Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld | A Journey of Individuation & Ancestral Healing
Course four
A Door into the Dark
The Bean Sídhe | ‘Banshee’
Samhain, the Cailleach and the Supernatural
chaos at the threshold
NEWEST LIVE EVENT ! Join me Online in a 4 hour International Workshop
Sunday October 25th 2026 - 9am PST | 12pm EST | 5pm Irish time
This is the fourth course in the six-part Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld series. (Check FAQ below for International Times)
It can be taken as part of the course series or standalone.
If you cannot attend live, you will receive the full self-guided online course program.
(Please note, the live discussions on the day are not recorded to preserve participant privacy).
An Invitation
I invite you into the ancient festival of Samhain known around the world today as Halloween. It is a festival that originated in Ireland and was believed to be a time when the boundaries between the human world and the Otherworld grew thin, and the landscape was charged with supernatural activity. In this course, we meet the Bean Sídhe (Banshee), or the woman of the fairy mounds, the woman of the Otherworld, whose haunting wail and crys belongs to the borderlands between life and death; this world and the Otherworld. She emerges from a cosmology in which the dead remained close, fairies inhabited the land, and encounters with the unseen were woven into the fabric of ordinary life.
To enter the world of Samhain is to enter a place of threshold, chaos and uncertainty—between harvest and winter, light and darkness, the living and the dead, the human world and the Otherworld. This is the realm of the Cailleach, the ancient crone of winter, a figure intimately bound to the land, the turning of the seasons and the coming of darkness. She belongs to the threshold where one season must die for another to begin. Her wisdom reminds us that transformation asks something of us: to relinquish what has been, and enter what is not yet known - this is a door into the dark.
Rooted in Irish Myth & Ancestral Memory
In Ireland, Oíche Shamhna—Samhain night or All Hallow’s Eve—marked a threshold in the year, when the harvest ended, winter began, and the boundaries between the human world and the Otherworld grew uncertain. The Aos Sí, the fairy people, were said to be ‘abroad’ in the landscape, and as the old stories go, the last fruits of autumn were touched or blighted by their breath. The shapeshifting Púca brought mischief and unpredictability, while divination, disguise, feasting, and strange encounters belonged to a night when the ordinary order of things was briefly overturned, and chaos reigned.
Within this liminal landscape we encounter the Bean Sídhe, whose cry announces death; and beyond Samhain, as winter takes hold, the ancient Cailleach, associated with wildness, winter, and the shaping of the land. Through these figures we enter deeper layers of the Gaelic imagination—where landscape, ancestry, mortality, darkness, and the unseen meet at the threshold.
The Heart of This Course
Through Jungian depth psychology, we turn from the outer landscape of Samhain toward the inner landscape of the psyche. Chaos is not always simply disorder. In both the natural world and the life of the psyche, periods of instability can disturb an established order and open the possibility of something new taking form. Jung understood that psychological transformation often asks us to enter such uncertain territory—when familiar identities loosen, old structures no longer hold, and we find ourselves between what has ended and what has yet to emerge.
What might the ancient figures of Samhain—the Bean Sídhe, the Cailleach, the Púca, the wandering dead and the Otherworld—have to teach us about these borderlands of human experience? Through Irish folklore and Jungian depth psychology, we explore what it means to encounter the unknown, and what may be waiting for us within the dark.
Art by Jeanie Thomanek
Themes We Explore Together
Themes explored include:
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The Bean Sí (The Banshee)
The mysterious Woman of the Sí, her place within Irish folklore, and her connection with death, prophecy, lamentation, and the Otherworld. -
Samhain in Irish Mythology & Folklore
Exploring Oíche Shamhna as a liminal time when the boundaries between the living, the dead, the fairy world, and the Otherworld became uncertain -
The Fairies & the Púca
Encounters with the Aos Sí, the shapeshifting Púca, returning spirits, and the supernatural beings believed to roam the landscape at Samhain. -
Chaos through a Jungian Lens
Exploring chaos, the unconscious, and transformation, alongside the Trickster and other archetypal figures that emerge when familiar structures and certainties begin to dissolve. -
Traditions & Customs of Samhain
Bonfires, offerings, divination, disguise, feasting, games, and the customs through which communities navigated this mysterious turning of the year. -
The Numinous & the Gaelic Otherworld
Exploring encounters with the sacred, mysterious, and unseen, and what the supernatural traditions of Samhain reveal about our relationship with mystery and the unknown. -
The Cailleach & the Threshold
Winter is the realm of the Cailleach. the ancient crone of winter. We explore her archetypal wisdom and how we can call on her to support us in the cycles of transformation. -
Ancestral Memory
How the dead remained present within family, landscape, and cultural memory, and how Samhain traditions created space for remembrance, relationship, and continuing bonds with the ancestors.
“All I know is a door into the dark” - Seamus Heaney
Join me Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin on this journey into the mysterious borderlands of Samhain. Through psychotherapy, depth psychology, Irish mythology, and folklore, we will encounter the Bean Sí as both an archetypal and ancestral figure, alongside the Púca, the wandering dead, and the fairy world—exploring how chaos, liminality, and encounters with the Otherworld illuminate the profound thresholds of psyche, transformation, and the unknown.
This course is for you if…
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You are standing at a threshold in your own life, and feel drawn to explore uncertainty, change, and transformation through myth, folklore, and a Jungian lens.
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You are fascinated by Samhain and its ancient traditions, and wish to journey beyond modern Halloween into the deeper folklore of the dead, the fairies, divination, ritual, and the Gaelic Otherworld.
