So the four kind of phases of the menstrual cycle, teaching through archetypes. And then what's been really occurring to me is how in any myth, the archetypes are kind of embedded in the myth and the myth is embedded in the land. Like these things aren't separate. We can think they are, we can try and kind of pull them up by their roots.
Caitlin Matthews (49:00)
Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Lian (49:21)
but they don't really make sense without that context. And so I've been pondering this and pondering kind of like, where's the landscape one would meet? Like, say, for example, one of the archetypes is the wild woman. Where would the wild woman be found? What's her landscape? And then also, if you're a particular person working with that particular archetype, where is that landscape on your land? And so this is the reason I've been really pondering the way that
Caitlin Matthews (49:50)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Lian (49:51)
in ourn modern culture, we've kind of tried to pull these things up from the roots. And actually, more and more, I see that that just doesn't work. It needs to be in the land we're on. probably the other way of saying it. In the real wild soil, yes.
Caitlin Matthews (49:56)
Yeah.
Yeah. No, potted archetypes don't work. No, they are because their roots are not interfacing with the rest of the Earth.
And this is the problem. Yeah. Yeah.
Lian (50:16)
So let me just ask you the question because I appreciate again we're out of time and but you felt
such an important one. I guess simply put what's your sense as to kind of the importance of our spiritual practice being connected, embedded, rooted in our land?
Caitlin Matthews (50:31)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I once had a conversation with John Borman and we were talking about exactly this and his observation was, ⁓ is the imposition of a desert religion upon a forest people, which I thought was just an incredibly observant. But it is true that all beliefs and traditions are rooted in ⁓ the soil of where we live. ⁓
Lian (50:51)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (51:01)
in the weather patterns that we have, in all the things to do with the land. And if we went back ancestrally, of course, people would have been interfacing with an Arctic landscape, which is not what we have now. So obviously, our spiritual practice and understandings have changed as, you know, the land came out of the ice. So, yes, I think those things are absolutely essential.
We can't pot the myths, they belong in the landscape. Myth and landscape belong together. And from those, as you say, the archetypes arise, but they're not just all in young. They are absolutely within the land. ⁓ And even within the land of Britain, that would be many different kinds of landscapes. And so we can tell the nature of
Lian (51:44)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Yes.
Caitlin Matthews (51:59)
say Cornwall is very different from say Aberdeen. They're both on granite, the soil type's really important. It makes the nature of the people very hardy on granite. ⁓ But there's an endurance in granite, which is very different from say the shale and gravel of the Thames, estuary or whatever, you know. So even around the country there will be different
Lian (52:10)
Mm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Caitlin Matthews (52:28)
different ways of seeing and understanding.
Lian (52:33)
Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (52:34)
And whether you're a hill person or a mountain person or a coastal person, know, all of those things tell you different things.
Lian (52:42)
Hmm. And I guess that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, the ancestors and the land. There is the land aspect of our ancestors and then there's the land, you know, not everyone's living on the land of their ancestors, but either way, the land of both needs to be taken into account. It increasingly seems to me. Hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (52:52)
No food.
then
Yes, yeah, exactly, I think so. Yeah, it's the way to go. It's the local be local. Yeah.
Lian (53:06)
Mmm.
Yes, yes,
absolutely. In fact, one very quick final question talking about myths. If you were here to, which I believe you are, live out your own soul's myth, what archetype, what myth would that be? And I know that you've got, you know, extensive understanding of myths.
Caitlin Matthews (53:28)
right, okay, no, no.
This is where we have to be very careful because there are certain myths that are very attractive to us, but our job is not to live them out. The Joseph Campbell thing is very, very dangerous because Joseph Campbell took myth to be personal. Myth is community. It's not personal.
Lian (53:35)
Okay.
Hmm
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (53:58)
Yeah. And I've seen a lot of people live out a myth and they're not actually human beings anymore. Becoming the archetype is not the thing. Mediating the archetype, that's different. Being in service to a stream of understanding whereby ⁓ all that is good and true within that comes out. But there are some very chaotic archetypes as well. We don't want to be.
Lian (54:05)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (54:27)
doing. And people who take that as a kind of a fated thing that they must behave like the Morrigan or they must behave like someone else is like, no, that's right. Mediate it, don't live it. We're human beings. It's part of, I think, Joseph Campbell's idea and this psychological idea that we can just apply myths directly to people is like
Lian (54:42)
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (54:55)
putting molten lead on people or expecting them to ⁓ take a confection of something that's quite poisonous. Here's a cup of ivy for you. ⁓ No, we're human beings. ⁓ While we resonate to particular myths and traditions, we must also be careful not to live them.
