Doe: A Prayer for Cervidae
How do you know when you are living through something extraordinary?
Do you want to hear a story?
The beginning of this project started 25 years ago…I had travelled to Ireland with my late husband, my 8-year-old daughter, and my mother-in-law, while John was receiving an experimental treatment for cancer. We happened upon a sacred pagan site on the outskirts of Limerick, and separated from the group, I wandered alone into a partially underground meeting place and sat down. Immediately, I felt what can only be described as a buzzing sense of having been there before. As I was leaving, I heard a message….so clear that I turned around to see who said it.
The message:
They will find you.
No one was there.
It would be another 20 years before I moved into a magical place, a stone cottage beside the convergence of Ingham and Aquatong creeks, on the land of the Lenape, in southeastern Pennsylvania. My daughter named it Fairy House.
The deer started arriving shortly thereafter.
Over and over they peered through our windows.
What happens when we drop our skepticism and open our minds to the magic around us?
How do you know when you are living through something extraordinary?
Do you want to hear a story?
The beginning of this project started 25 years ago…I had travelled to Ireland with my late husband, my 8-year-old daughter, and my mother-in-law, while John was receiving an experimental treatment for cancer. We happened upon a sacred pagan site on the outskirts of Limerick, and separated from the group, I wandered alone into a partially underground meeting place and sat down. Immediately, I felt what can only be described as a buzzing sense of having been there before. As I was leaving, I heard a message….so clear that I turned around to see who said it.
The message:
They will find you.
No one was there.
It would be another 20 years before I moved into a magical place, a stone cottage beside the convergence of Ingham and Aquatong creeks, on the land of the Lenape, in southeastern Pennsylvania. My daughter named it Fairy House.
The deer started arriving shortly thereafter.
Over and over they peered through our windows.
What happens when we drop our skepticism and open our minds to the magic around us?
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Kathryn's Project Statement:
Doe: A Prayer for Cervidae is an exploration of liminality, and is in direct conversation with place, nature, animism, ecofeminism, and spiritual ecology. It combines my ongoing Celtic studies and interest in Scottish mythology and folklore: the Cailleach Bheurr of Scotland was reputed to dislike hunters and the Cailleach Mhornam Fiadh (the Great Hag of the Deer) resided on the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland, now home to 200 human residents and 7000 deer. Doe looks at hunting through an ecofeminist lens and explores and exposes the western patriarchal power structures that encourage and normalize the killing of animals for fun and sport. However, at its core, this project celebrates my inexplicable connection and silent communication with the deer that found me.
During hunting season, I will install small deer head sculptures along the deer path behind my home, used by both deer and trespassing hunters, along with ritual altars of protection for both the deer and the planet. With a nod to sacred ritual objects, lawn decorations, and deer hunting trophies, these sculptures will be both freestanding and incorporated into the trees and stones along the path. The sculptures will include deer heads imbedded with crystals, stones, and marked with correspondences and sigils of protection, utilizing a sigil language that I created in 1993. A wooden rifle box will hold the free-standing ritual sculptures. This installation will also include repurposed deer hunting decoys, sound, ritual performance, and writing. Further documentation will include trail camera photographs and videos. In the future, I will travel to the Isle of Jura to perform a ritual in honor of both the Cailleach and the deer. This trip will be documented as part of the long-term project.
Doe: A Prayer for Cervidae is an exploration of liminality, and is in direct conversation with place, nature, animism, ecofeminism, and spiritual ecology. It combines my ongoing Celtic studies and interest in Scottish mythology and folklore: the Cailleach Bheurr of Scotland was reputed to dislike hunters and the Cailleach Mhornam Fiadh (the Great Hag of the Deer) resided on the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland, now home to 200 human residents and 7000 deer. Doe looks at hunting through an ecofeminist lens and explores and exposes the western patriarchal power structures that encourage and normalize the killing of animals for fun and sport. However, at its core, this project celebrates my inexplicable connection and silent communication with the deer that found me.
