Brigid and Smithcraft ?

On the relevance of Brigid as Matron of Blacksmiths

It is my contention that although blacksmiths and forge-workers of old may have held Brigid to be their patron deity (matron) due to her association with the hearth, "smithcraft" was not representative of her spiritual aspects beyond that association.

Would we say that automobiles should be an emblem of Saint Christopher? Well, for the better part of the 20th century, millions of Roman Catholics world-wide had a little plastic statue of St.Christopher on the dashboard of their cars and/or a St. Christopher medal hanging from their rear-view mirror. So, is an automobile a religious symbol of St. Christopher? Is Jesus to be given the epithet "grave-god" because the graveyard is full of crosses?

I would hope you'd answer: "Er, um, well, sort-of but... I suppose no, not exactly..."

The primary story recalling the mythic-identity of Saint Christopher ("Christ-carrier") was that he once unknowingly carried a wayward child safely across the raging torrent on his shoulders and this tattered child, greatly impressed with his kindness and bravery, turned out to be the Lord Himself. As a consequence, Catholics everywhere ascribed to him the role of Protector of Travelers. 

Squadrons of desperate mothers, tens, no, hundreds of thousands, prayed every night to St.Christopher, begging for his intercession with the Lord to protect their sons on their travels overseas, and so it was through several of the wars in the last century. Alas, in later years albeit still hugely popular, the Church decomissioned him, as presenting far too-little historical data to support his actual existence, relegating him to the dust bin of apochrypha.

BRIGANTIA: Protectress and Sovereign

Brigid is almost exclusively rubber-stamped for us these days in the popular Celtophernalia as "a goddess of Poetry, Healing and Smithcraft" and it is the smithcraft I would take to task here. We have no Irish Gundestrup or Reims icons to compare and review here, no Scythian or Roman craftsmen to fossilize some cross-cultural clues for us... None* but one; the Romano Celtic shrine to Brigantia from north Britain...

Brigantia shrine from Birrens, Dunfriesshire

Above is an 1800 year old artifact bearing an image which we should cherish and hold central to our quests for understanding Her. Yet, somehow, it remains largely overlooked. Yes, the iconography here is almost completely Roman, calling her Brigantia, but portraying her as a sovereignty goddess with a full set of the attributes of Minerva: the spear and shield and the Aegis on her breastplate, and in her hand, the orb as a symbol of her universal rulership. You may recall having seen this particular icon, but honestly, just how often? Why so infrequently?

The Minerval aspect of Brigid accounts for or at least informs many of the bits of lore we have from the Irish and the Scots. The protectress function not only sees her as a guide and guardian of armies and nations but figures equally well in her inspiration to mothers and house keepers as foster mother, blesser of the home-hearth and protector of door, wall and roof. As inspiratrix she guides the creative with her flame of wisdom. As the emblem of the soul of the nation of Ireland to this day and more anciently of Britain, there is little question of her function as a goddess of sovereignty...

But, as usual, instead we are plastered (wattle and daubed?) with the same couple of fragments of Brigid-lore from the Irish hero tales, the sources for which only rarely exceed the first thousand years before our time. Younger yet, the remaining body of lore attributed to Her is actually booty from raids made by the wishful-thinking upon the lore and folkways attributed to the quasi-historical Christian saint bearing her name. I must confess I often have pillaged therein myself, particularly in the wonderful appendices to Campbell's Carmina Gadelica. That material, as beautiful and evocative as it is, bears its unshakable Iron Age pedigree only in that it was field-collected from Scottish folk traditions alive in the years stretching from the time of Charles Dickens through the reign of Queen Victoria. Yes, back when Lady Gregory carried her tablets down from Ben Bulben, summing up for us forever after the three primary aspects of Brigid as "Poetry, Healing, and Smithcraft"...

Quite simply: a Goddess of the Hearth and the sanctity of Fire

There seems to be a significant number of references to the quasi-historical saint, or dearly hoped-for "Celtic Goddess", which indicate an association with fire, and in particular, sacred fires, and a strong and potentially very old set of household hearth-customs, the common ground there being specifically fire-based prayers and ritual activity. Again I will admit to falling back on my own intuition and syncretic tendencies (and some 25 years of ritual experience with Her) and I continually emerge with the conclusion that a primary component of Brigid's identity was focused on the sanctity and utter indespensibility of fire and as such it brought Her veneration to a central, veritably axial, role in every home, first then and foremost as a Goddess of the Hearth.

In my mind, Brigid was likely no more a goddess "of smithcraft" than Saint Christopher was a saint of automobiles.

