Tending Your Flame
I put songs and music on the wind before ever the bells of the chapels were rung in the West or heard in the East … And I have been a breath in your heart, and the day has its feet to it that will see me coming into the hearts of men and women like a flame upon dry grass, like a flame of wind in a great wood. For the time of change is at hand.72
Different goddesses come to the forefront of our consciousness at different times, not just personally but culturally and globally. Brigid has stepped forward now for so many reasons. She offers us protection and healing, comfort and courage, nourishment of body and soul. As a practical goddess, she is a role model for change. Her planet is in trouble, her people are suffering, and Brigid is setting things to rights. When you are called to her in devotion, you may find that you are also called into her service. Is there any role that women undertake that isn’t blessed in some way by Brigid? Whatever you do to give back to the world, where is she present in that work? I can promise you, she is there—or she wants to be there. She gives us her multifaceted strength to take on the complex ills of this complex world. Your contribution doesn’t have to be big to be world-changing. Your small flame adds to the sum of light.
Brigid’s Charity
Whether my house be dark or bright,
my door shall close on none tonight.73
I was at an interfaith thanksgiving service a couple of years ago where the featured speaker (let’s call him Daniel) was the director of a Portland organization whose mission is to feed, clothe, and offer shelter and aid to those in need. Daniel offered us a real-life parable. As he was leaving the shelter late one night, a stranger knocked on the window of his van. Now, Daniel worked every day with people who were poor and homeless, many of whom were rough in appearance, and that never fazed him. Yet this stranger’s sudden approach startled him, and he hesitated, feeling tired, vulnerable, and a bit resentful of more being asked of him after a long day. Gritting his teeth, he rolled down the window to see what was needed. “Hey, man, I just wanted to tell you that your door’s open,” said the stranger, pointing to the back of the van.
This encounter made Daniel question how open his door really was. He had given his life to opening the door of charity, but was it enough? If his heart wasn’t open too, was he really welcoming? He was willing to listen to what the stranger needed and to help, but was he doing it in coldness or in warmth? Cold charity throws coins in a basket and hurries away without looking into the face of suffering. Cold charity judges and fears.
Brigid’s charity is warm charity. Warm charity blesses and loves. Even if you only give a dollar, give it as Brigid herself would give. She has always welcomed society’s castoffs. She feeds them, shelters them, wraps them in her own cloak against the storms—and she does this through her representatives on Earth. Brigid challenges us to ask: How open is our door? Who are the lepers in our society? How close are you willing to get to the real needs of the world? There’s no right or wrong here—we all give in our own way. But ask the questions.
In the Benedictine monastic tradition, the portress lives right by the front door in case anyone knocks. The job description says this should be a wise old woman who has the experience to deal with whoever comes to the door and the stability to commit to the task. When a knock is heard, the portress calls out, “Thanks be to God! A blessing!”—and this reply must come from the heart, every time. Whatever is needed by the visitor, the portress gives it with warm charity and true thankfulness. You are the portress of your own life. If Brigid sends someone to your door, call out, “Thanks be to Brigid! A blessing!”
In Brigid’s Sacred Service
Selena Fox
Selena Fox is a psychotherapist, teacher, ritualist, and Pagan priestess. She is the founder of Circle Sanctuary, a Nature spirituality center headquartered on a 200-acre nature preserve in Wisconsin.
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Circle Sanctuary is a Pagan resource center and legally recognized church serving Nature religion practitioners worldwide. I founded Circle Sanctuary in 1974 and serve as its senior minister and high priestess. Attuning to and working with the goddess Brigid is an important part of my priestess work, and facilitating Brigid rituals and meditations is part of my services for the Circle Sanctuary community, for the larger Pagan realm we serve, and beyond, including in interfaith settings. In addition, at Circle Sanctuary land, I tend Brigid’s Spring, a year-round freshwater spring, which is a sacred healing place. Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve, founded in 1983, is located near Barneveld, Wisconsin, and is the headquarters of Circle Sanctuary. At Brigid’s Spring we do a form of the old clootie well custom—visitors hang prayer ribbons as part of healing ceremonies. We also have a place where healing ribbons are left above the Brigid healing altar inside our main temple.
