Remembering Brigid: Hope in troubled times

“We can transmute this,
We can transform this,
We can survive this,
We can thrive past this.”
– Goddess Brigid in meditation

As Imbolc passes for another year, I felt the call to personally awaken; the need to go out onto the land and stamp my feet and keen all this anger, all of this disappointment, all of this grief.

To misquote G.R.R. Martin, the world has been dark and full of terrors lately, and we are globally feeling the impact of politics in America as well as the continued misuse of power and travesties costing lives globally. It can feel hard to breathe – hard to know how to even start knowing what we can do in such times.

It is in moments such as this I am called to remember how I perceive the Goddess Brigid, who has survived at the hands of conquering religious forces before, refusing to be forgotten by the people.
To this day I do not personally connect with much of the modern imagery of Brigid, in long swaths of silky fabric with her locks flowing about; instead visualising her in blacksmithing leathers, hair braided and tied up out of the way, with a no-nonsense attitude of lets get this done. 

Each to their own of course, if you love that imagery then that’s fabulous.

Goddess Brigid is alchemy, She is keening, She is healing.

None of these energies should be taken lightly, nor should the fact that She remains to this day in popular consciousness, her traditions surviving at Kildare and even taking on modern reimagining’s:

In 2005 Kildare County Council commissioned a sculpture to house the flame in Kildare Town Square. The sculpture comprises a twisted column, flourishing at the top into a bronze, acorn cup holding the flame nestled amongst oak leaves. Surely, we have come full circle with the oak leaves symbolising the Druidic element of the legend of Brigid and the name of Kildare, ‘Cill Dara‘, the Church of the Oak. – Clas Merdin 

Whether in my Witch hat or Druid self, I feel in my bones the need for the kind of wisdom and healing this Goddess brings, who brought keening – a ritualistic display of wailing, crying, and singing to express grief over death – to Ireland.

We need to get out on the land and cry, stomp our feet, scream and release this diet of shock and awe tactics we’ve been fed against our will, just to get all that foulness out of ourselves and begin to alchemize this rot. Hopelessness and despair are tools of the corrupt designed to make us feel apathetic or weak.

Goddess Brigid – Mother of the Druidic Bards, remembers the power of poetry and words – and reminds us all that we can be word-smiths.

To take the alchemy from the archetype of the Blacksmith and infuse our words with that sacred fire (from deep in our bellies).

Wake up that fire and courage after you’ve released all that dampening energy.

Find your voice. That is the beginning. That is the first step – for hope and for alchemy.

To realise that you have power, your words have power, and you can alchemise that into action – is an important reminder in troubled times. The rhetoric is there is nothing you can do – I promise you this is a lie.

For myself, I work mainly with The Morrigan, whose call to justice is loud – and we will talk of Her another day.

Yet as Imbolc passes us in the Northern Hemisphere, I know that Brigid is nourishing us all (if we reach out to Her,) and fuelling us to keep going even in times such as these.

We have the power to transform the world around us – if only we remember this to be the truth.
To survive them and moreover – to support one another in community the world over as we do so.

Stand together.

Many blessings,
Joey Morris