The World Below: Song & Conversation with Katy Hellman | Ep6 S21

Explore your own mythic landscape…

Join us for our summertime writers’ retreat on June 25th! 

During a three hour online retreat, we’ll explore a series of imaginal landscapes that help to illuminate and reframe your own relationship to your creativity and to your voice. You can expect a guided journey, a lot of time to write, and chances to dive into conversation with other myth-minded participants.

This event is open to all paid Myth Is Medicine subscribers. To subscribe, or to upgrade your subscription, please visit: https://mythismedicine.substack.com/ 

IN THIS EPISODE

As part of our Myth Workers & Culture Makers series, American musician Katy Hellman of Emerald Ground Water talks about how folklore and a connection to the Irish ancestors was so fundamental to the development of her latest album.

OUR GUEST

Katy Hellman is a songwriter, storyteller, astrologer, and community organizer based in Burlington, Vermont. She weaves worlds together through her art, one-on-one work, and community engagement. Drawing on mythology, ancestry, and folklore, Katy infuses her work with mythic wisdom—believing these stories offer vital guidance on what it means to be human.

Her latest project is the debut album from her band, Emerald Ground Water, titled The World Below. The album delves into the depths of inner experience, echoing with ancestral sounds and drawing on the archetypal power of fairy tales and myth. She blends these ancient sounds with more contemporary inspiration of psych rock, prog rock and freak folk. 

Find the album on all major streaming platforms. Find the tour dates and the album's fabulous accompanying PDF booklet at https://www.emeraldgroundwatermusic.com/

OUR CONVERSATION

• Katy consciously sings from a shared well of sound with people from her ancestral and musical lineage
• Katy & Marisa met through the Bard Mythologies online Nine Waves Program
• Imbas forosnai - the Irish druidic practice of channeling “inspiration that illuminates”
• Seeing the scars of colonization and industrialization in the treeless Irish landscape
• Developing a relationship with a spiritual guide or “fairy hitchhiker” that might follow you home after visits to Ireland
• Inspired by Stephanie MacKay: grief is generative, while despair is not 
• Feeling ancestral support and care through the creation of art
• The power of calling in Cailleach, so often associated with winter, in the midst of a summer solstice heatwave. As we say on KnotWork, every season is Cailleach season!  (Including the recent story from the Outer Hebrides told by Tracy Chipman.)
• The Cailleach gives you permission to feel ugly and rageful 
• Dee Mulrooney speaks about the power of the diaspora to support the culture and offer new perspective to the “mother culture”
• Katy has deep expertise in astrology, so the stars and planets ground this conversation too!

Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com

WORK WITH...