I honor Brigid not only as a Celtic goddess, but also as an international, multicultural, and interreligious form of the Divine Feminine. I’ve found that people of many paths and places are interested in her. When I did my “Brigid: Celtic Goddess, Celtic Saint” presentation in Cape Town, South Africa, at the 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the room was packed to overflowing with people from many countries and religious traditions.
Brigid is a goddess with many aspects, including a warrior form. When I work with Brigid in her warrior aspect, I often call upon her by one of her ancient names, Brigantia. In this aspect, she usually holds a spear. I also invoke Brigantia when I do rituals to bless, protect, and honor those serving and who have served in the military and emergency support services, including police, firefighters, and other first responders. I call on Brigid as warrior and transformer to aid religious-freedom battles and in other social justice endeavors. As executive director of the Lady Liberty League, the national and global Pagan religious freedom and civil rights service of Circle Sanctuary, I often do specific workings with Brigid to help with Pagan civil rights cases that the League is aiding. Sometimes this takes the form of working with Brigid for healing, protection, and support of those struggling to combat religious persecution. Other times it takes the form of working with Brigid power to win legal battles and defeat prejudice, ignorance, and discrimination. I attuned to and called on Brigid many times for inspiration, strength, courage, and success in the long yet ultimately successful quest to get the US Department of Veterans Affairs to add the pentacle to its list of emblems of belief that can be included on the grave markers it issues for deceased veterans.
One of the reasons that Brigid is central to my priestess work is her versatility and many facets.
Another reason is ancestral, although I already had been aligned and working with Brigid as part of spiritual practice for many years before I discovered that. I learned through research into my Scottish and Pictish heritage that on my father’s mother’s maternal grandmother’s line I am said to descend from the keepers of Brigid’s sacred site in Abernethy, Scotland. This place was reportedly dedicated to Brigid in Pictish Pagan times and was later dedicated to Saint Brigid when it became a site of a Celtic Culdee monastery. This probably explains why I not only connect with Brigid as a Pagan goddess but also attune to her in her form as Christian saint, and why I tend several Brigid sites as part of my priestess service, including the oak forest where I make my home.
For more about Selena, see the Contributors appendix.
Brigid the Activist
Brigid is a peacemaker, but that doesn’t imply passivity. She is also a goddess of justice who battles on behalf of the enslaved and the oppressed. She speaks truth to power. She wants you to find your own true voice and use it to make the world a better place. The sustained strength of women’s voices together weaves powerful magic for change. This is literal as well as metaphorical. The wailing cry of grief called keening has been performed publicly for thousands of years as a protest against society’s ills and domestic abuses.
Keening in protest brings Brigid to the barricades in a profoundly feminine way. Women have always been the ones who keen. Until very recently, professional mná caointe (keening women) performed at funerals and wakes, and after “praising the deceased, mourning his/her passing, and aggressively criticizing his/her enemies, mná caointe articulated their own concerns and assorted social tensions. Mná caointe grieved incidents of domestic violence and social slights and cursed those who offended them.” 74 In modern times, keening has been used in civil disobedience actions against nuclear power, war, and oppressive foreign policies.75 A group of grandmothers have keened at airports against useless security practices that do nothing but increase fear. The mná caointe stand with Brigid at the threshold of life and death, and woe unto those who ignore their cries. Group keening is eerie, otherworldly, unsettling—frankly, it’s scary. It’s the sound of all the women of all the ages crying out for justice. Brigid’s women will not be silenced.
