Book: "Pagan Portals - Brigid: Meeting the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Forge, and Healing Well" by Morgan Daimler

This is an EXCELLENT book.

I have read it cover to cover, and have seen nothing else that comes close to it in clearly and briefly presenting the facts and confusions around the goddess Brigit. (Not the saint. Different book.)

I can't recommend it highly enough.

From the publisher's website:

Pagan Portals - Brigid is a basic introduction to the Goddess Brigid focusing on her history and myth as well as her modern devotion and worship. Primarily looking at the Irish Goddess but including a discussion of her Pan-Celtic appearances, particularly in Scotland. Her different appearances in mythology are discussed along with the conflation of the pagan Goddess with Catholic saint. Modern methods for neopagans to connect to and honor this popular Goddess include offerings and meditation, and personal anecdotes from the author's experiences are included as well.

Who was Brigid to the pre-Christian pagans? Who is she today to neopagans? How do we re-weave the threads of the old pagan Goddess and the new? Learn about Brigid's myths among the pagan Irish, the stories of Bride in Scotland, and the way that people today are finding and honoring this powerful and important deity to find the answer.

Morgan Daimler is an Irish Reconstructionist with Heathen tendencies who has been a polytheist since the early ’90′s. Morgan is a Druid in the Order of the White Oak and witch who follows a path inspired by the Irish Fairy Faith. A wandering cleric of Odin and dedicant of Macha, Morgan teaches classes on Irish myth and magical practices, fairies, and related subjects around the northeastern United States and has appeared as a guest on the podshows, the New Normal and Raven Radio. Morgan has been published in multiple anthologies as well as in Circle magazine, Witches and Pagans magazine, and the CR journal Air n-Aithesc. Besides the titles available through Moon Books Morgan has self-published By Land, Sea, and Sky, a book of Irish language translations called The Treasure of the Tuatha De Danann, and an urban fantasy/paranormal romance series called Between the Worlds and through Spero publishing a children's book called A Child's Eye View of the Fairy Faith. Connecticut, USA.

Course: Weaving the Protection of Brighid - A Goddess Activation Course with Jude Lally

Goddess Ink, publishers of Brigit: Sun of Womanhood, are offering a week-long Goddess Activation course with Jude Lally:

From the website:

This week long Goddess Activation course introduces several traditional ways of invoking Brighid's protection, from creating a Brighid's Wheels to casting the Caim. You will explore each of the six aspects, learning the history and then adapting and integrating them into your daily life. Each lesson is a journey in building and deepening your relationship with Brighid through study, altars, guided meditation and personal rituals...

... Jude Lally is an artist, a writer and holder of sacred space. She grew up a few miles from Loch Lomond, where the river Leven meets the mighty River Clyde, on the West Coast of Scotland.

She gained her masters degree (MSc) in Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland with her thesis "Fire in the Head, Heart and Hand: A Study of the Goddess Brigit as Goddess Archetype and her Relevance to Cultural Activists in Contemporary Scotland."

Find out more about the course and sign up at Weaving the Protection of Brighid.

Cost is $35 US.

Poem for Imbolc: "By Brigit's Day"

Please visit Stone on the Belly--the Brigit poetry blog--for this and other poems and prayers to and about Brigit and her cultus.

Blessings of (Almost) Imbolc! And Thoughts on Feast and Famine

Hello, dear Friends of Brigit!

Coming up is my favourite night of the year--Imbolc, and the beginning of the Celtic spring with all its quickening life and new promise. To those of you in the southern hemisphere comes Lughnasa, another rich moment in the calendar. 

I want to wish all my sisters and brothers in tending Brigit's flame, and all who simply love or simply are terribly curious about her, the brightest of blessings at this festive time. I hope your lives, and your flames, are shining brightly, and would love to hear from you if you would like to say hello.

One of the basic ways I celebrate Imbolc is to make some kind of Irish-related festive meal--usually involving a big pot of colcannon, made either with kale or, as is more common now, cabbage.

This year I've decided to pay homage to my pre-Famine ancestors and eat a potato with a dab of butter and some buttermilk, and nothing more. It is amazing the richness that diet provided, and the devastation of its loss. So to all I say, may we be deeply grateful for the blessings of our earth and on our plates, and may our health be the best that it can be.

