Review: Brigid - Celtic Goddess and Matron Saint of Ireland (Oracle Deck)

Brigid - Celtic Goddess and Matron Saint of Ireland, DR. KAREN WARD (author) and BERNIE SEXTON (artist) (2023)

Introduction

I am delighted by the breadth, depth, and beauty of this deck.

As always, there are things I quibble with, and I'll mention one or two below. But in general I find much more to like in Brigid - Celtic Goddess and Matron Saint of Ireland than to quarrel with. For instance, it takes in more of Brigit's cult than usual, leaning into aspects of her that we don't normally pay attention to, and so gives us more scope for contemplation. As well, rather than ignoring incontrovertibly Catholic aspects of Brigit and paganising the bits of Saint Brigit that we want to retain, she is allowed to be celebrated equally. (For instance, in the cards which show family members of both the saint and the goddess.)

This is important not because I have a fondness for the saint, personally, although I appreciate it for that reason, too, but because it's a step towards a clearer representation of who Brigit really is. Just as we protest the Christianisation of pagan elements of our stories, we need to acknowledge the modern tendency to paganise Christian elements, and look instead at what her roots truly are.

This clarification of roots isn't completely adhered to in Brigid - CGMSI. There are elements, such as the tradition of tying rags to trees at her holy wells, which come from the saint's cult but which are also, or exclusively, attributed to the goddess. But you'll find similar mixing of attributions in nearly all of the popular material about her – it's natural that traditions will be blended together over time – and there is less of it here than generally. So, for someone like myself who values knowing where ideas come from, and who loves the saint and the goddess equally, this is an enormous plus side to this deck and booklet.

The details

There are 52 cards in the deck. This is not a tarot but an oracle deck. There are no suits, no major and minor Arcana. It is divided into sections of from 3 to 8 cards. These sections cover her symbols, attributes, gifts and legends, and so on.

Karen Ward conceived of the deck and wrote the accompanying 62 page booklet. Each card has a number, a name, and an associated aspect. For instance, card number one is "Noble Name – Divinity" and the image is of a woman with various versions of the name Brigit superimposed on her.

There is one page for each card. The top, with the name and image, contains messages for the reader: "Find out what your name means. Your leadership skills need to be nurtured. You have the gift of 'common touch' with the ability to relate to many. Begin your sacred work now." Below this is a discussion of the concept, in this case Brigit's name. It culminates in a question: "What does your name mean, who gave it to you and why? May Brigid inspire you to embrace your name with new insights and delight. There is power and a divinity there to be discovered." You can see that there are a variety of perspectives offered for each concept and you are free to choose what speaks to you, comfortably or uncomfortably, within those offerings. I have found some of the cards I've drawn to be particularly thought-provoking on subjects that I am grappling with in my own life.

The artwork by Bernie Sexton is sublime. The images alone invite contemplation and can take the reader to some very interesting places. Several strike me as being particularly beautiful and one such,"The Element of Water" (card 11), makes me wish I could talk with the artist about her inspiration for the image. Others are straightforward, such as a raised fist in a circle of Irish knot-work, against the background of a golden sun, found on number 13, "Activist." I love that such a card exists, along with Peacemaker and Earth Keeper, Powerful Vocation, Charitable Deeds, and Sunbeam Miracle… cards that take us to places so critical in these times and help us to reflect on how each topic is relevant in our own lives.

Although there is a suggested layout for readings, I've simply been pulling individual cards and sitting with their image and message for days or, in the case of the first one I pulled, shortly after my mother died, months. (That card was number 33 – "Keening.") I have found this a rich path into meditation.

Do I agree with every interpretation or representation of Brigit in the booklet? No. For instance, the assertion that "Goddess Brigid's Fire Temple, Kildare was incorporated into Saint Brigid's monastery" (number 23, "Fire Temple"), and the underlying assumption that Saint Brigit herself was originally a druid, is well enough rebutted in the academic literature to be left out or at least couched as a hypothesis. And there is the occasional tendency to do what I myself did in places in my own book about Brigit, and mix the two strands, goddess and saint, as if they were the same story. This leads to such things as attributing the role the saint plays in protecting children – but not the goddess, in any of the lore available to us – to "her perceived inability to save her own (the goddess's) son" (pg. 43).

