Hello Shining Ones,
This message should arrive in your inbox at sunset, Irish time. I hope this day has been a gift for you as we soon transition into the twilight hours, a magical, liminal threshold time.
Last week, I opened the waitlist preorders for the Sunset Journal - a creative journal infused with Irish ancestral wisdom for anyone ready to reimagine their relationship with time. It has been surreal to see orders arrive from across Ireland, England, Scotland, the Orkney Islands, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
This project started five years ago when I asked myself a question inspired by how our ancestors likely began their day at sunset, not sunrise as we do today. I simply asked myself:
What if you began your day at sunset?
Then I asked my clients, community, and anyone else I thought might be interested:
What would life look like if I believed that my day started at dusk, not dawn?
The question itself was fuelled by my experiences as a feminine embodiment coach. It felt like an antidote to productivity culture, where you begin your day like a warrior ready to take up arms and battle through life. In the neon demands of a 24/7, switched-on life, it felt radical to contemplate my day in an ancestral way.
In the Irish language, one of the words for sunset is luí na gréine, which means the ‘lying down of the sun’, contemplating the sunset felt like lying down with the ancestors.
That original question has now become the Sunset Journal.
‘Stories were traditionally told by the storyteller, the seanchaí (the bearer of ‘old lore’), during the dark months from Samhain to Bealtaine and regaled at night after the sun had set, for it was considered bad luck to tell stories during the day. The fairies – descendants of the old deities, the Tuatha Dé Danann – were said to be most active after sunset when the veil between the waking world and the Otherworld became translucent, as ‘night belongs to them’.’
—Sunset Journal
The Sunset Journal is a printed creative journal for anyone who feels inspired to cultivate a practice of beginning their day at sunset. It is infused with the wisdom of our ancestors, but made for contemporary life.
Content includes:
Explorations of this sunset way of perceiving time, drawn from classical, mythological and folkloric sources
Reflections on how our creativity can be fuelled by the darkness of dreams and the Otherworld, inspired by the Irish bardic tradition
Insights into the mystical 8th-century text, the Cauldron of Poesy, and how we can tend to three cauldrons: Cauldron of Warming, Cauldron of Motion, and Cauldron of Wisdom as a framework for beginning our day at sunset
Over three months (13 weeks) of double-page Daily Spreads with journal prompts to begin each day at sunset
Plus 13 Sunset Distillations: a practice of gathering, distilling and decoding your daily entries into a unique symbol lexicon, your own inner oracle
‘The Áes Dána paid serious heed to imbas and its counterpart, sous, which means ‘scientific knowledge’ or ‘learning’, what we might call, in modern times, ‘book knowledge’ acquired through more formal study. Today, we are suffering terribly as a collective because we ridicule imbas, even though great scientific discoveries have come from this very place. Intuition, synchronicities, our night dreams – all gateways to imbas – are often devalued as codswallop, superstitious, and even backwards.’
—Sunset Journal
Everything about this journal is intentional and artisan. I want it to feel like holding a piece of art, a piece of the great ancestral puzzle, a piece of living soul in your hands.
For me, this is not just a journal, it’s about creating a movement for kindred souls who love sunset, dusk, twilight, and night. To reclaim the magic of dark in a light obsessed world.
This is only the beginning.
The waitlist has already made a wonderful dent in the availability (which was originally 130 books for this first print run) so do preorder to avoid disappointment if you feel the inner pull.
Your copy will be in the post by October 2026, just as we move into the dark months and the coming of Samhain. If you are in the southern hemisphere, the journal will still work its wonders. You’ll begin the Sunset Way with the coming of Bealtaine.
‘There are many tales of folks voyaging to the Otherworld and experiencing time collapse beyond logic and linear constraints. In what may seem like one rich day in Tír na nÓg, one whole year will have passed in linear, mortal time. Similar to Kairos in the Greek tradition, Otherworldly time is deep and generative, like our night dreams, where all timelines can co-exist in a single moment. This journal was created in Tír na nÓg time, so feel into this sense of deep time in your sunset journalling.’
—Sunset Journal
I hope we’ll be sunset journalling together soon.
For now, in gratitude,
Jen x
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