Teallach

The Irish Word for “Hearth.”

Teallach is the Irish word for hearth. The hearth was always of central importance in Celtic society. The cottage was built around the family hearth. Turf burned there continuously day and night. It provided warmth and nourishment and was a gathering place at night for storytelling, music, mythic tales, and songs. Fire and the hearth were always central in the symbolic rituals marking the festivals in the Celtic Calendar - Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasagh.

The hearth holds great symbolism. A warm sheltering from the harshness of the world outside.

My website is named teallach.com. My broader Depth Psychology-based approach is called Deepening the Senses. In this overarching approach, there is a symbolic ‘coming in’ from the darkness to return to the metaphoric hearth, to the inner world, and a return to the symbolic place that illuminates the darkness.

As human beings, we yearn to make meaning out of the darkness. This work draws on Depth Psychology, Philosophy, Celtic mythology, Somatic Psychotherapy, ancient Gaelic wisdom, folklore and stories, the medium of poetry, art, music, symbol and metaphor.

Focail Gaeilge | ‘Irish Words’

In this series, I share words in Gaeilge (Irish) and explore these words through a Depth Psychology lens, allowing us to begin exploring our inner world— our psyche, and deepen our understanding of our place in the world around us. When we embrace our native language or become curious about the languages from our ancestral roots, we can embrace our sense of place, our speech, our imagination, our psyche, and the song of the soul...