Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld | A Journey of Individuation & Ancestral Healing
Live WORKSHOP & Course THREE
Lamenting the Dead
Bean Chaointe | The Keening Woman
Irish Ancestral Rituals of Death, Grief, and the Gaelic Otherworld
Sunday, June 28th 2026
9am - 1pm PST | 10am - 2pm MST | 11am - 3pm CST | 12pm - 4pm EST
5 pm - 9 pm IST (Irish Standard Time)
This is the third course in the six-part Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld series.
It can be taken as part of the course series or standalone.
An Invitation
I invite you into an older understanding of grief—one held within Irish ancestral tradition, where the visible and invisible worlds are deeply intertwined. We meet the Bean Chaointe, the Keening Woman, whose role extended far beyond mourning. Through her voice, gestures, and presence, she carried both spiritual and social authority, within her community, expressing grief in a powerful, culturally understood language.
To those outside the tradition, her expression seemed wild and untamed; to those within it, it was a deeply embodied language of grief—felt in the body, shared in community, and essential to the passage between worlds. To encounter her is to return to deeper layers of Ireland’s traditions around death and dying, where grief, land, voice, and the unseen are intimately connected. Together, we explore how death is held alongside life, how ritual can support us in meeting loss, and how ancestral wisdom may guide us across thresholds—into a deeper relationship with both grief and life.
Rooted in Irish Myth & Ancestral Memory
In Ireland, the land was imagined as a living goddess—feeling, responsive, and sovereign—and the Gaelic Otherworld, ever-near, was shaped through feminine voice and expression. Within this landscape, the Bean Chaointe emerges as part of an ancient lineage of women who gave voice to grief, guided the dead between worlds, and held the living in their sorrow.
We trace keening back to its earliest echoes in pre-Christian times. Through ancient myth and oral tradition, we encounter what is remembered as the first caoine—the first lament on this island—a cry of grief woven into Ireland’s spiritual and cultural life. As mná caoine, their voices and movements carried profound authority, helping to guide the deceased from the realm of the living into that of the ancestors.
Though these traditions have largely fallen silent, their echoes remain—in story, in memory through the songs, and perhaps in something still felt within us. This course invites you to listen for those echoes, and to consider what they might offer us now in meeting grief, loss, and the thresholds of our own lives.
The Heart of This Course
This course explores 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. This is a journey of soul and spirit, where poetry, Sean-nós (“old style”) song, the Irish language, myth, and folklore are interwoven with Jungian psychology and psychotherapy in a deeply visceral exploration of grief and mourning. Together, we explore how ritual, ancestral memory, and embodied expression may help us meet the profound crossings of life with greater meaning and presence.
The course offers a space for reflection, cultural exploration, and engagement with traditions that honour grief as both personal and ancestral. We also consider how silence, sorrow, and intergenerational trauma can be carried through family lineages—and how reconnecting with voice, remembrance, language, and ancestral traditions may open pathways toward healing.
Through the Bean Chaointe, the Wise Woman archetype, and Irish mourning traditions, grief becomes a sacred threshold where ancestral wisdom and presence may hold and guide us through times of loss, change, and transformation.
Join Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin on this journey into the ancient tradition of lamenting the dead. Through psychotherapy, depth psychology, Irish mythology, and folklore, we will explore the Bean Chaointe as both an archetypal and ancestral figure whose voice, presence, and ritual expression gave form to grief within the soul, the community, and the thresholds of life and death.
Themes We Explore Together
Themes explored include:
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The Bean Chaointe (The Keening Woman)
Her role within the community explored through social, cultural, mythological, and psychological perspectives. -
The Gaelic Otherworld in Irish Mythology & Folklore
Exploring liminal thresholds, the ‘thin veil,’ and the relationship between the living and the dead in Irish tradition. -
The Caoine (Keening Practice)
Archival accounts of mourning rituals alongside recordings of keening, laments in Gaeilge, and ancient songs carried across generations. -
Grief Through a Jungian Lens
An exploration of grief, loss, and transformation through depth psychology, psychotherapy, Irish myth, and folklore. -
Rituals of Death and the Irish Wake
Traditional Irish mourning customs, including recordings from my Connemara community in Gaeilge with English translation. -
The Numinous in Grief and the Otherworld
Exploring how encounters with the sacred, mysterious, and unseen can accompany grief, healing, and transformation. -
Sacred Time and Ritual
How grief opens us beyond linear time into liminal and ancestral ‘deep time,’ where ritual can support us through life’s thresholds. -
Ancestral Memory and Intergenerational Grief
How inherited grief, silence, and ancestral memory live within us, and the ways ritual and remembrance can support healing across generations.
You are invited to meet these themes gently, allowing insight to arise in its own time.
This course is for you if…
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You are moving through grief, loss, or a life transition, and feel drawn to explore these experiences through myth, ritual, and an ancestral lens.
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You are curious about ancestral and communal approaches to mourning, and how grief has traditionally been held through ritual, remembrance, and community.
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You are drawn to Irish mythology, folklore, the Bean Chaointe, and the Gaelic Otherworld, and wish to explore their relationship to death, grief, and liminal thresholds.
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You want to better understand inherited grief, silence, and intergenerational trauma, and explore how ancestral remembrance may support healing across generations.
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You accompany others in grief through grief and are seeking to deepen your understanding through symbolic, cultural, archetypal, and embodied perspectives.
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You feel called toward reconnecting with Irish ancestral memory, Gaeilge, voice, and tradition as a source of meaning, belonging, and guidance.
Remembering the women who guided the living through their grief & the dead between worlds.
You will learn…
About the role of the Bean Chaointe and the practice of keening within Irish myth, folklore, and pre-Christian tradition, gaining insight into how death, grief, and mourning were once held within a living cultural and spiritual framework. Together, we will explore how grief connects the body, the land, memory, and the unseen world through the lens of the Gaelic Otherworld, the numinous, ritual, and sacred time. Drawing from Jungian psychology, ancestral traditions, archival materials, poetry, music, song, and conversations in Gaeilge with my neighbours in Connemara—where echoes of these ancient customs still live in the land and living memory—you will deepen your understanding of grief, intergenerational memory, and the enduring wisdom these traditions may offer us today in meeting loss, transition, and transformation.
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
4-hour LIVE Workshop on Sunday June 28th 2026 with Group Reflection and Dialogue (9am PST / 5pm Irish Time)
120+ Minutes of Immersive Video Content
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
A Depth Psychology Experience Rooted in the Irish Mythology
Lamenting the Dead online course and workshop is an immersive, embodied journey into soul and psyche. It weaves together sweeping visual footage of the Irish landscape with myth, folklore, music, poetry, and ritual. Through this visceral experience, we explore how these extraordinary figures from our ancestral past can continue to guide and support us today—helping us understand loss and grief, and deepen our enduring bonds with lineage, land, and ancestors.
Begin the Journey
Book Your Seat
Lamenting
the Dead
Bean Chaointe | The Keening Woman
Live Workshop - June 28, 2026
9 am – 1 pm (PST) | 10 am – 2 pm (MST) | 11 am – 3 pm (CST) | 12 pm – 4 pm (EST)
5 pm – 9 pm (Irish ST) Ireland and UK | 6 pm – 10 pm (CEST) Amsterdam / Berlin / Paris / Madrid
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, 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. I 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 personal development journey.