Saint Brigid and the goddess Brigit: how are they related to each other and to Imbolc?

As Pagans and Catholics around the world celebrate Imbolc, Imbolg or Candlemas at this time of year, I thought I would share some information on where this festival, timed perfectly between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, comes from, and why it is so associated with a mysterious figure best known as Brigit.

Are Saint Brigid and the goddess Brigit the same person?

Brigit is a Celtic fire goddess (her name literally means "bright one") who was adopted as a saint by the Catholic Church, making it unlikely that she ever existed as an actual human. The only biographies about her that exist were written hundreds of years after her supposed death in Ireland in the C6th, although she is also credited as having been Jesus' midwife over 500 years earlier. However, legends persist, such as of her miraculous abilities to heal lepers and the blind, turn bathwater into beer and make cows produce three times the normal amount of milk.

As the bringer of fire, Brigit is naturally associated with the first stirrings of the warmer weather of Spring. Imbolc literally means "ewe's milk" and you might be able to sense the first stirrings of fertility trickling back into the land, especially if you live in the countryside. Today was the first day the rescue hens that live near me started laying eggs, for example, after a long Winter break.

This association with the approaching Spring logically leads to Brigit being a goddess of fertility and birth, as well as fire. One of the many variations of her name, Bride (pronounced "breed"), is also the traditional word for a young, fertile woman about to get married and start having children (especially if she happens to be a Catholic). As previously mentioned, Brigid is also a midwife, a sensible job for a fertility goddess and healer.

Why celebrate Imbolc?

Imbolc is a traditional time of year for thinking about health, fertility and the oncoming Spring. For me, it always feels like the true start of the year, a perfect time for making New Year's resolutions, especially ones pertaining to eating better, going to the gym more often or improving mental health. Burn up those bad habits in Brigit's fire!

As with everything to do with making magick work for you, if you can't use it, discard it. You do not need to celebrate any of the Pagan festivals in order to be an occultist or work magick. And if you do choose to mark some or all of them, you can do it however and whenever you like.

Having said that, there are some reasonably traditional ideas that could get you started with celebrating Imbolc or Candlemas. If they don't appeal, don't bother with them- this blog is about a very real and personal path of evolving power, and not a place for conformity!

1. As a fire goddess, Brigit is about (positive) destruction, which makes way for new life. A Spring clean of one's home/ office/ car and a healthy "detox" of one's body are appropriate, as is a roaring log fire.
2. As the goddess of Imbolc ("ewe's milk") and also the saint who could turn water into beer, unpasteurised dairy products and dark ale are traditionally served at Brigid's festival. Oat or hazelnut milk would be good vegan options, as both oats and hazelnuts were plentiful in Ancient Ireland. Add a quality probiotic capsule to get the same brain-gut connection benefits as with unpasteurised dairy.
3. Notice what new flowers are appearing in your local area and look them up on Wikipedia. Imagine how their biological attributes could have spiritual symbolism.
4. Candles are a fool-proof aid for meditation and ritual, and Candlemas is a traditional time to make your own and light a few.
5. If you have a fireplace in your home, this is a traditional place to make an altar for Brigit. If not, a bunch of candles somewhere that feels right will work. Red and white are traditional colours associated with the season, perhaps representing snow and fire, ewe's birthing blood on the snow, virginity and menstruation, purity and courage, or whatever you like.
6. Having sex (maybe near your altar), either alone or in company, would be the perfect way to honour a fertility goddess, and can be conveniently tied in with a Chaos Magick ritual (free download of Ultraculture's simple guide to 'hex sex' here).

Further information

Candlemas is 1 February and Imbolc is traditionally celebrated 1 - 2 February every year, with Celtic Pagans celebrating on the nearest New Moon. This year, that will be Monday 8 February.

Check out Candlemas: Feast of Flames (2001) by Amber and Azrael Arynn K for an informative and reasonably priced Wiccan perspective, as well as some "recipes" for little Wiccan Imbolc rituals, if you're into that sort of thing ;)

If you can get to Glastonbury, England, there is a Pagan temple at the White Spring dedicated to the goddess Brigid that you can visit. Entry is free and it is open until 4.30pm most days. Bring an empty bottle to sample some of the calcium-rich waters.

