Posts Tagged ‘brigid’

February 2nd. Brigid’s Day.

Here’s a photo of my mantle with a candle lit for Imbolc and below that, a digital painting I made last night with Painter X, based on a 3d render I worked up a couple years ago.

In honor of my muse, my Lady, my creative spark, my Empress, my mother, my anima, my tornado, my warm breeze, my protector, my instigator … sun of my morning, moon of my night, fire in my darkness.

I light a candle and create … and Possibility inches ever more closely to being born.

Today I was hoping to create something either written or visual to share in honor of Brigid’s Day, but in an odd twist, I got completely buried today in client work due to a botched Joomla upgrade.

So tonight, as I try to settle in for the evening, I have been reading through some of my favorite blogs and I ran across a really potent entry from Paul Tevis that hits creativity right between the eyes.

I’m going to be thinking about what this means for me all night tonight, I suspect. And hopefully tomorrow, I’ll grab a moment and make myself available to it, and CREATE something.

Becoming Available To The Moment » paultevis.com.

This week is the first week of February. During this week there will be a holiday, and it’s one that, even though it isn’t particularly mainstream, it is one of the most meaningful to me. It’s one that I actually go out of my way to observe.

No, I’m not talking about Groundhog Day. Although, ironically, Groundhog Day does have a historical connection to it. (Look it up, you’ll discover what I mean). No, the holiday I’m talking about is Imbolc. Or, well, you could also call it St. Brigid’s Day. Imbolc is a pagan sabbat that honors the Celtic goddess Brigid, and is celebrated on the evening of February 1^st. St. Brigit’s Day is on February 2^nd, and honors the Irish saint, who happens to have very strong mythic connections to the Celtic goddess. Again, it’s not necessarily my intent here to present you with a lesson on this stuff – I am a life-long student of Celtic legend and mythology but I am no expert and ought not be taken as an authority. I invite you to use Wikipedia and/or your favorite other sources to find out more about Brigid and Imbolc and Celtic Spirituality. Invoking the name Brigid probably means a lot of different things to different people. I can only speak of what it means to me, and I intend no disrespect or disregard for how others might think of her. So if I don’t do as good a job of crunching a very complex thing down into fairly simple terms here in a second, feel free to contact me with your own take on it.

Meanwhile, I’ll share my own understanding with you.

Brigid is a Celtic goddess, one of the more significant ones. She is also known by many other names, and also has several different aspects over which she is said to preside. But the prevalent aspect is that of a triple-goddess of hearth and home, smithcraft, and poetic inspiration. She is thus a motherly nurturer and protector, a patroness of skilled craftwork, and a muse of the poetic arts. She is one mask of the High Priestess in the tarot deck. She is the keeper of the flame of hope and inspiration. She is the spirit of strength, wisdom, and renewal, and she is suprememly feminine.

That’s my quick and clumsy version – there’s so much more to it. But the upshot of it is that on the evening of February 1^st and the morning of February 2^nd I celebrate Brigid. For me, it is a personal remembrance that culls from a mixture of pagan sources, Christian sources, and my own life experiences. It is the day I honor an archetype that has taken a rather powerful hold on my mind and spirit for most of my life. It is the day that I honor the spirit of motherly protection, the spirit of healing, and the spirit of the muse that inspires my creative efforts. It is the day when I reflect upon the flame-haired goddess of fire, inspiration, hearth and home, and feminine wisdom and strength. Ultimately, it is the day I celebrate my foster-mother and my spirit-sister.

See, without going too psychological on you, I grew up with a somewhat different trajectory as it relates to female role models in my life. My mother was forced to leave home when I was only a few weeks old, and I had no contact with her or anyone on her side of the family until I was twenty-one, when I sought her out. I got a stepmother when I was 8, but that is something I definitely do not consider a positive experience, so it has little bearing on these proceedings. And I didn’t have a sister until I was 13, when my father and evil stepmother had a child. That helped a lot in my education about taking care of a baby and toddler, but not much in the way of having a sister-peer to relate to.

So, I got my female role models from TV and books and eventually from my teachers and classmates. And, thankfully, from my fertile imagination.