Brigid is the goddess behind keening, having originated it in her own grief, but she is also behind it in the sense that her voice comes through the throats of those who keen in righteousness. Now, you may or may not want to take part in keening demonstrations for the causes you hold dear. But you can keep the spirit of the mná caointe alive by making your voice heard in every way you can. Merely signing an online petition doesn’t cut it. Consider whether your actions will have a real effect and if you can do more. You don’t have to go as far as Saint Brigid, who gave away so much that her nuns protested they didn’t have food to feed themselves. In our age, crowd-funding means that your small contribution can help add up to a significant amount of aid. Be as generous as you can be, with your resources, time, and energy. Do all good works with love.
Brigid needs you to stand up for yourself and stand up for others. Speak out for the downtrodden—and for Goddess’s sake, that certainly includes you. Get help if you are being abused, organize at work if conditions are unfair, or gather with your neighbors to work locally for change. Put your vote where your mouth is. Support women’s causes. Refuse to tolerate injustice. Protect Brigid’s beautiful green earth.
For a bit of inspiration, here’s the mission statement of the organization Afri (Action from Ireland):
Afri’s goal is the promotion of global justice and peace, and the reduction of poverty; this includes, but is not limited to, the progressive reduction of global militarisation, and responding to the threat of climate change, corporate control of resources and water, and interference with food sovereignty.76
Justice, peace, care for the poor, protecting the earth, sharing the wealth, feeding the people—these are all things that Brigid holds dear. And this is no happy coincidence—every February, Afri holds the Féile Bríde (Festival of Brigid) in Kildare. At Féile Bríde 2014, the theme was “Life: Source or Resource, Enslavement versus Sovereignty.” The event began with harp music as the Brigid flame was carried into the conference hall. The topics discussed included ending human trafficking, sustaining local food sources worldwide, and other campaigns that combine the visionary with the practical. Brigid the midwife, the lightbringer, is surely present in the program that provides solar lamps to midwives in Kenya so they can deliver babies safely at night in remote areas. Féile Bríde concluded with more music, poetry, and the planting of an oak tree.
In the early 1990s, I co-created a ritual for Long Beach Womanspirit with my sister priestesses Callista and MaryScarlett.77 We called it “The Snakes Return to Ireland: A Ritual of Celtic Mysteries,” and it was an alternative celebration for St. Patrick’s Day. We reclaimed hallowed objects in the name of the Goddess, we revised the words to “Danny Boy” to make a yearning hymn to Danu (“Oh Danu, the pipes, the pipes are calling …”), and we invoked the presence of Brigid with a mighty whoosh of flame in an alcohol thurible. I lit this flame, and I still get shivers at the memory of calling Brigid’s name as the fire leapt up. After we introduced her to the crowd, we had them divide into three groups based on their field of work:
• Healers: Those who did any kind of healing, peacemaking, parenting, and other caregiving work.
• Poets: Those who worked with words in any way, such as writing, editing, music, teaching, and so on.
• Crafters: Those who created a product in their work, laborers, artists, and anyone who worked with tools.
Each of the priestesses then worked with a group to make a gift for the other groups. The healers made small herbal charms for everyone, and the poets created a lilting song. The crafters made snakes and other symbolic amulets using paper and pipe-cleaners. As each group offered its gifts, the others thanked them for their contributions to the community and to the world, and invoked Brigid to bless their work now and in the days to come.
You can do this too, both the offering and the thanking. As you pursue your passions and offer your gifts to the world, gather with others for support and inspiration. Brigid blesses spiritual circles, but she also loves political affinity groups, storytelling gatherings, writers’ groups, book clubs, art collaborations, and needlework circles. Seek your tribe. Claim your clan.
This book opened with a woman lighting a candle in devotion to Brigid. Let’s close in the same way, with nineteen candles this time. This prayer litany can be done all at once or over nineteen nights. You can offer one prayer each night or do it “twelve days of Christmas” style: on the first night offer Flame 1’s prayer, on the second night offer the prayers for Flames 1 and 2, and so on until on the last night you offer all nineteen. However you get there, when you’ve lit that final flame, remember that Brigid holds the twentieth flame, which is eternal.