But the reality is, I'm not going to agree with everything in any book about Brigit, and some things, like the story of the goddess having a perpetual flame and the saint having been druid, are almost universally embraced by popular writers; there is no getting away from them. It's up to us as readers to learn as much as we can about where our information comes from [1] and to keep an open mind about everything we read. What I have to do as a reviewer is to step back and ask, "Is this a book I would give to a friend who wants to grow closer to, or know more about, Brigit? Does it have substantial value?" And in this case the answer is unquestionably, "Yes.”

Note [1]:  Morgan Daimler's book, Pagan Portals – Brigid, is an excellent jumping off point for learning where our ideas about Brigit arise from; Christina Harrington's book, Women in a Celtic Church – Ireland 450 - 1150, gives an in-depth explanation of the origins of the goddess fire-temple story and the dearth of material supporting it.

Images: A selection of cards and the booklet from this deck. Photo by Mael Brigde.

 

Review: "Brigid of Kildare - A Full-Length Play” by Myla Lichtman-Fields

 

Review Myla Lichtman-Fields Brigid of Kildare - A Full-Length Play (2014)

 

This review has two parts, one covering the booklet containing the original script, and one of the radio performance, which differs from the original in important ways.

 

The booklet (original script):

 

Lichtman-Fields’s play is that rare beast among Brigidine fiction, a piece that, while written for one side of the religious divide or the other, in this case Christian, honours and respects and even celebrates to some degree the other religion, pre-Christian Irish paganism, or Druidism as she envisions it. A most welcome approach!

 

Lichtman-Fields has done a good job of looking through the lives of Saint Brigit and picking out important moments, then fleshing them out with dialogue and character.

 

BRIGID: Kildare’ll mark an important link between our Druid traditions and our new world. Here, my Sisters will keep a fire burning day and night to honor those who came before and to help light the way for those who come after us.

 

 pg. 60

 

This is pure Lichtman-Fields. There is nothing in the early Brigit literature about linking the two worlds.[1] But it is a lovely offering of a long-withheld olive branch between the two paths.

 

Make no mistake, though, this play will appeal in the main to Christians, particularly Catholics, who enjoy and appreciate the old genre of religious inspiration and education, hagiography – writings of saints’ lives which model the values, beliefs, and understanding of the world that are expected of a great Christian. 

 

Review: "The Celtic Quest: A Contemporary Spirituality” by Rosemary Power

 

I saw this book on a shop shelf at St. Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn, Ireland. I thought at first that it would be another book intended to inspire the spiritual seeker, and, given the place and the publisher, that the seeker would be a Christian.

That is partly right. It is aimed in the main at Christians, but it is in fact an examination of a spiritual path which the author clearly defines as *modern*, and which is based on a small number of carefully selected writings, taken out of context, which give a partial and distorted image of the original cultures and spiritual paths.

Power is herself Irish and is a member of one of the communities that is most strongly associated today with the “Celtic” — the Iona Community in Scotland. Her intention in examining the history of Celtic Christianity, its aims and values, errors (deliberate and not) and strengths is not to tear down the structure but to reveal it, and to suggest ways to grow past the flaws and create a broader and deeper spirituality.

Although I am not a Christian I am very interested in what she reveals here, as it has many shared roots, strengths, and flaws with the Celtic in Neo-Paganism, both of which spiritual paths have spread misconceptions about the cultures whose writings and art have been used by them. I agree that a close examination of the details of these paths is needed and can only strengthen them as they continue into the future. Although a bit dry in places (and a bit needfully generalised in the early chapters), it is a fascinating story and one that, if more widely known, can help to counteract some of the misconceptions we continue to perpetuate.