Magickal Movie Night

If you would like to be introduced to the Tarot, and two of the most influential magicians in history, this video reel is for you!

It's also an entertaining refresher for those who already know a little about the Tarot, John Dee and Aleicester Crowley.

Don't forget to take notes on anything you might want to look up afterwards!

Learn magick for free!

Have some free knowledge, the best gift of all (except discovering this year that Jus-Rol readymade shortcrust pastry is actually vegan; hello, homemade mince pies)!

Some of the best advice I ever read in a magick book was not to go crazy buying every other magick book you like the look of. Research before buying one and read it before buying another. Make notes in your BoS. Sell or trade in any books that turned out to not be so useful. Don't bury yourself under piles of books that may never get read, all on completely different subjects, and all collecting dust!

Introduction to The Complete Psychonaut Field Manual, listed below.

A good way to scratch that magick book-collecting itch without turning your house into a feng shui nightmare is to do free courses online in between reading your physical books/ Kindle. Here are some good ones:

• Introducing Consciousness
• Magic in the Middle Ages
• Modern European Mysticism and Psychological Thought
• Chaos Magick 10-Day Course
• Hex Sex Codex
• The Complete Psychonaut Field Manual (not actually complete yet, but plenty to be getting on with)

If you must buy a physical book and feel like blowing your mind wide open, I recommend Alterations of Consciousness: An Empirical Analysis for Social Scientists by Imants Baruss. It's the perfect primer for beginning your journey into psychonautics and is the first book I read that made me take the existence of the occult or "invisible worlds" seriously.

Season's greetings!

Book review: Chaos Craft by Julian Vayne and Steve Dee

I read Chaos Craft cover to cover on a recent working trip and thought I would give it a quick review, as I had been looking forward to reading it, but it was nothing like what I had expected.

Extract from the blurb:

"Blending together the essences of Chaos Magic and modern Paganism, this book records the emergence of the new tradition of Chaos Craft... Some [essays], previously unavailable, comprise the secret rituals of this unashamedly syncretic form of occultism."

Pros:

1. Easy to read with short chapters and a casual, chatty style;
2. Laid out as logically as possible considering it's just a collection of blog posts;
3. Good for reminding people who are new-ish to the occult that once you get the hang of more than one system, they can, with common sense, be blended;
4. Good for reminding all of us that we can make up completely original aspects to ritual as long as they resonate with us.

Cons:

1. Not actually all that much about Chaos Magick; more general thoughts and musings of the bloggers, as well as some descriptions of group workings that they have done;
2. Several irritating "... and then we can't tell you the next part of the ritual that we did because it's top secret" moments. Why write a book about it if you can't talk about it?
3. Articles that I felt just weren't relevant to the subject matter, e.g. a chatty post about how one author is raising his kids that I felt had absolutely nothing to do with 'Chaos Craft';
4. Little in the way of solid information.

Conclusion

Don't judge a book by its cover (the cover is what sold it to me!), and read Liber Kaos if you want to know about Chaos Magick (it's much more informative than Liber Null, with far more information and far fewer vague anecdotes).

Samhain at the Chalice Well Gardens

The Chalice Well Gardens in Glastonbury, England is a famous site visited by all kinds of important occult writers, like Dion Fortune and W. E. Butler. The gardens are laid around the ancient Red Spring, so-called because of its iron content, that has been in constant use since Neolithic times.

Historically, the spring has been characterised as masculine by Christians, with the red colour symbolising the blood of Christ eternally pouring forth, and as feminine by Pagans, with the colour representing menstruation and therefore life. Whatever its "gender", it represents eternal life, and it's great to fill up a few glass bottles with it while you're visiting. A pint every week is a useful iron supplement.

My partner and I just enjoyed an absolutely magical evening there. The gardens were lit entirely with tiny candles, tucked away in all kinds of bushes, around springs and in trees, with the pools of water reflecting the stars and the stars seemingly reflecting all the tiny lights on the ground. As above, so below! It was utterly beautiful. A harpist played gentle music and a group meditation was held.