Certainly She would have been held by the blacksmiths and forge-workers as their patron. The anvil, hammer, and tongs may have been their connection to Her but this only because they were daily workers at a hearth. But proportionally, who worked at hearths? Let us not forget that for every single blacksmith west of the Rhine in the last 2500 years, there were untold millions of housekeeper cooks, working their daily magic, and even more populous yet came all those damp and shivering souls, stumbling in from the cold to huddle-before that blessed radiance glowing at the center of every home, eagerly drawing upon Her power to comfort and heal, to protect and inspire.

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* well actually, this "one" seems to be the model or best realized from among several extremely similar but more crude Brigantia-relief versions from the same area and period in the south of Scotland.

My Druids' ALMANAC, 2012

(NOTE: the 2014 Druid's Almanac is up and can be found HERE instead)

The WHEEL of the YEAR,  2012...

To download a printable PDF 

of the above, click HERE.

 

ALERT: CORRECTED VERSION (v1.02) now displayed above and below; 

a pair of typos were discovered on Jan12, 7pm Eastern

(Lughnasa time and AutEqx date on previous post were incorrect )

Please help me proofread this page; alert me to any typos you find asap.  Thanks, - E.

The Book of Sassafras 
DRUIDS' ALMANAC Miscellany...

The full series of Druid Almanac charts, essays and resources is found

 HERE...

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And so turns the year - Listen !

The scene is a familiar one: it's New Year's Eve; a party, perhaps at your home or perhaps at a friend's. There are many friends there, old and new, as well as many faces you don't recognize. The time is drawing close to midnight; the television is on and the traditional sounds and images capture the attention of your little gathering... Times Square, New York City is a surging sea of people. A stream of numbers tumble across the screen, peeling off the last minutes and seconds of the old year. On the screen, the passions of the crowd grow stronger, the excitement is infectious and obviously affecting your companions. Most of the people around you are now transfixed by the inane but indisputably powerful imagery pouring out of the television. A few of your neighbors forcibly break free from their trance to check their watches; you notice and perhaps you are compelled to check your own. The world plummets onward through the last remaining seconds while, on the screen, the crowd now whipped to an ecstatic frenzy, joyously roars in celebration of a simple ball sliding down a pole.

Usually at this point, I've already run out to the front porch or into the front yard. I've done this for virtually as long as I can remember; for this is certainly the most magical moment of the year. For a brief minute or two a whole time-zone of people, from Canada all the way down through South America, are locked in synchrony! The combined emotional / psychic power of tens, no, hundreds of millions of people celebrating the same moment in much the same way, experiencing much the same sentiments - - Well, the concept has always just staggered me. The front yard? Oh yes... You see, standing outside, away from those interior components of the moment, one can experience the most exquisite thing...   

you can hear the year turn !

There are always plenty of early-birds who start during the actual count-down, so at first you can hear its approach. Distant and occasional, then closer and more persistent it comes. Shouts, fireworks and gun-blasts, and all around you comes the glorious clattering Old World echoes of the beating of pots and pans, car horns and more shouts... Eventually the peak of the tumult passes over and then a few more fireworks and the occasional gun-blast and maybe a last distant car-horn. You can almost see Him (I swear I have...), the great Old Man, striding from east to west across the sky, stopping halfway to shake hands with Orion, then hobbling onward to finally fade and disappear into the western stars. And, as we finally lose sight of Him, there arises from all directions the half heard whisper of a million storm-doors slamming themselves shut... and perhaps, the one final closing we perceive before the shutting of our own door is that of the great one - hinged upon the very poles of the sky itself....            

-E.

Happy New Year !

A (very) OLDE-ENGLISH Holiday

 Wherein we find that, as far as the historical record goes, the oldest recorded details of Western European non-Christian December Solstice celebration beyond the Mediterranean comes not from Germany or Scandinavia, but rather,  from ENGLAND

"Midvinter Blot"

Ok, so here's the deal:

What we DO know from the historical record about what most Neopagans consider the ancient pagan "Yule" does not really come from the Germans or Scandinavians, per se...

Really. 

Yes, although the familiar word "Yule" comes directly to us from Christian Germanic-customs a couple hundred years old, when we are looking for an ancient source speaking of an active paganism in Western Europe celebrating the December Solstice, we find the word spelled "Yule" does not carry us back that far - - yet of course, we Neopagans tend to use it as a convenient umbrella term for all the pagan-ish non-Bethlehemic customs we co-celebrate with our neighbors to this day alongside their feast of Christmas. So, to Neopagans, the term "Yule" has come to signify everything "pagan" celebrated at the December Solstice, except say, the more Mediterranean Saturnalia observances of the Romans.

So, if there is any significantly "ancient" source material predating the Continental Yule, then where do we look for such information? A variety of sources? Well, actually not.

As it is, it comes mainly from 

ONE ancient source,  

and it's from

ENGLAND...