I also look forward to making a bed for Brigit, an example of which you will see humbly depicted below, dashing some cream over the threshold, and inviting her in for another year.

Sweet blessings of Brigit on you all!

 

                                   Flame Offering 

In the name of the three Brigits

I light the candle of my heart

May I offer it to everyone

gentle and steady

warm and bright

The Daughters of the Flame

Brigit's Sparkling Flame

Lady Cara: a Gentle Telling of Brigit's Story (YouTube)

Part One of Lady Cara's telling of Saint Brigit's story:



And Part Two:

Children's Books about Saint Brigid

Fox Leaping Through a Hoop Made from Brigit's Skirt - by Caroline Cory

I will confess right off the top that I have found these links online but have not actually seen any of the books. What a plethora compared to just a few years ago! And the ones I knew (see my reviews in the pages links above) are not even among them.

Holy cow. (As it were.)

The Truth About St Brigid - By the pupils of Saint Brigid’s School for children with special needs in Mullingar. (There is a video of the book, and all proceeds go to buying a bus for the school. If they haven't got it already - it's been a year since the posting.

				The Truth About St Brigid Did you know that Saint Brigid, Ireland's foremost female holy person, liked to drink tea whilst eating chips? Or that the King Of Leinster was so amazing that his ...
				View on www.broadsheet.ie	Preview by Yahoo

Holy Crocodile!: Taming Foxes -- The story of Brigit and two foxes feature in one chapter of Cory's book about saints and animals.

				Holy Crocodile!: Taming Foxes In the story of St. Brigid and the Fox, there are two semi-tame foxes -- one is the king's pet, who is killed by a woodsman. The other is St. Brigid's fox.
				View on carolinecory.blogspot...	Preview by Yahoo

 Shower of Roses: Celebrating the Saints :: St. Brigid of Ireland -- This one is a blog posting that features different books and a personal story of her daughter's love for Saint Brigit.

				Shower of Roses: Celebrating the Saints :: St. Brigid of... Between the conversation with my daughter and the new painting I was inspired to try and do a little something extra to celebrate St. Brigid's feast day after all.
				View on showerofroses.blogsp...	Preview by Yahoo

Saint Brigid and the King's Wolf  -- by Rhode Island art educator and illustrator, Mary Kane Hendrickson.

Saint Brigid the Fearless - In a Nutshell -- from Poolbeg's "In A Nutshell" series.

The Story of Saint Brigid -- by Catriona Clarke

New Brigit Blog: Her Eternal Flame

From Erin's new Brigit blog:

An Invitation

An invitation welcomes, and there are so many welcomings.

Brighid’s Eternal Flame invites us to sit within Her Light, and allow it to transform us.

We, in turn, can invite Her Eternal Flame into the sanctum of our heart centers, the depths of our souls, where that mystical transformation takes place.

The hospitality of welcoming is the promise of giving, and the humble joy in receiving bounty.

My invitation to my fellow Brighidine Flametenders, devotees, and other interested readers, is twofold:

I invite you to read along and explore with me my unfolding vision of contemplative Brighidine mysticism, in terms of spirituality and practice, and how this might inform our roles and paths as Brighidine Flametenders today.

I also invite you to envision and intuit yourselves the various ways in which such a path might express itself, the varieties of how She might speak to the human soul, that each soul might find those ways which resonate most meaningfully.  We might each have our own paths to and within Contemplative Brighidine Mysticism, and I think we can only benefit by sharing them with one another, and that in doing so, the flame burns brighter.

Please feel free to share your insights and thoughts and visions in the comments here.  Let us continue to tend Her flame together, as fellow Keepers of Her Eternal Flame.

Brìde Bless.

AuthorErin Lund JohnsonPosted onJULY 23, 2015

The Cow That Nursed Saint Brigit

A Short History of Irish Moiled Cattle: Thanks for this, Vicki!

We nearly lost them. Thanks to those who've brought them back. Wouldn't I love to have a few of these beauties grazing in the back.



From Bethu Brigte, the Irish Life of Saint Brigit:

5

When it was time to wean her the druid was anxious about her; anything he gave her [to eat] she vomited at once, but her appearance was none the worse. ‘I know’, said the druid, ‘what ails the girl, [it is] because I am impure.’ Then a white red-eared cow was assigned to sustain her and she became well as a result.

Perhaps I'll change my name to Moil (Maol) Brigde...