One specific example:

Power tells the story of a poem dated to the 10th or 11th century which is included in Kenneth Jackson’s A Celtic Miscellany (1971). The poem contains images that will be familiar to many, particularly, “I should like to have a great ale-feast for the King of Kings; I should like the Heavenly Host to be drinking it for all eternity.”

The poem goes on to outline the speaker’s wish to embody important Christian virtues, from Faith and Repentance to Long-Suffering and Mercy. Jackson says in his notes, “A religious poet imagines himself as a tributary tenant of God, rendering the Irish legal dues of lodging and entertainment to his overlord and his retinue.”

Why, then, do we all think of Saint Brigit when we hear of beer and God?

Esther de Waal published a folk version of the poem in A World Made Whole — Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition (1991) which loses the penitence and gloom and becomes pure celebration. This version was taken from the introduction to an English translation of Blasket Island storyteller Peig Sayers’ autobiography. But it is de Waal who attributes it to Saint Brigit. There was no hint of a connection with her before that time.

I highly recommend this book to both Christians and Pagans to whom it is important to get things straight. The real history is far more interesting than made up ones.

I would take exception to one point Power seems to make in the section entitled, “Can the historically wrong be theologically right?” She says, “Celtic spirituality has been criticised for its limited use of sources, for being naïve, but not for being destructive.” The implication being that whatever else it may be, it hasn't done any harm. Perhaps she is thinking that it hasn't done any harm to the adherents themselves. To my mind, despite all of the good it has done for its adherents — and it has done good — by creating and spreading misinformation about the cultures the original texts are taken from, it has done harm to those cultures themselves.

P.S. I’ve just put my review on Amazon and the book is very expensive there. Try bookfinder.com or interlibrary loan!

Book Review: Becoming Brigid by Lisa Shafer

 

Becoming Brigid by Lisa Shafer (2013)

 

Confession: covers matter to me. They are the first thing about a book that catches my attention, either by their wonderfulness, their horribleness, or their unnoticeableness. They tell me the genre, often, what sort of publisher is handling them (don’t assume I gravitate to the ones from big publishers, because I don’t), and, if I’m lucky, something of the subject of the book. They are my first opportunity to assess whether I might be interested enough to stay a moment and find out a little more.

 

Given all that, I approached this book, which I found by chance online, cautiously. The cover appeared homemade, which usually means the book is self-published. I know that many self-published books are awesome, but a whole lot of them are not. So, I approach, but with slightly lowered expectations.

 

To my delight, the blurb told me that this was a novel not just about a girl and a fellow, but also a missing goddess named Brigid. Yes!! There are not enough novels about Brigit, from where I sit, and I am always looking for ones I will love. With Becoming Brigid I was looking at one that moved out of the more serious territory of the others I have read* and into a fond sub-genre, paranormal fantasy. I ordered it, and soon it arrived.

 

My first impressions were good. The writing was professional and engaging, the genre familiar and comfortable (North American Y.A. urban fantasy), and I quickly got a sense of the main character and her cheeky, adventurous spirit. Her father is a ghost hunter who never finds anything, but she, it seems, sees ghosts. And one, at least, sees her.

 

And we’re off.

 

The long and the short of it is, I really like this book. The plot is appealing and carried me along, with enough surprises that I was pleased but not so many I was exhausted. The main and secondary characters are convincing and interesting (I really like Pepper’s sidekick, though I wish her female friends had featured more in the book). The dialogue, and in fact the writing overall, is excellent. The story’s main setting (Utah) remains tangible in my memory, though I have hazier recollection of other settings. And the author’s humour shines through on a number of occasions, giving me some good, unexpected laughs, which I appreciate in a book that is not attempting to be funny on every page. I was absolutely in my reading element to have added to all of that the intrigue of my real life favourite goddess playing a major part here.

 

Did I have criticisms flickering in my brain at any points as I read along? Of course. I always do – even when I am the person who did the writing.

