While it may be pushing the current a bit, today is Imbolc, a festival of my ancestors marking the beginning of Spring.
And let me tell you, like my people on that little island for so long, so long, at this moment I’m ready for Spring…
I’m also among that crowd that are pretty sure this is the origin for what has become the Feast of St Brigid. While I believe there was a Christian of the name, it seems hard to avoid seeing the mixing of that good lady with the other good lady, one of those triple goddesses so loved by the ancients in that area.
And, me, I like that sort of thing. The old and the new, a great blending, and a pointing to the great arc…
As Augusta Gregory writes the goddess Brigid was “a woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith’s work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night. And the one side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. And the meaning of her name was Breo-saighit, a fiery arrow.”
May the firey arrow be with you at this moment of transition and hope.
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