Brigit of Song & Laughter

The Order of St. Brigit of Celts:
Scottish Nobility Re-Enactors Guilde & The Merrie Wreath Consort Renaissance Minstrels
i wouldn't assume that the information about St. Brigit is especially, er, proveable, but what a wonderful bunch of lively friends of Brigit! lovely garments and banners and music and loyalty to Mary Queen of Scots--who could ask for anything more? have a look at their photos and if you are in their neighbourhood...raise the haggis, i guess!

http://www.stbrigit.com/Brigit01.html

Tending Her Flame

sketch by Daughter of the Flame
Hawthorne, in Australia

to our knowledge there are three groups actively tending Brigit's perpetual flame at present, after a hiatus of a few hundred years. the flame of the Goddess had burned for no one-knows-how-long in Cill Dara--Kildare, Ireland--the Cell of the Oak. as Christianity took root the Goddess was replaced by the Saint, Her flame tended instead by nuns, who kept it for hundreds of years.

in 1993, on the same day--Brigit's Feast of 1 February--a group of Catholic Brigidine nuns and a largely Pagan group of women, unaware of the others' activities, relit Her perpetual flame in Ireland and in Canada. the second group, the Daughters of the Flame, live in many areas of the globe and take turns tending the flame every 20 days. the Catholic sisters have groups in several countries besides Ireland, as well.

some years later, a member of the Daughters of the Flame created Ord Brighideach, a solely online group that would make shifts available to women and men and in great numbers.

if you know of other groups who tend Brigit's perpetual flame, we would love to hear of them. please leave a comment at the end of this posting.

the Brigidine sisters in Ireland don't have a website, but can be contacted at this address:

SolasBhríde,
14 Dara Park,
Kildare, Ireland

you may wish to join their lay group or come on Imbolc for the great festival of Brighid each February. their sisters in Australia can be found at:
http://www.brigidine.org.au/

the Daughters of the Flame can be found at:
http://www.obsidianmagazine.com/DaughtersoftheFlame/

and Ord Brighideach's site is:
http://www.ordbrighideach.org/

Peace Beads

this site shows how to use prayer beads for peace, but also features information on a number of spiritual figures--goddesses and saints--who are concerned with peace. it saddened me to realize that although i had heard of the war god, mars, when i was just a child, i had never heard that there was a goddess named peace, pax, until today.

both the goddess Brigit and the saint Brighid are featured on this site, and there is a lovely picture of the goddess with a wolf:

http://www.thepeacebeads.com/ourlady/brighid.htm

http://www.thepeacebeads.com/ourlady/stbrighid.htm