 

There were a couple of moments where a person of size was referred to in a humourously pejorative way, which really bothers me. (I felt somewhat better when I discovered that the author herself is heavy. Not that it makes it great, but it is likely internalised oppression rather than skinny-person prejudice. I can live with that.)

 

I did feel uncomfortable with the sexual vibe between a teenager and a grown man, even though it is never acted on beyond a brief kiss. Why could he not have been a teenager, too? On the other hand, handled as it is, it’s saying to girls, “You can say no even to a guy you really like; there is no hurry or even any need to act on those feelings,” without shaming the protagonist’s sexual sensations and desires. That is pretty cool, if you ask me, and a whole lot different than the messages in the books I read as a teen.

 

In fact, there is a whole lot of girl power happening in this story, a lot of rejection of controlling males, and the protagonist finding her way through her fears and self-perceptions: but not in a heavy handed, info dump kind of way. Really well done.

 

For those among us who are attached to certain stories about the goddess Brigit, I will say that the backstory here is not from the Irish tales and traditions. It is based instead on a much more recent tale of Brigit and Lugh in Scotland, along with what my limited understanding believes is a Wiccan or similar Neo-Pagan perspective. Brigit’s triple goddess nature is said by one character to be linked to the maiden-mother-crone modality, which in origin, in fact, it is not. This is again a modern framework superimposed on an ancient goddess.

 

But you know what? That’s okay. If we aren’t coming to this novel to learn mythology or history, but to enjoy fictional magic, a character’s growing self-awareness, and plain good writing, then there is no need to worry about those things. And you know how much time I do spend worrying about them, in my free time.

 

Now, I may have to seek out Lisa Shafer’s other books, starting with the first, Confessions of an Average Half-Vampire.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

* You can read my reviews of them on my blog, Brigit’s Sparkling Flame: http://brigitssparklingflame.blogspot.com/p/brigit-book-reviews.html

Review of River Magic by M. A. Phillips, book one of The Rituals of Rock Bay

 

Review of River Magic by M. A. Phillips, book one of The Rituals of Rock Bay (2020) Shadow Spark Publishing

 

First, what I like:

 

I want to say right from the start that I really like this book. It has a kind of ebullience and innocence about it that is really charming. The protagonist, though imperfect, as we all must be, has an integrity that guides her actions, and a passion for life that goes beyond herself and her friends, to the beings, sometimes familiar, sometimes frightening, that dwell in the world around her. It also deals with something I haven’t seen represented much in fiction: The coming of age of a modern Neo-Pagan woman.

 

Lacey Moran has explored Paganism with her friend Lidia since their school days, but she hasn’t really found her spiritual home. When Lidia opens a metaphysical store in their village of Rock Bay (situated along the beautiful Saint Lawrence River – a visit there is now on my bucket list), a group of modern Druids book the space for their Imbolc ritual. This ritual introduces Lacey to the goddess Brigit, and a connection is made immediately. (Hurrah! This is why I decided to read and review this book.)

 

Lacey has also had cryptic dreams of a mermaid in the river. Coming from a family with a talent for premonition, Lacey knows that many of her dreams foreshadow events to come. Do these?

 

Now, I have completely left out the other main theme of this book: the love that Lacey has for her longtime friend, Cian, and her conflicting feelings about becoming romantically involved with him. Cian is a feature of these dreams, making them more concerning to her. What do they mean?

 

“Conference review for Brighid: Her Flame Burns Brightly 27 Jan 2018” by Potia Pitchford

I am very late to the game in sharing this review with you. I just stumbled across it quite by accident, while looking something up on DuckDuckGo. [Edit: Ha ha! I actually posted about it at the time, but I just gave a link. Doh.]

Potia Pitchford, Scottish Hearth Druid, wrote an extensive review of Land, Sea, Sky Travel's first online conference, which happened eighteen months ago. With her permission, I am reposting the review here, but follow the link if you would like to read it in its natural habitat, Musings of a Scottish Hearth Druid.