It was a nearly contemporary description of English paganism, of probably the Anglo Saxons, living in central and eastern England in the 6th and 7th centuries C.E.

Our source was the Venerable Bede in his de Temporum Ratione ("On the Reckoning of Time"), writing in England around 730 C.E. Earlier than that, we only find early Christian writers' adjurations against Roman celebrations of Saturnalia and their Solstice-feast "Dies Natis Solis Invicti" ("birthday of the Invincible Sun") in various Mediterranean sources.

Therein we find the word Yule looks back to this single English source as citing the oldest surviving predecessor found written in connection with its lore, a feast referred to as "Giuli". Earlier than that there is only one case suggested by a month name: fruma jiuleis in a 4th century Gothic source. Of course there may have been others but simply, none those seem to have survived. 

There was pagan celebration related to Giuli which he decribes as allegedly the greatest religious celebration of the pagan year. It was known to them as the "Mothers Night" ("Modranecht", often Germanicised into "Modranicht") he says it was observed on the night preceding the December Solstice; and we should remember that in those days the solstice fell, or was held to have fallen on the 25th :

"...(the month) December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called. They began the year on the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. That very eve, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is. "mother's night", because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night... - - Nor is it irrelevant if we take the trouble to translate the names of the other months. The months of Giuli derive their name for the day when the Sun turns back [and begins] to increase, because one of them [these months] precedes [this day] and the other follows..."

-------------
Wallace, Faith. Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

So, there we have it.  Bede specifically tells us that...

1.) previous to the arrival of Christian customs, the "English" had their own important celebration on the same date(s) as Christmas
2.) this celebration Modranecht, (Mothers' Night") was observed by them "all that night"
3.) the night described, was the night preceding December 25th
4.) the 25th of December was held to be the beginning of the heathens' year
5.) December and January were once joined to comprise a single heathen month "Giuli"
6.) "Giuli" also was the heathens' name for the December Solstice, the day the Sun "turns back"

We do get reeeally close to having him say that Giuli, heathen new-year, and the December Solstice were the same date/event. It's almost a safe assumption to make - - yet he doesn't quite specifically say so. What he does say is that they were related at least by sharing the same name. Perhaps a Latin scholar could clarify this.

I don't know about you but I'm willing to make that leap of faith; I just won't continue saying that the historical record (via Bede) factually confirms my assumption.

But nonetheless, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Therefore, considering the elements of the seemingly endless debate over the etymology of the word "Yule", upon the above and the following, I personally have come to assume that:

1.) Giuli and Yule are basically different versions of the same word.
2.) Giuli, often suggested as being closely related to the word for "wheel", is less about wheels than what it is that wheels do: they "turn"... (see Bede's suggestion above that Giuli is the word for the December Solstice because it recalls the "turning-back" of the Sun...).
3.) Therefore, I feel it's more than safe to say, specifically on Bede's authority, that Giuli /Yule meant "the Year's Turning"; that-is, the feast of the (Sun's / Year's) Turning (wheeling-on / changing).

On the other hand, the great ancient English celebration of the "Mother's Night", although celebrated in those days on the eve of December 25th - "must" have been an observance of the December Solstice because, since late Roman times, the prevailing Julian Calendar used from Constantinople to Rome to Ireland, had December 25th falling on the date of the solstice (-solstices after all are fixed annual events and calendars are movable imaginary constructs). It was only later when Pope Gregory's team created our marvelous Gregorian Calendar (1582 C.E) did we see the solstice better found happening on the 21st or 22nd, as it does to this day. We need to remember that before Britain was Anglo Saxon, it was very deeply affected by several hundred years of Roman occupation and, like the roads and the architecture they left behind, much of their cultural imprint had been left upon the subsequent generations of the British, including the those who would later be known as the "English".

- Earrach 

-----------------------

Here’s a trove of Book of Sassafras 

YULETIDE goodies from days of yore…

WHAT I BELIEVE AT YULETIDE

"Bah- humbug?" - No way... 

Yes, Christians should keep

"the Christ in Christmas", 

but

YULETIDE

belongs to everybody!

THE OLD MAN AT THE YEARS END

The three faces of the Spirit of the Yule and

the Fractal Mystery of the Twelve Nights

between Solstice Eve and New Years Eve...

A (very) OLDE ENGLISH HOLIDAY

The oldest records of Yuletide may be from

England of the Dark Ages, not Germany...

YULETIDE, FUNDAMENTALLY...

Don't overlook these basic themes when creating

ritual celebrations for the December Solstice...

AND SO TURNS THE YEAR - LISTEN!

 Yes, it's true, you can hear the year turn...

Looking for  D R U I D  - ish 

Y U L E T I D E   T U N E S  ?