Lian (54:57)
Mmm.
Yes.
Mm, but a real, cautionary tale right there. Yes. So differently said, and I really agree with you again, going back to what I was saying earlier, I completely, in fact, I ⁓ recorded an episode a couple of weeks ago talking about this, you know, myths themselves are ultimately communal and are showing us how to live in relationship with, with the land of the community around us. ⁓ and yet as you're saying,
Caitlin Matthews (55:20)
because yeah, I've seen this. I've seen this.
Yes, I'm sorry.
Lian (55:49)
There definitely is ⁓ archetypes and stories that have this kind of particular meaning to us, this particular call to us.
Caitlin Matthews (55:56)
yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm the teller of stories and the singer of songs of all the patient wife stories. Yeah, that's that's kind of that, you know, as a younger woman, I was near that I was very near that stepping into that to live it, which is like, no, not living that. is not that is not my personal myth. No, that is that is has been.
Lian (56:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (56:25)
both a support and it could have been a curse as well. But yes, so the myths of Rhiannon, the Haggedinag, all of those stories, you know, the horse that knows how to get out of the enchanted castle, all of those stories, those are all the stories, ⁓ all the sort of the myths of the, you know, the horse-headed Demeter of Fularis. so those, yeah, I know those, I know those very strongly.
Lian (56:28)
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (56:54)
And I also know that I must not live them. But I know that I'm out there for all those people that, you know, that resonate on that. So I know from a point of expert understanding, which I think we all do, we all do, but the people who fulfill the myth absolutely in their lives can become psychotic. They can become very unbalanced and
Lian (56:57)
Mmm, yes.
Mmm.
Caitlin Matthews (57:23)
it takes them out of the court with their everyday life.
Lian (57:26)
Hmm, yes. So, where can... Yes, no, I'm really glad, I'm really glad we may need to come back and continue this conversation. Yes, it really is, it really is. But I'm very happy. don't all, I do love a happy ending, but we don't always have to. ⁓
Caitlin Matthews (57:30)
which is a cautionary point to end this. yeah, yeah, no, think this is this is a whole other discussion. Yeah. Yeah.
I know, but sometimes it's like it's not our responsibility to enact those great things. But I mean, these are the mysteries, aren't they? May this is another conversation of another time that the great mysteries end with a capital M of the traditions are.
Lian (57:52)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Caitlin Matthews (58:14)
You know, they're huge, they're nationwide stories and there's a whole other thing that lies there. And they sometimes guide countries well and peoples well and sometimes the specter of those can take over. So it's exactly the same for countries and people ⁓ as it is for landmasses. yeah.
Lian (58:33)
Yes.
Yeah it's I think I think we do need to come back and do an episode on that. Yes for now we're listeners find out more about you and the wonderful work you do.
Caitlin Matthews (58:46)
We'll go there. Yeah, so they can have a look at my substack page, which is called Caitlin Matthews dash Hello Quest H-A-L-L-O-W Quest, or one word, Sanctuary, where I'm writing every week. So you can see me there. My website is ⁓ Hello Quest, the same dot O-R-G dot U-K.
Lian (59:38)
What a wonderful show. Here are my favourite parts. Simple daily gestures of attention to our body, the land, the weather and our soul can shift spiritual practice from a guilty obligation into a steady resource that restores our resilience and prevents that porous unglazed feeling that so many people live with.
Caitlin's way of praying fall with, from and to refrain spiritual responsibility, dissolves that fear of doing it wrong and widens the field of relationship by recognising that prayer isn't a performance, it's a participation. Routing archetypes, myths and personal practice in the actual soil, seasons and place brings the stories alive, steadies our inner lives and keeps us in service to the myth rather than being swallowed up by
If you'd like to hop on over to the show notes for the links, they're at BeMythical.com/podcast/529
And as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and would benefit from guidance, kinship and support, come join us in Unio, the community for wild sovereign souls. You can discover more and join us by hopping over to BeMythical.com/unio now. Let's walk the path home together.
And if you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device, auto magically as soon as it's released.
Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'm sending you all my love. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, go be mythical.