As far back as I can remember, I had this companion. An imaginary friend, if that’s how you’d like to interpret it. My imaginary friend was a girl named Sophie. She had red hair and freckles and confidence and energy. She started out as a little kid, like me, but grew as I grew, from pre-school on up. As a kid I don’t think I ever bothered to ask where she came from, but once, one of the last times I actually “saw” her, I asked her where she came from, and she said she was a daughter of Brigid and my spirit-sister. This was before I understood anything about anyone named Brigid. In fact, I think maybe that’s what got me started researching it.

Anyway, even though Sophie seemed basically the same age as me, she was always smarter, and wiser, and usually stronger. When I was scared of the dark, she would be there, sometimes with light, but more often with reassurance, courage and a willingness to spend the dark night watching over me. When there was yelling and screaming and violence in my household or my neighborhood, she was there to hold my hand and tell me I could get through it. Sophie was confidence and hope and strength and courage, all the things I wasn’t. She protected me. She comforted me. She inspired me. And except for a few times in my teen years when I pushed her away or pretended she was only a figment of my imagination or disbelieved in her, she was always there when I needed her. I’m almost 40 now, and although the way she manifests has changed, she’s still a big part of my psyche. Just ask any of my true friends or fellow roleplayers. They’ll tell you. Sophie shows up in practically every story, features in almost all of my roleplaying settings, and influences the way I interact with women.

In fact I used to rely on that so much that it became a cliché. On some level, I was always trying to find a living breathing Sophie to be my friend and sister-figure. I’d look for her confidence and strength in female friends and potential girlfriends. I’d gravitate toward women who were proactive, independent, and in control. I’d write stories about her and secretly talk to her and project her persona into any character in a book, movie, or TV show who had reddish or brownish hair and had confidence and moxie. I sought out a real, living breathing Sophie to complete me.

But see, what I finally realized is that is not possible – because, really, Sophie is me – a part of me, anyway. She’s a manifestation of my anima – the feminine archetype that exists in the male personality. Or maybe she’s kind of my Shadow – the bits of my personality that I had to bury so that I could survive the first few years of my life. Either way, she’s a part of me, and cannot be replicated in the behavior of another person. I looked for her outside myself but what I really need to do is to embrace her within myself. To be honest, I don’t think that’s happened yet. I’m still questing. But I understand it a little better these days. Maybe.

Okay. So, now that I’ve forced you to play the role of my therapist for several minutes, maybe it’s time to pull back a bit. Let’s just say that all that stuff I just said is there as part of my rationale for the overall philosophy I aspire to live out – that good stories and myths are there so that we can tap into out collective subconscious and understand one another and remember one another and learn from one another. To me, this Sophie that I’ve just barely scratched the surface of introducing to you is a profound archetype – as such, I’m of the belief that you, too, whether you’re a woman or a man, can resonate with it on some level. We can all use a little Brigid in our lives. We all need mothering and protection, we all need healing and light. And we all need inspiration and wisdom. The way the archetype touches you may be entirely different than my experience, but chances are it is still present – a part of you. As such, the Brigid archetype, like all the others, can be a conduit. A conduit between you and your own inner self, a conduit between you and other people, a conduit between you and whatever higher power you choose to relate to.

So here’s what I do. I light a candle. On the evening of February 1^st, I sit down in a quiet place and I light a candle, and I think about how grateful I am that something got me through those terrible dark nights that came so often in the first decade of my life. I think about the imaginary girl with the red hair who made me think I was crazy but actually kept me sane. I think about how glad I am that I have a spark of creativity and I promise myself I’ll kindle it more this year. And I say a prayer of thanks that I have a home and a hearth and the privilege of being a father and husband, and I ponder the part of myself that is feminine, and I think about how cool and fascinating and incomprehensible and mysterious and frustrating and sexy and profound women are, especially the real live redheaded one that I get to spend my life with. And I think about Brigid. Brighid the goddess, Brigid the saint, Brigid my foster-mother and muse and spirit-sister. I remember and respect the Lady of the hearth, the harp, and the healing hand. My own personal Brigid.

That’s what I do. But then, I’m just a misfit.