Conference review for Brighid: Her Flame Burns Brightly 27 Jan 2018

by Potia Pitchford

Mother, hearth druid, polytheist

“Brighid: Her Flame Burns Brightly” was an online conference organized and hosted by Land Sea Sky Travel as the first in a series of conferences. The series is called “A Year With The Gods” and they have plans for online conferences spaced through the year close to the more commonly recognized Pagan festivals.

As I have had a devotional relationship with Brigantia for many years I decided that trying to attend this online conference should be a good experience for me with the added benefit of devoting time to Her that day.  I was however a bit nervous as I had not experienced this type of online conference before.  I needn’t have worried.

Review: Saint Brigid of Kildare: Life, Legend and Cult by Noel Kissane

Kissane, Noel. Saint Brigid of Kildare: Life, Legend and Cult (2017).

Noel Kissane’s book on Saint Brigit is unlike any I have previously read. Readable, immense in scope, it places her within the context of medieval Irish and Continental Christianity while also examining the minutiae of her cult.

Kissane traces the early development of Christianity in Ireland, such as the process of conversion, and sets Saint Brigit in the context of bishops like Palladius and Patrick. Important texts about or mentioning her are discussed, their dates estimated and implications considered. Various older images of Saint Brigit which we encounter on the internet are identified with their original sources. The lives and intentions of authors of early poems and Lives dedicated to her are delved into. Artistic depictions are listed. Her folklore, the history of Brigidine nuns, cultural movements that drew inspiration from her are examined—and so on and on.

If you were to attempt a pilgrimage through Europe dedicated to Saint Brigit, this would be an essential reference book. Irish placenames linked to her, monastic communities and churches connected to Kildare (ca. 1000 C.E.), and current dedications from churches to Gaelic Athletic Associations are listed and their history briefly recounted. The origin and movement of her various relics (including more heads than most people can boast) is investigated, and he details her cult across Europe, distinguishing between churches named for St. Brigitta of Sweden versus those named for St. Brigit of Kildare, where to the untrained eye these wouldn’t be easily teased apart.

I especially enjoyed reading Kissane’s depiction of life in Ireland during her era—setting her tales against that essential background is not done enough.[1] He goes deeply into the role her supposed tribe, the Fothairt, played in that society (working as mercenaries for other tribes) and what this implies for her, and compares the claims of different locales for her birth, growing up, or veiling ceremony. (I am now convinced it was Mac Caille, not Mél, who gave her the veil, but you may come to a different conclusion.) Amply sourced and footnoted, with an index that includes a breakdown by Irish county and town, it has a bibliography to bring joy to the researcher’s heart. Such are the delights of this book for Brigit scholars.

It is delightful, as well, to have so many oddities of the lore explained. For instance, why do we sometimes encounter the suggestion that Cogitosus (author of her earliest Life) was Brigit’s nephew? (Because of a misreading of a garbled manuscript.) Could Patrick actually have converted Brigit? (Nope.) Why did the Scottish claim her as their own? Was she ever in Glastonbury? Etc. Some of these are explained elsewhere, of course, but no other text tackles so many of these questions as this one.

Little space is set aside for the goddess, naturally, as she is not the subject of this book. However, I am disappointed that Kissane accepts without really questioning, and offers as a statement of high probability if not fact, the hypothesis, generally discounted by modern scholars (for utter lack of evidence), that Kildare was a pagan community dedicated to the goddess Brigit.[2] He even adds to the usual story his own details, such as that the saint may have converted separately from the community (pg. 90), and that she probably inherited a “countrywide network of established holy sites” (pg. 118). I fear that his elaboration of these and related ideas will just add to the rampant confusion around this. I am not opposed to him speculating. I simply wished he had made it clearer that this scenario was unweighted by evidence, and had offered the contradictory view as well. He has such a richness of factual matter here, and many of his speculations throughout the book seem more carefully reasoned. In this area he seems to lose sight of the boundary between conjecture and supportable theory. He goes so far as to say, “It is almost certain that to some degree the early Irish converts to Christianity conflated the saint with the goddess and regarded the saint as retaining and manifesting certain of the qualities and functions of the goddess” (pg. 93). But it is not almost certain. Now, if he had said that it was almost certain that they saw elements of a goddess in the saint, I would be much happier. But to presume the existence of this Brigit goddess sanctuary is venturing too far into conjecture to be certain of anything.