Check these out:

 "The Mistletoe Bough" and

"The Unconquered Sun"

by Steeleye Span 

on their holiday album

"Winter"

Solc/Ex diagram by Earrach

================================ 

Note / extra:  While I was doing my fact-checking for this essay, i discovered  
this wonderful page and wanted to share it with you too. Check it out...  -e.

Grey November: Crossing the Wasteland

(( For my THANKSGIVING card to you and yours, click here... ))

THERE IS THAT WHICH HAS ENDED

AND
THERE IS THAT WHICH IS YET TO BEGIN

AND THERE IS THAT WHICH STRETCHES 

WIDE AND GREY AND DESOLATE
BETWEEN THEM
.
IT IS

THE WASTELAND...

THE  GAP  IN  THE  TORC  OF  THE  YEAR.

If you simply give up trying to make Samhain represent a "beginning" * and let the agrarian year end there, the grey twilight of November stands before us as the desolate Wasteland, the Wandering Place located between the cycles of life where eventually we will find our way from the exit of one year to the entrance of the next. We journey from November's dimming into the blackness of December and eventually, at the very pit of the year, we arrive at Yuletide, the great feasting-hall of our year's underworld, eventually then to emerge on its far side, blessed with the spark of hope for the Sun's triumphant return.

You see, for all of our good intentions as serious Celtophiles, I still believe it's just too difficult for most of us to recalibrate our internal calendars to make the Samhain-as-Celtic-New-Years truism actually "work" emotionally. In seeking to reconcile the overwhelmingly "authentic" feel which Yule and New-Years creates at the year's end with the similarly familiar "fit" of Samhain as the feast of the death of the agrarian year, some time ago I began to articulate a pattern of myth and image which I believe we don't need to 'enforce' upon ourselves artificially. Rather, we can easily begin to discover that 

its componentry is already built-into us: as Westerners

we've actually been celebrating it all along...

- Earrach

================================== 

* Contrary to just about everything you’ve read just about everywhere, there actually is a significant dearth of evidence to support the notion that the Celtic feast of Samhain (traditionally Nov. 1), is the “beginning of the Celtic year”. Yes, it's long been the assertion of Celtic Studies publications both academic and popular, yet the actual antiquity of the concept cannot be adequately verified.

In 1992 I had written an article, Samhain- the Beginning or the End? for the very first edition of our grove’s newsletter suggesting this idea. The article was later published in ADF’s journal The Druids Progress (vol.11, pp12). More recently the British historian Ronald Hutton examined this “factoid” in his exhaustive study of the ritual calendar of the British isles, "Stations of the Sun" (Oxford, 1996). Hutton uses both the folk record and extensive researches into calendar references in the medieval literature to show that there is really no evidence that Samhain was considered the Celtic New Year any earlier than the late 1800's.

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Can folksong capture the essence of the Wasteland?

Well. this is a very personal choice of course but nothing quite takes me there than this old cautionary tale, "Long Lankin", sung by Steeleye Span. It has dire warnings gone unheeded. a grim and bloody murder and an uncaught and ever-lurking fiend, all framed in a vast landscape of November-grey moorland...

Stonehenge Schmonehenge

"Early Celtic Stonehenge discovered in the Black Forest" 

proclaims the headline...  and, my my, what a cool looking diagram!  But wait a minute...

Nope... This is precisely the kind of drivel that gives Archaeoastronomy a bad name.

I've been fascinated by the lure of Archaeoastronomy ever since I cut my teeth on Gerald Hawkins' "Stonehenge Decoded" back in the early 1970's.

In those days I was easily swept away by images of druid-ish ancient astronomers standing ghostly in the starlight in their long white robes, marking out their sacred calendars with virtually every standing stone, post-hole, and horizon-notch in the whole of the British Isles.

Taken in its time and context (1963,'65), Stonehenge Decoded was an inspiring and cautiously reasoned work. Nowadays it is considered quaint if not continually problematic to the writers of contemporary works considered "cautiously reasoned" by more modern standards.

No, initially I'd not tasted the venom waiting to be unleashed from the lurking world-wide community of skeptics. They were out there alright, their cruel and sneering attacks to be readily lunged into the soft underbelly of the theories offered by innocent visionaries who made the fatal mistake of not anticipating the danger at hand. Oh, the meanness of those heartless bullies; and, most alarmingly: their fair and critical analysis as experts in their own fields pointing out the huge gaping holes left unnoticed by an "expert" in one field, unsuccessfully assuming his competence in another, largely unrelated, field...

Yes, it's a thin and ricketty bridge that spans the abyss separating one's expertise from the domains of knowledge charted wholly by others...

- E.

==========================

For more cross-disciplinary Stonehenge-abuse drek (click HERE)
(added Feb.17 ,2012)