Happy Imbolc! (Let Me Explain...)

I don't know when I discovered the goddess Brigid.  I'm pretty sure it had something to do with needing a retired goddess to be my Faerie Queene for the only novel I've ever actually finished.  (My spiritual journey and the writing of TONIEAF are totally in a chicken/egg relationship.)  I was looking for a goddess of inspiration and writing and I happened upon her while betoodling the nascent interwebs.  She had everything I needed in a retired goddess who was leaning on a writer to save the world:  she was the goddess of poetry and of forges and she was associated with oak trees and with sandstone formations, which figured weirdly and largely in TONIEAF.  Perfect!  I thought, and I plopped her smack dab into the novel, where I put her in her crone phase (many gods and goddesses have three aspects in Western civilization...and many of those are associated with Spring...I'm just saying) and made her look like my high school debate coach.  (It occurs to me that maybe I need to devote a blog post to Ms. Silvers...)

Fast forward a few years and I've completely wandered off my spiritual path.  I'm bouncing hither and yon and I come across a blog entry about Imbolc.  For those not in the know, Imbolc is the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  It was celebrated by Pagans in Western Europe before Christianity got a good foothold and it's celebrated by Pagans now.  It's a fertility holiday, one that honors the sheep and cows who have recently given birth, the bees that make honey, and the animals that are still sleeping but will soon wake.  No, it's not coincidence that Imbolc and Groundhog Day happen either on the same day or close to it.  Groundhog Day?  Not only a great movie featuring Bill Murray and a not-wooden Andie McDowell, but also a pretty much pagan free-for-all.  Woooohoooo!

Ahem.

Imbolc also honors Brigid.

To be clear, I don't worship Brigid.  At this point on my path, I don't worship any god, but I do find many that resonate with me and she's one of them.  A complicated goddess--a two-sided, three-aspected deity who watches over midwives and soldiers, who is found in doorways and high hilltops--she is a reminder, for me, of the complexity of women and the power of words and of the softness of spring.

She is a goddess of amethyst (found in my engagement ring), of daffodils (found in my memories of the first sign that winter will be over soon), of whistling and candles and embroidery  (found in...uh...me.)

Plus, I mean, she's associated with the number nineteen.  What does that even MEAN?  I don't know, but I find it obscurely awesome.  I can sort of picture her, red-haired and doing cross-stitch with her feet up on the table while the gods dole out numbers and associations.

"I claim heather.  Oh, and the number nineteen," she says.

"Dude, what?  Why?"  (This from Hermes, who has always talked like this.)

She lays down her embroidery and starts cleaning her fingernails with the knife she just forged.  "Because I can.  Dude."

Oh, I love me some Brigid.  Love her so much that a few months ago, she inspired a poem.  THIS is what I feel about writing.  THIS is why I keep hugging trees and arguing politics and dreaming of better things.

Happy Imbolc, y'all.  Hope you are INSPIRED today.

Prayer to Brigid (Dreaming of Inspiration and Greatness)

I want my words sharp as a snake’s tongue

sharp as a bee sting

silver sharp, 

 pulled and beaten fine over a fire

 that would melt the world itself

 if you gave me half a chance.

  

Give me your fire.

 I’ll fashion an arrow that will

 slice so finely a hole in their hearts

 that they’ll not notice it

 when the darkness runs out

 ‘til they are empty of all but light,

 stumbling silly like lambs

 through a wildflower field.

  

Give me your fire

 and I’ll take the arrow from the oak

 where it lodged.

 I’ll melt it down to nothing but sharpness

 and use white thread

 to sew up their hearts

 so the lightness stays in.

Give me your fire.

 I’ll make a torch of rushes,

 touch it to the flames.

 I’ll carry the light up into the hills.

 Moving fast,

 I can reach the highest one by daybreak.

 With the sun behind me,

 I’ll hold up your fire,

 so that from below, 

fire and sun seem one and the same.

And they will wake up,

empty and full of light,

stepping over the threshold

into a new world.