Another instance of unsupported speculation, much less worrying, is when he states that the story of Brigit’s mother’s status is much more likely to be correct in Vita Prima (slave) than in Cogitosus’s Life (noble woman) because there would be no reason to invent her illegitimacy. I can think of one good reason: Christ was born to a woman who was unmarried at the time of his conception. As in other saints’ Lives, many of the elements of Saint Brigit’s hagiography are meant to reflect moments in Jesus’s life as a way of showing her holiness. They reflect but do not exactly copy them. Could this be an instance of the same? I give this example only to say that speculation is just that, and we should never take it, when unsupported by excellent evidence, as any more likely than any other explanation to be true.

There is another good reason for making her illegitimate. Cogitosus was apparently a monk at Brigit’s monastery at Kildare (though a good while after her death); the author of Vita Prima was loyal to Armagh, St. Patrick’s seat of power. Kildare and Armagh were in the throes of a struggle for ecclesiastical supremacy. As Lisa Bitel writes in Landscape with Two Saints, unlike in Cogitosus’s Life, in Vita Prima and other later Lives Brigit “submitted to male religious officials, never competing directly for territory or space” (pg. 176). In this way she is subtly shown to be Patrick’s inferior, making Armagh the legitimate religious centre of Ireland. Would it not benefit such an agenda to have her the daughter of a slave, where Patrick was the son of nobles?

But such matters hardly mar my pleasure in the book as a whole. There is a goldmine of information here, including facts that, for all my scrutiny, I have never come across before, and which put into a much clearer order the normally shifting sea of matters Brigidine.

Highly recommended.

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[1] See Christina Harrington’s Women in a Celtic Church and Lisa Bitel’s Landscape with Two Saints for very fine exceptions to this rule, as well as Alice Curtayne’s much earlier St. Brigid of Ireland for a less academic and slightly more fanciful but nevertheless excellent example.

[2] See Christina Harrington’s Women in a Celtic Church for a detailed explanation of how this hypothesis came about and the changes in scholarship that have led to its general rejection today.

Review: Pagan Portals—Gods and Goddesses of Ireland by Morgan Daimler

Daimler, Morgan. Pagan Portals—Gods and Goddesses of Ireland: A Guide to Irish Deities (2016).

Once again I come away from reading one of Morgan Daimler’s books with a sense of excitement and the urge to wave it in front of all sorts of people saying, “You want this book!” Why, in this case?

If you have ever plunged into Irish mythological texts, or even modern writings about the Irish deities, you will have quickly discovered that there are a LOT of names in there, all baffling if you are unused to Irish spellings, or are unaware that there are multiple forms and spellings for every name, not to mention the plethora of different persons associated with each god or goddess. In one story he is married to so-and-so, in another he is cavorting with someone else; here she is a sympathetic character, there she is a trickster or a dupe. How do you keep them all straight? And how begin to build a sense of each deity in his or her own right and complexity? How winnow through opinion and fact, misinformation and changing perceptions over time? How, on top of all of this, do you honour those you are drawn to?

There are a number of excellent tomes that cover Irish deities and myths in depth. Their worth is undeniable. But if you want to narrow down your focus you would be hard pressed to find a source that maps things out as clearly and beautifully as Pagan Portals—Gods and Goddesses of Ireland.

The Pagan Portals series is a brilliant idea. Each book is short—in this case less than ninety pages—and serves as an introduction to its subject that offers enough information to set you clearly on your path without overwhelming you with detail. It is possible to read one quickly enough to retain a good sense of the general scope of the book, to leave you feeling less rather than more confused.