Croghan Hill by Sara777

Croghan Hill (Bog of Allen County Offaly Ireland) by Sarah777
Public Domain -- Wikimedia Commons

I wanted to envision Croghan Hill, Saint Brigit's old home, and ancestral territory of her father, Dubthach son of Dreimne. So I looked it up online and found this wonderful "severely enhanced vision" of it uploaded to Wikimedia by Sarah777, Click on the image for a large version.

It may not be the whole story, but what a lovely aspect to it.

(I think I see her walking on the hill.)

Stone on the Belly: A Brigit Poetry Blog

It is probably time to fess up and tell you that I have begun a new blog for my Brigit poetry—Stone on the Belly. I have written a heck of a lot of these things, and am slowly publishing a few of them online.

Some focus on the goddess(es), some the saint, some both. Others reflect my relationship to Brigit over time. I don't try to make all of her lore and traditions into a single unified whole, but let each poem, each tradition, stand on its own foundations.

Below is the introduction to Stone on the Belly. You are welcome to come by and dip in, or sign up for alerts.

Writing Brigit

Many years ago I wrote my first Brigit prayer. Poem. Blessing...

I have been writing them ever since, but seldom share them. Some of them are carefully crafted, some simple and straight from the heart.

I also read the prayers and blessings of my sisters in the Daughters of the Flame and other Brigit-loving women and men, and they fill me with surprise and delight.

I would like to share some of these poems with you.

Following is the one that signs off each of my emails, a reminder to me to guide my words and intentions with care when I write to anyone. It's as good a place to start as any.

Flame Offering

In the name of the three Brigits

I light the candle of my heart

May I offer it to everyone

gentle and steady

warm and bright

The Three Lesser Known Brigs of Irish Lore

"The Three Brigits of the Ulster Cycle & the Forgotten Origins of Neopagan Theology" is a lovely article by Christopher Scott Thompson. If you have heard references to Brig Ambue, Brig Briugu, etc., but not gotten much more of their stories, this is a good place to get the skinny, with some Celtic Twilight extras that link to that old NeoPagan trope, Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

Christopher pulls the material together nicely. Be sure to read the comments below for a little extra clarification.

Here is a teaser from the article:

"Brig Ambue was the wife of Celtchar MacUthechair of the Ulster Cycle, but she was sometimes referred to as Brig Brethach or “Brigit of the Judgments,” supposedly because she gave a famous legal judgment in correction of her father Sencha mac Ailella, poet and judge to Conchobar MacNessa. The name Sencha is very similar tosenchas, a word that means lore or tradition. This is especially significant because the references to Brig Ambue come from the Senchas Mor or “Great Tradition,” a medieval collection of Brehon law.

Brig Brethach was her mother, the wife of the same famous judge and poet.

Sencha’s mother was Brig Briugu or “Brigit of Hospitality,” but the glosses to a story called Din Techtugud identify this Brig as the Brig Brethach who corrected Sencha’s false judgment.[4]   

Three Brigits: the mother, wife and daughter of a famous poet whose name actually means Lore or Tradition, and who are known mostly from a book called the Great Tradition.

We are not dealing with scattered references to women named Brigit, but with a second trinity of Three Brigits. Unlike the more well-known trinity of three sisters from the Mythological Cycle, these three are from the Ulster Cycle. As such, they are described as being human women- but their connection to the goddess is now unmistakable, and they are probably best described as avatars."

Christopher Scott Thompson is a member of Clann Bhride and writes "The Loop of Brighid" column for Patheos.

When the Daughters, and Why?

From the 1994 newsletter, by Hawthorne

One of the Daughters of the Flame sent me an email today asking, "...when did you set up Daughters of the Flame? And what inspired you to do so?"

I wrote a brief reply and after doing so thought maybe others would be interested, as well.

So:

"I began working on it in 1992. I'd devoted myself to Brigit a few years before, and I thought it would be good to have the practice of tending her flame reintroduced. At that time it was not being tended anywhere, not even by the Brigidine nuns, and that felt sad to me.

I didn't have a lot of energy for organizing, but I thought this I could do. So I asked some women friends if they wanted to do it, and a man friend offered to make a computer program for scheduling worldwide, and we lit the flame for the first shift on Imbolc 1993.

I didn't know for several years that the Brigidine sisters relit the flame in Kildare on that day, as well. Very cool. Obviously the time was right."