During hunting season, I will install small deer head sculptures along the deer path behind my home, used by both deer and trespassing hunters, along with ritual altars of protection for both the deer and the planet. With a nod to sacred ritual objects, lawn decorations, and deer hunting trophies, these sculptures will be both freestanding and incorporated into the trees and stones along the path. The sculptures will include deer heads imbedded with crystals, stones, and marked with correspondences and sigils of protection, utilizing a sigil language that I created in 1993. A wooden rifle box will hold the free-standing ritual sculptures. This installation will also include repurposed deer hunting decoys, sound, ritual performance, and writing. Further documentation will include trail camera photographs and videos. In the future, I will travel to the Isle of Jura to perform a ritual in honor of both the Cailleach and the deer. This trip will be documented as part of the long-term project.
A Prayer for Cervidae
I saw her yesterday
by the tree on the creek
The light, sound, beautiful peace
Did you see it, she says
I am here
She loves me
I never left
I wait for her in the blue mystery
Fading light, stirring branches
A memory of many sisters
culled from the land of generations
On winter nights
I dream of you
Full moon illuminates
as you pass silently under my window
In the morning
your prints in the snow send a message
You were here
I am here
Where are you
Life gone
Tucked in freezers of frozen flesh
Rotting in landfill, excess trash
You had a life
You were here
You had a life
Hear my prayer
Come back to the crepuscular
To the creek of clear water
and gnarled roots
Of fireflies and frogs
Of Blue Heron silently stalking
I saw her yesterday
by the tree on the creek
The light, sound, beautiful peace
Did you see it, she says
I am here
She loves me
I never left
I wait for her in the blue mystery
Fading light, stirring branches
A memory of many sisters
culled from the land of generations
On winter nights
I dream of you
Full moon illuminates
as you pass silently under my window
In the morning
your prints in the snow send a message
You were here
I am here
Where are you
Life gone
Tucked in freezers of frozen flesh
Rotting in landfill, excess trash
You had a life
You were here
You had a life
Hear my prayer
Come back to the crepuscular
To the creek of clear water
and gnarled roots
Of fireflies and frogs
Of Blue Heron silently stalking
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Doe Embedded Stone
I usually don’t share my work at this stage of the project. It is a vulnerable time for the work and for me. These sculptures are not the end goal of Doe; they are the very beginning. Some
will be embedded in crystals while others will morph from the trees and stones along the path. As I continue, I will also create rituals and spells to impart the protective powers that they will need to protect the deer on my land. Some of them will remain on the deer path indefinitely and others will travel with me to Scotland where I will perform a celebration ritual to honor both deer and the Cailleach. The spells and rituals will be documented and photographed and preserved in a grimoire style book. |
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Kathryn's Artist Statement:
Kathryn Eddy is an interdisciplinary artist, animist, and activist who uses painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, writing, ritual, and immersive sound installation to explore the complexities of the human / more-than-human relationship. As an activist against racism, sexism, and speciesism, she explores linked oppressions and examines through an eco-feminist lens, the patriarchal power structure that perpetuates them. Her immersive sound installations include often-overlooked game and food animals and their troubled and abusive relationship with human animals. In January 2020, her immersive sound installation, Urban Wild Coyote Project, was exhibited in its entirety for the first time, as part of the exhibition, Animals Across Discipline, Time, and Space at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario, curated by Tracy McDonald. A full color catalog was published, co-written by scholar and author, Mandy-Suzanne Wong.
Her current project, Doe: A Prayer for Cervidae, is a work in progress.
Kathryn Eddy is an interdisciplinary artist, animist, and activist who uses painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, writing, ritual, and immersive sound installation to explore the complexities of the human / more-than-human relationship. As an activist against racism, sexism, and speciesism, she explores linked oppressions and examines through an eco-feminist lens, the patriarchal power structure that perpetuates them. Her immersive sound installations include often-overlooked game and food animals and their troubled and abusive relationship with human animals. In January 2020, her immersive sound installation, Urban Wild Coyote Project, was exhibited in its entirety for the first time, as part of the exhibition, Animals Across Discipline, Time, and Space at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario, curated by Tracy McDonald. A full color catalog was published, co-written by scholar and author, Mandy-Suzanne Wong.
Her current project, Doe: A Prayer for Cervidae, is a work in progress.
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