Come walk with me.
- Aug 13
- 4 min read
I was reflecting on pilgrimage today, about how the journeys that have changed my life the most always began before I understood why I needed to go.
My first pilgrimage to Glastonbury was in 2023. Most randomly, the call came while I was watching Once Upon a Time. I reached the season about Camelot and something in me immediately knew, I have to go to Avalon.
I didn't have a grand explanation for it. I didn't know what I was going there to find. But I found a guide that same day (Shamir, still my guide!), reached out, and not long after, booked my ticket to Glastonbury.
That pilgrimage changed my life.
At the time, I was seriously frightened of wild and unstable terrain. I felt that I 100% needed proper paths beneath my feet. If the ground was steep or uneven, I needed someone's hand to hold.
On that first pilgrimage, I walked the back of the Tor through nettles and overgrown paths and being completely overwhelmed by the wildness of it.
And yet pilgrimage kept taking me, quite literally and psychologically, somewhere there was no pavement.
In the years since, I have climbed mountains I never imagined I could climb, entered caves while frightened, walked ancient paths alone, cried and grieved on stones, and followed places without understanding why I needed to be there.
Again and again, those journeys have introduced me to parts of myself that a life of comfort simply never required me to meet.
My courage. My wildness. My grief. My desire. My power. My freedom.
I don't think pilgrimage necessarily gives us something we don't already have.
I think it places us in experiences that call forgotten parts of ourselves forward.
The mountain asks something of us.
The cave asks something of us.
The ancient stone asks something of us.
The unknown asks something of us.
And in answering, we discover:
Oh. This is me too.
This is why I have come to believe that:
the further we venture,
the closer we come home to ourselves.
I've been thinking about all of this because I've been painting a body of work that has emerged through my pilgrimages. I often visit ancient sites, allow what I've encountered to settle in my body, and then paint.
And while reflecting on these paintings recently, something became very clear to me:
The life is the ritual.
There comes a point when we can journal about the life we want, dream about it, pull cards about it, ask for signs about it, and wait to feel completely ready for it.
And then there comes a point when we have to live it.
Book the journey. Make the art. Say the thing. Follow the curiosity. Answer the call. Leave what has ended. Begin what has been waiting.
Not because we aren't frightened.
Not because we know what will happen, or how it will unfold...
But because something inside us already knows where life is asking us to move.
And this is why I am writing to you today.
In a few days, I begin The Way of Fae, a seven-day mythology and ritual pilgrimage through Cornwall.
The following week, I begin Ancient Avalon, seven days of pilgrimage through Glastonbury, Wells, Bath and the surrounding sacred landscape.
There is still space to walk with us.
THE WAY OF FAE
Cornwall Mythology + Ritual Pilgrimage
16–22 August
We will journey through Cornwall's mythic landscape — to ancient stones, wild coastlines, caves, holy wells and places carrying the stories of Arthur, Merlin and the old land.
But pilgrimage is not about collecting places.
We enter into relationship with them.
We listen to the land. We walk it slowly. We meet it through myth, sound, ritual, silence and the body — and allow ourselves to be met in return.
Because these ancient places can become mirrors.
The cave, the stone, the ocean, the mountain — each asks something different of us.
Each can call forward a part of ourselves that everyday life may never require us to meet.
We don't simply travel through the landscape. We allow the landscape to travel through us.
ANCIENT AVALON
Glastonbury Sacred Feminine Pilgrimage
23–29 August
Ancient Avalon is a pilgrimage through landscape, but also through different faces of the feminine.
Across seven days, we journey with:
The Magdalene — The Witch — The Oracle — The Hearth — The Goddess — The Priestess — The Pilgrim.
Each becomes a doorway into a different part of ourselves. And rather than exploring these archetypes only through conversation or ideas, we meet them through place, through the body, and through lived experience.
The Magdalene through devotion, anointing and prayer.
The Witch through the ancient yew and the old ways.
The Oracle through sacred water, listening and inner knowing.
The Hearth through rest, spaciousness and return.
The Goddess through the living land, ancient trees and the Tor.
The Priestess through mystery, divination, sacred water and rebirth.
And finally, The Pilgrim — the one who has walked.
We journey through Glastonbury, Wells, Bath and the surrounding sacred landscape, meeting ancient trees, holy wells, the Abbey, the Tor, Chalice Well, White Spring and other places woven into the story of Avalon.
The archetypes give us a way into the land.The land gives us a way into ourselves.
And on the final day, we return.
Not as somebody new.
But more of who we have always been.
And this is what I want to say most in this love letter:
You don't have to know why a place is calling you before you go.
Sometimes going is how you find out.
So if Cornwall or Avalon has been somewhere in the periphery of your imagination — if you've kept returning to these journeys, felt something when you've seen the stones or the wells or the wild land, or simply had that strange little feeling of I want to be there —
listen to it.
You don't need to turn the whisper into certainty before answering it.
Sometimes the first step of pilgrimage is simply saying:
Okay. I'll go.
If there is a yes somewhere inside you,
come.
Come walk with me.
Perhaps there is a part of you waiting somewhere along the path to be met.
Your fellow pilgrim,
Stephanie
Cornwall · 16–22 August
Glastonbury, Wells + Bath · 23–29 August
ANSWER THE CALL →
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