In this case, Daimler’s purpose is to offer sound scholarly information about the deities in an easily accessible style to assist those interested in following an Irish Pagan path. This book could be of use both to newcomers to Irish Neo-Paganism and to those who have been immersed for some while.

She tackles her topic by dividing the book into three main sections covering the gods of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the goddesses of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and Irish deities of different or uncertain origins. Instead of limiting herself to the handful of deities we encounter again and again, Daimler includes a number who are much more obscure. She somehow strikes a balance between giving a satisfying survey of their names, relationships, attributes, associations, and elements of their stories, and holding back enough detail that the reader doesn’t end up becoming lost in the thickets.[1] (It must be very hard to stop herself at times—she is well versed in her topic and has many fascinating gems at her disposal.) She is concise and clear without oversimplifying, frequently giving conflicting points of view and allowing the reader to follow up on them if desired rather than simply offering her own favourite theory and omitting all controversy. As well as those of Celtic scholars, she offers perspectives of Irish Neo-Pagan practitioners, and ends each entry with suggestions for how we might honour a given deity in our own lives.

In addition to the individual entries, which range from less than half a page for a deity like Neit, about whom little is known, to over four pages for Macha, Daimler offers excellent advice on how to build a relationship with the deities—not a prescription of rituals and offerings, but an approach to learning and relating that is as wise as it is clear (and again, succinct). A bibliography and recommended reading list are given at the end of the book.

I had not originally thought to include this review in Brigit’s Sparkling Flame. I changed my mind for the simple reason that Brigit is not an isolated goddess, but a part of a rich tapestry of deities from a complex culture, and having a clearer sense, even just a beginning sense, of some of the other gods and goddesses can only strengthen our understanding of and relationship to her. I can think of no better book to wave before Brigidines for this purpose than Pagan Portals—Gods and Goddesses of Ireland.

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[1] One detail I find especially interesting which is not often included is the particular geographic area a deity is linked to, where that is known.

"Imbolc: A New Interpretation" by Phillip Bernhardt-House

I am republishing my review of Bernhardt-House's article in celebration of the fact that he has uploaded the paper to Academia.edu, making this hard-to-find piece easy to obtain. Thank you, Phillip! (Click here to view or download.)

 “Imbolc: A New Interpretation”, Phillip A. Bernhardt-House (pp 57-76) in Cosmos 18 (2002)

This intriguing article looks at the meaning of Imbolc from a new perspective—that of a connection with wolf and warrior cults originating with the Indo-Europeans and presenting in Roman and Celtic civilizations. Bernhardt-House has a broad knowledge of the literature and he brings together disparate pieces into a tantalizing whole. Where he himself concludes that his new etymology may be proved unsound, it nevertheless serves to “refocus our attentions on certain smaller aspects” of Imbolc, particularly the wolf aspect, which is “now beyond doubt as having been important to the holiday as it would have been observed in pre-Christian times” (pg 65-66).[1]

In approaching the subject, Bernhardt-House first looks at both Neo-Pagan and scholarly etymologies of the Irish word for the festival, Imbolc. While accepting the consensus meanings of milking and purification, he suggests an additional—and surprising—one.

If im has as its basis “butter”, olc is generally derived as “evil, bad, wrong” in Irish, both Old and Modern. But Kim McCone[2] traces this word back to the Indo-European root meaning “wolf”. Joining these two, Bernhardt-House offers “Imbolc as the 'butter-wolf'”, hoping to “shed some light on further images in Irish sources, as well as connecting this to a further complex within Indo-European ritual” (pg 60).

These images in Irish sources range from calendrical evidence linking February to wolves, the association of Candlemas in France and Belgium with the wolf (where a wolf sighting predicts the ending of winter), of Brigit herself with the bear and wolf, and so on, along with an examination of the period of time between Samhain and Imbolc and its association with warring, as well as hospitality.

