Lora O'Brien – Irish Author & Guide
Your Authentic Connection to Ireland
You’ve heard a lot about the health benefits of meditation by now, right? I know, I know, some of that has been from me, in previous blog posts… But I’m not alone in thinking that meditation can change the world, and change your own life in so many wonderful ways. Every celebrity seems to be…
Guided Meditation is a particular meditation technique, which just means ‘meditation with the help of a guide’, so you don’t have to try and follow a path all alone. We could all use a little help and guidance sometimes, right? Especially when you’re just beginning your meditation practice. It can be a bit overwhelming. There…
When I started studying psychology in 2011, with the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, I was very surprised to see ‘mindfulness’ on our lesson plan for the first term. You see, I knew mindfulness was a form of meditation, because I’d been practicing it in a spiritual context since 1994, when I’d picked up…
Meditation and mindfulness are vital parts of any Pagan practice, and often they are either ignored by teachers, or it’s presumed that a student will simply… know how to do it. Spoiler: most Western people don’t just *know* how to do meditation. It’s a discipline which takes years to build: starting with simple breathing and…
Just like the question of how we do our Paganism – the other question of how it all began is a little… contentious. In some camps. We know of course, that what we’re doing now in our various spiritual traditions is derived from, and continually inspired by (even in some cases closely related to), ancient…
Pagan Holidays (Holy Days) worldwide are coming back to a more general use and understanding, with folk often asking questions about whether Christmas is a Pagan Holiday (it is, sort of), and observing the 8-fold Wheel of the Year. The current Neo Pagan calendar (and its primarily Wiccan holidays) is ostensibly based off the ‘Celtic…
Some of the most common questions on Irish Pagan Beliefs I see, revolve around the Pagan Altar. What is it? How do you make one? What direction should a Pagan Altar face?! I figure it might be useful to show you what I do, as a starting point. (Spoiler alert, there’s no pentagrams! The post…
The Catholic Church are full of the drama lately that the Irish have reverted to Pagan beliefs, with the drive towards recognition of equality, basic human medical rights, and other such truly shocking things… but the reality is, we never REALLY gave up on our Pagan beliefs. To get a good look at Irish Pagan…
This is a question that comes up a lot – what are some Pagan Symbols used by the (Celtic) Irish? It’s kind of a tough one to answer, as we don’t have an extant [surviving through the ages] Irish Pagan tradition, per se. We have a whole lot of Irish mythology, of course, and even…