After all, this morning is Samhain,2 the old seasonal Gaelic festival which marks the beginning of winter. And on this night, my ancestors believed, the passage between this world and the Otherworld is open.

madness. In this most ‘civilised’ of all cultures, madness is never something to be embraced – but in our old Celtic myths it occurs often enough, and it’s a perfectly natural response to the unendurable.

We have our own guiding stories, and they are deeply rooted in the heart of our own native landscapes. We draw them out of the wells and the waters;

And so, inevitably, my symptoms of panic returned: this time, with perfect resonance, taking the form of hyper-ventilation: a constant gasping for breath. I was thirty-seven years old, and it seemed to me that I was right back where I had started, seven years before. The Wasteland was all around me, and I was living in it again. But beyond a vague

Sometimes, madness seems like the only possible response to the insanity of the civilised world; sometimes, holding ourselves together is not an option, and the only way forward is to allow ourselves to fall apart.

That is why we must look for help along the way. The most valuable allies are those who teach us that we cannot succeed alone – and more, that it is meaningless to succeed alone, for an essential feature of the Heroine’s Journey is uncovering the power of community.

Whatever it takes, whatever might be lost along the way, I need to cut myself loose from this increasingly meaningless life, and find another path.

Heroine’s Journey is rarely, if ever, linear. My own journey has been more like a series of spirals – spirals which go both ways, leading me inwards and then back out again.

On any quest, there may be dead ends; sometimes we can set off down the wrong path. When the Selkie’s old skin is discovered, when she understands finally what was lost, she cannot wear it again, because it has disintegrated through misuse. She cannot simply pick up where she left off; she must set off to find a new skin.