Perhaps most interesting is the parallel drawn between the rites of the Lupercalia in Rome and Imbolc in Ireland, and their potential links to Gaulish deities and to earlier rituals. The link with purification in both festivals is already established; the writer points to a possible further link in purification with the use of milk or, in the Irish case, butter.

The young Roman priests, the Luperci, sacrificed a dog and a goat at the cave where Romulus and Remus were said to have been nursed by a wolf. The blood of these two animals was mixed and the youngest priest's forehead anointed with the mixture; this was then cleaned away using a piece of milk-soaked wool, which ritual was followed eventually by striking the general populace with goat-skin thongs for luck and fertility.

In a medieval story St Brigit removes the signs worn by men which signify their engagement in activities of war; Bernhardt-House suggests that if “some form of Brigid was one of the presiding deities of Imbolc, Brigit who was bear-mother in origin but could easily have been a wolf-mother in Ireland, might have been the deity who removed these warrior-signs and reincorporated the youthful fian-warriors into regular society, perhaps by the means of the purifying medium of milk, or, given the etymology I have suggested with imb-, perhaps even butter” (pg 64).

The details examined by the writer are greater in number and scope than suggested by this brief review, and it is worth tracking down the article through your local or university library.[3]

This is just the sort of thing that gets the creative mind churning along nicely. A very enjoyable article.

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[1]     For a complete review of the wolf and werewolf in Celtic literature and an examination of that material, see Bernhardt-House, Phillip A., Werewolves, magical hounds, and dog-headed men in Celtic literature: a typological study of shape-shifting, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.

[2]     See my review above of his Brigit section, “Fire and the Arts” (etc) in Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature, Kim McCone (1990)

[3]     For a posting in the NeoPagan blogosphere see http://www.patheos.com/community/paganportal/2011/02/01/the-hidden-imbolc/. For a discussion  in a Celtic Reconstructionist forum of both the blog post and this peer-reviewed article, see http://community.livejournal.com/cr_r/351977.html In particular see the comment from  wire_mother: “I've read the original article from which PSVL derives this thesis (Bernhardt-House, Phillip A., "Imbolc: A New Interpretation", Cosmos 18 (2002), 57-76), and I buy the argument on the basis that OIr. olc very plausibly derives from PIE *wlkwo- "wolf" (which gives us English "wolf"!, and which through simple metathesis gives us *lukwo-, from which we derive e.g. English "lupine" from Latin) and also very plausibly shows semantic drift into its current meaning of "bad, evil" given the Christian experience of the youthful warrior/lycanthropic bands in Ireland; that it shows a definite relationship to Lupercalia, which seems to be a Latin reflex of the same ritual impulse; and the relationship of St. Brighid to the outlaw bands (all of which elements are discussed in that article by PSVL). For disclosure, I know both Prof. Bernhardt-House, the author of that article, and PSVL in person, and have discussed the issue with them many times, but even so, the three points I list here are more solid than even the assumption that we can derive pagan practices from e.g. folklore. That is, we have solid linguistic grounds (any linguist can easily derive that using tested rules of language change - one would have to dismiss nearly the entire field of linguistics to dismiss that point), solid comparative grounds (in the same region, even, and from a tradition which is linguistically closely related - one would have to dismiss the concept that religious ideas refer to the past in any way to dismiss that point, which would require one to dismiss the concept of any continuity of pagan religion at all), and solid hostile testimonial grounds (and the evidence for those youthful warrior-bands being also self-consciously, as well as community-consciously, considered to be "lycanthropic" is extensively documented across Europe, in the Celtic countries, and specifically in Ireland).”

Conference review for Brighid: Her Flame Burns Brightly 27 Jan 2018

Potia Pitchford gives a generous and pithy review of Land, Sea, Sky's Brighid conference in her blog, Musings of a Scottish Hearth Druid (Thoughts about living, loving and worshiping as a Hearth Druid. One woman's journey.)

To read it, follow this link.

Image: Header from Potia's blog.