Two miles west of my hometown of Armagh, situated on the ancient road that linked Tara and The High Kings Of Ireland with Ulster, lies Emain Macha or Navan Fort. It is the mythological home of the Kings and Queens of Ulster and the Horse Goddess, Queen Macha who gave her name to the town of Armagh.
There exists on Emain Macha an old vision of a living, breathing world of enchanted beings. This world, the anima mundi, (soul of the world) resonates at an atomic level on Emain Mhacha in every blade of grass. Walking the lemniscate between the two mounds on the hilltop is an experiential connection with the non human world.
The stories of Cú Chulainn who led Craobh Rua the mythical army of King Conchobar mac Nessa, are central to the Ulster Cycle. It was to Emain Macha that the young boy Setanta came, initiated into the adult world as warrior leader and by the age of 14 protector of that ancient Kingdom. But that initiation, or rite of passage was not unique to warriors, it played a vital role in life in Celtic Ireland.
A rite of passage was a profoundly meaningful bridge between the worlds of childhood and adulthood in a young adolescent boy or girl's life. They would separate from family, spend time alone in the liminal world and then be integrated back into the community with a sense of belonging, empowered with grit, purpose and responsibility, guardians of the future world. There was nothing romantic or ecstatic about a rite of passage, tribal elders have always known it was a place to go to die and be born, where serious questions were asked.
But what meaningful rituals do adolescent children have in our modern world to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood? A new Ipad, the latest Iphone? Unable to stay in the land of childhood, not welcome in the adult world, they drift toward adulthood, often seen as troublemakers, often looking for belonging in the wrong places, estranged from the natural world.
This is the birth of sadness.
If we go through a major transition in our lives without honouring it properly, without being held and witnessed by an elder, how can we connect with the devine; know how to expand our territory; dare to be more than we thought we could be? Without this valorisation, young teens now run the risk of building an identity based on guess work from peers, borrowed images, media stereotypes.
During the spring of 2020 when all maintenance of Emain Macha had stopped, groups of adolescent boys and girls began to gather on the site. Chased out of town by the law for congregating, they chose Navan to stay hidden yet relatively close to town. It wasn't long before the thrash began to pile up, then one day, in an act of treachery, two of the giant sentient trees that stood around the summit of Emain Macha were felled. What remained of one of the trees was then set on fire.

Bone Memory is the story of an encounter between four young teenage warrior friends from King Conor McNessa's Red Branch Knights and four young teenage friends hiding out at Navan during the spring of 2020. Through a glitche in the timeline The Goddess Macha is the architect of this encounter and communicates with them through the ancient ritual of a vision quest, awakening the remembering in them.
There is old memory in all of us.
Call it ancestral, call it instinctual, call it the previous life. It comes from the same place.
Bone memory.

“There is a place within you that remembers. Before the first wound. Before the forgetting. Before the silence that settled over your lineage—there was rhythm. There was song. There were bones that danced and breathed with memory.”
-Iya Affo

Supported by the Art's Council of Northern Ireland