Flame 1: Welcome
Brigid of brightness, I bid thee welcome,
Brigid of blessing, come thou in.
Brigid of strength, I bid thee welcome,
This night and every night, this day and every day.
Flame 2: Hearth and Household
Brigid of the threshold, come thou in,
Brigid of the hearthfire, take your ease,
Brigid of the cook-pot, sup with us,
Brigid of all comforts, live in our hearts.
Flame 3: Ancestors
Ancestors all, I embody your legacy,
Ancestors all, I ask for your blessing,
Ancestors all, I offer Brigid’s flame
To light the needfires of deep memory.
Flame 4: Flamekeepers
Brigid of the timeless flame, bless your daughters:
Those who keep the circle bright,
Those whose faith has never failed,
Those who keep your name ablaze.
Flame 5: Healing
Brigid of the holy waters,
Brigid of the soothing hand,
Brigid of the miracles,
Touch me with healing.
Flame 6: Poetry
Brigid of lore, deepen my understanding,
Brigid of bards, increase my eloquence,
Brigid of poetry, lead me to beauty:
Beauty of word and beauty of thought.
Flame 7: Courage
Brigid of the golden shield,
Brigid of courage,
Brigid of the sunbeam,
Increase thou my trust.
Flame 8: Righteous Causes
Brigid, lend your righteous sword
To those who work for justice,
To those who speak the truth,
To those who seek a better world.
Flame 9: The Oppressed
In the name of Brigid, who empowers the oppressed,
In the name of Brigid, who releases the enslaved,
In the name of Brigid, who lifts up the downtrodden,
May all her people be honored and free.
Flame 10: Children
Brigid the midwife, bless every birth,
Brigid foster mother, protect every child,
Brigid of springtime, bestow on each childhood
The innocence of wonder and the magic of joy.
Flame 11: Women’s Causes
Mighty Brigid, your keening women call to you:
Strengthen our voice,
Strengthen our resolve,
Strengthen our sisterhood.
Flame 12: The Earth
Brigid, preserve this planet,
The stones and the seas and the skies.
Brigid, spread your green mantle
For the greening of the earth.
Flame 13: Animals
Brigid, protect the earth’s animals,
The fish and the beasts and the birds.
Brigid, shelter your creatures
As your sheep shelter lambs from the wind.
Flame 14: Water
Brigid of the clear dewdrop,
Brigid of the pure wellspring,
Brigid of the pool of knowledge,
Teach us to honor the gift of water.
Flame 15: Creativity
Bright Brigid, flame of creation,
Kindle my enthusiasm,
Fire up my passion,
Ignite my imagination.
Flame 16: Nourishment
Brigid of the overflowing milk,
Brigid of the good brown loaf,
Brigid of the endless butter,
May all beings be nourished.
Flame 17: Peace
Peace of the swan and peace of the kine,
Peace of the hearth and peace of the open door,
Peace between neighbors and peace between nations,
The deep peace of Brigid within.
Flame 18: Gratefulness
Brigid, I thank thee three-times-three:
For my birth, my body, my spirit,
For my kin, my clan, my tribe,
For my home, my work, my knowledge of thee.
Flame 19: The Three Flames of Brigid
May the hearthfire of welcome warm me,
May the temple fire of faith sustain me,
May the forge fire of change strengthen me,
And Brigid’s love encompass me, now and evermore.
72. The words of Brigid, in Macleod, The Winged Destiny, 1911.
73. Medieval Irish, from O’Faoláin, The Silver Branch.
74. Brophy, “Keening Community: Mná Caointe, Women, Death, and Power in Ireland.”
75. Watch a video of keening as political protest at www.theguardian.com/yourgreenham/video/page/0,,2075892,00.html.
76. Afri, Action from Ireland, www.afri.ie.
77. Thanks to Callista for refreshing my memory on the details of this magical night.