Still is.

Blessings.

From the first Daughters of the Flame newlsetter: the astonishing news that by word of mouth we had grown from five to twenty flamekeepers between Imbolc and Bealtaine. Astonishing because I knew almost no one in The Community.  Remember, this was pre-internet, and I was not yet on email. Another world, it was...

A Blessed Little Beer

Well, I should not be surprised by this, but I guess I was (I haven't tasted it--if anyone does, let me know what you think):

Cycle Saisonnier – Seasonal Saisons

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Mary of the Gael

Spring Saison

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

St. Brigid’s Day is celebrated in Ireland at the time of Imbolic, a once pagan celebration of ‘summer in the belly of winter’. This release in our series of seasonal saisons is a refreshingly hoppy take on saison for springtime. Mary of the Gael has a simple base of pilsner malt, a touch of honey malt and is dry-hopped with a copious amount of floral hops

.

Alc. by Vol. 6.5% |  21 IBUs | 14 °Plato  | Light foods/Fish/Artisan Cheese/Asian | Best  at cellar temperature (55 °F)

The Well of Five Streams: Essays in Celtic Paganism by Erynn Rowan Laurie

Some of you will remember a post I wrote last year about "Queering the Flame", an essay on Brigidine flame-tending, past and present. I noted then that it would be included in the then-upcoming book by Erynn Rowan Laurie, The Well of Five Streams. (Check here for that post.)

Well, it came out this summer. Click here to find out more or purchase the book.

Five streams flow from Manannán’s well in the Land of Promise; those who seek inspiration must drink from the well and the five streams. Finding this well requires dedication to the pursuit of wisdom. The book you hold contains the fruit of over twenty years of thought and deep exploration by this Celtic polytheist theologian. Much of the included material is out of print or hard to find, but there are also new pieces for long-time readers of Laurie’s work. There are essays on non-Celtic paths, examinations of Gaelic poetic traditions, musings on sacred madness, community, entheogens, the role of gender in Brigidine flamekeeping, and much more.

Here's a review from Goodreads:

Aug 20, 2015Morgan rated it 5 of 5 stars

A treasure trove of wisdom, this anthology offers invaluable discussions of concepts that are key to Celtic polytheism, Celtic Reconstructionism, and modern Druidism. Erynn Rowan Laurie takes the reader on a journey through beauty and madness, poetry and truth, the divine and the mundane, weaving them all together into a cohesive and captivating whole. Truly essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the beliefs of the ancient Irish and how those beliefs can be interpreted and applied today, as well as a fascinating and essential view into one woman’s journey along this path (less)

flagLike · see review

The Mythical Pairing of Brig and Bres: Its Origins and Meaning in ‘Cath Maige Tuired’

“In the ninth century Irish text “Cath Maige Tuired”, the figure of Bres offers an illustration of a failed king and his impact on prosperity. The goal of this paper is to uncover a greater mythical significance to Bres, and to begin to discover what the presence of his wife Brig (Brigit, daughter of the Dagda) in the tale might indicate. This is done by examining their significant attributes and relationships in this and other texts and, in the case of Brig, in material attaching to St Brigit of Ireland.”

There is very little evidence in the medieval texts of a goddess named Brigit: this is one of two that I know of.

For those who haven't read the text, it's quite interesting, as is the First Battle of Moytura, which also features Bres although Brig doesn't make it in.  But even if you haven't read and don't feel like reading the texts, you can still learn some interesting facts about Brig, her husband and children, and the world of the medieval Irish tales in “The Mythical Pairing of Brig and Bres”.

Click here for the free pdf download at Academia.edu.               



Morgan Daimler I think the paper raises some very interesting ideas about Bres and his ultimate role in the mythology beyond "bad king" that deserve some real reflection. I also like the exploration of Brig and Bres as a couple and why that could be and is significant - its really not a subject I've seen anyone else try to deal with.


Pinar Writes: this is beautiful, many thanks for sharing. I shall dowload it and refer to it later as well. it's not easy (at least for me) to form and understand the relationships and what they represent between Celtic deities sometimes; they're so much more fluid than, say, the Greco-Roman pantheon. that's one part of the challenge. after all these years (about 20!) I'm still trying to figure out the connections, the symbolism, regional variances and all that. articles like yours are very helpful in that sense.