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You are drawn to the Bean Sí, the Cailleach, the Aos Sí, and the supernatural landscape of Ireland, and want to understand these mysterious figures within their cultural, ancestral, and mythological context.
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You are curious about chaos through a Jungian lens, and how encounters with the unknown, the unconscious, and the Trickster may emerge at times of psychological transition and transformation.
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You are interested in the numinous, liminality, and the unseen, and how myth and archetypal imagination can deepen our relationship with mystery without reducing these traditions to psychological explanations.
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You feel called toward reconnecting with Irish ancestral memory, Gaeilge, landscape, folklore, and tradition as sources of imagination, meaning, belonging, and a deeper relationship with the Gaelic Otherworld.
Remembering the night when fairies and the dead roamed the landscape & the Otherworld drew near.
You will learn…
About the Bean Sí, the mysterious ‘Woman of the Fairy Mounds’, and the ancient wisdom of the Cailleach. We will explore a world in which encounters with the supernatural and unseen were woven into the ancestral landscape of Ireland. From there, we journey into the traditions of Samhain, a liminal time when the boundaries between worlds grew uncertain, the dead returned, the fairies roamed the land, and the shapeshifting Púca brought mischief, disruption, and unpredictability. Drawing on Jungian psychology, Irish folklore, mythology and ancestral tradition, alongside recorded interviews in Gaeilge with my own neighbours, native to the Connemara Gaeltacht—where echoes of these older ways remain alive in landscape and living memory- we ask what this inherited wisdom might still offer us today. This is an invitation into the borderlands of our own inner world and to consider what it means to enter the wintering dark.
What is included?
This course is educational and reflective in nature and is offered as a supportive complement to personal or therapeutic work.
A Self-Paced Online Course you can return to at any time
120+ Minutes of Immersive Video Content with sweeping footage of Ireland’s landscape
Video content designed to evoke the senses and imagination.
30+ Page Companion E-Workbook for reflection and integration
Space for journaling, contemplation, and embodied listening
Instant access with unlimited lifetime availability
CPD Certification for Irish Professionals - 4 points
A Depth Psychology Experience Rooted in the Irish Folklore and Mythology
A Door into the Dark is an immersive journey into the borderlands of soul and psyche. It weaves together sweeping visual footage of the Irish landscape with myth, folklore, music, poetry and ritual. Through storied encounters with the Bean Sí, the Púca, the fairy world and the Cailleach, we enter the mysterious terrain of the Gaelic Otherworld at Samhain, exploring how these ancient figures and traditions can continue to speak to us today—illuminating the thresholds of our own lives, where certainty gives way to mystery, chaos opens the way to transformation, and the known world meets the unseen.
Begin the Journey
Book Your Seat
Lamenting
the Dead
Bean Chaointe | The Keening Woman
We explore the Bean Chaointe—the Keening Woman of Ireland—who stood at the threshold between worlds, keening for the dead and for the living alike. Through her, we encounter a way of giving voice to sorrow, rage, love, and all that cannot be spoken. Together, we consider how ritual and ancestral wisdom might support and guide us in meeting grief, loss, and the thresholds of transition. This course offers a space for reflection, cultural exploration, and embodied engagement with these traditions.
FAQ
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All workshops, courses, programs and products are designed to support your personal development. They are not designed to diagnose, prescribe or recommend any specific psychological, psychiatric or physical health interventions. Anyone engaging in this work agrees to take responsibility for their own personal wellbeing and should they need to consult an individual licensed, qualified healthcare professional, they will do so at their own discretion.
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All workshops, courses, programs and digital products are designed to be a lifetime access. If you cannot attend a live event, all recordings are made available to you in an online course format. All sales are final and non-refundable.
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The LIVE workshops weave together the course content with group discussion and reflection, building upon community and the collective experience. After the LIVE workshop date, the immersive video seminars allow you to explore at your own pace and start whenever you feel called to step into the journey. The essence of the courses is the same as the live workshop version and still draws on aspects closest to my heart, from Irish mythology, poetry, and the ancient Gaelic world, connecting to the body and the deeper symbolic, soul self.
I add course sections for deeper reflection, videos that share the myths in a visual format, and journal invitations to help you directly apply the work to your daily life.
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New Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld workshops/courses may be added in the future; please join the mailing list to be the first to be notified.
About
Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin
BSocSc, MA Social Work, MA Psychotherapy, MA Irish Mythology and Folklore, Dip Supervision, Dip Jungian Psychology, Certified Coach (WCI)
I am a Psychotherapist, Educator and Folklorist with over 20 years of experience. I work internationally and am dual-located in the US and Ireland (in Northern Nevada and on the West Coast of Ireland, in Connemara). I work from a Jungian and depth-oriented perspective, integrating Jungian Psychology, Psychodynamic and somatic therapies.
I grew up in Connemara, a wild and rugged landscape on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Oscar Wilde famously said of the region, “Connemara is a savage beauty”. I grew up in a small, rural Gaeilge (Irish) speaking community where Gaeilge is my first language, and is still spoken today in people's homes. This area was a major centre for the work of the Irish Folklore Commission, recording endangered folklore, mythology, sean-nós (old-style) songs, and oral literature. I have been greatly influenced by the wild physical landscape and immersed in those ancient songs, stories, customs, myths, legends, and music since childhood.
My work interweaves the Gaelic (Irish) World and Otherworld with Jungian Depth Psychology. This work becomes a doorway through which you can enter and explore your own inner landscape. My desire to share with you a felt sense of that ancient culture and spirit and, as a Psychotherapist, support how that connection can nourish and guide you on your own personal development journey.