After the meditation, I had a strong urge to stand in a certain spot by one of the two ancient Yew trees- it was as if I could see an empty person-shaped aura where I should go and stand- so I stood and pressed my hands and forehead against the bark for a while. All I could see behind my eyelids was a beautiful sky-blue. I went and found my boyfriend and asked him to stand in the same spot and see if he could 'see' a colour. He also reported blue. Neither of have us any idea what that could mean- maybe it's the blue the branches reach up to in the daytime?- but it was pretty cool that we both sensed the same thing. It made it feel like it was real and not wishful thinking.

It's difficult to describe how I feel after a great couple of hours spent in Glastonbury, whether it be at the Chalice Well Gardens, White Spring Temple, Goddess Temple, the Abbey or the Tor, except "on a natural high." I feel friendly and relaxed and like everything is right with the world. If I could bottle this feeling and sell it, I'd be rich. Or just an MDMA dealer, whatever.

The Findhorn Garden at Lunar Lammas

I have felt a natural affinity with trees since I was a very young child and my grandmother taught me to hug them and see how it felt. Whenever I see a tree, I can feel out something of its personality by staring at it for a while. However, I found that older trees were much easier for this, and hardest of all were regular plants/ flowers, which kind of left me cold. I read this unglamorous-looking book to try and get some insight into how to commune better with plants.

The basic idea underlying it is that plant "devas"- like plant spirits, angels, faeries, whatever you'd like to call them- can be communicated to via the plants they live in- and all you really need to do is sit and listen (so buying up a load of fancy incense etc turned out to be a bit of a waste of money). The original founders of the Findhorn Garden claimed that the plant devas gave them very specific and often unorthodox gardening advice that led to a bountiful garden of enormous fruit, vegetables and flowers to grow on a previously desolate and windswept patch of sand on the Northern coast of Scotland.

The sweetpea deva was the first in the Garden to make contact, apparently!

I was excited to be visiting maybe the most appropriate site in the world to be at Lunar Lammas. I visited the gardens during the day and crashed in one of the village hippie's spare rooms in their eco-home that night. Having read the book, I did get a little thrill out of seeing the original caravan in which the founders lived.

Disappointingly, the Findhorn Garden feels very commercial now. The guy in the ticket office more or less openly sneered at the idea of "pixies" existing in the garden, which sort of annoyed me. Why work there if you're just going to scoff at what it is? Despite the devas having apparently told the founders not to eat meat, meat was available to buy from the cafes onsite. Incredibly, I also struggled to find somewhere that had vegan milk for a coffee. It all just struck me as a bit of a betrayal and I most certainly didn't see or sense the presence of anything supernatural. It was just a pleasant garden on a nice day.

If anything, I felt that whatever magic might have happened there, was over, at least for now. It's still an interesting place to drop into if you're passing. The most exciting thing for me was discovering that I could feel part of one of the ley-lines running through the site. I don't know why I could only sense it in one spot, but there it was, fizzy energy exciting my nervous system from the soles of my feet upwards when I stood on a certain spot. This was very exciting to me as I've never felt this when visiting places like Stonehenge or Glastonbury Tor.

A dead leaf, teeming with life.

What I learned at the Findhorn Garden- other than the ley-line thing- came to me while I was meditating in the garden. I'd been over-complicating things with research, getting props together for a ritual to contact Pan, and travelling all the way to the North of Scotland to see a few flowers. Plants are everywhere. It's not a question of dragging your physical body to a special spot in order to appreciate them, it's learning to feel what they are on a deep level, which is a skill that travels with you.

Boleskine House, Aleicester Crowley's Loch Ness home

I had a working trip around Scotland last month, which gave me the opportunity to visit two important sites in occult history, Boleskine House and the Findhorn Gardens. I will blog about the Findhorn Gardens using notes from my Book of Shadows (BoS) next time :)

For now, let me tell you about Boleskine House!

In case you've never heard of it, Boleskine House is on the South coast of Loch Ness. It is of particular significance to Thelemites because Aleicester Crowley lived there for a spell (ho ho) while he undertook the first six months of the Abramelin rite. (EDIT 02.02.16: More about Abramelin on the excellent Ultraculture blog.) He eventually got fed up and left before completing it, but reported that enough paranormal phenomena occurred as the result of his activities for him to feel that the project had nevertheless been a success.

Crowley had French windows installed in this room, where he did his indoor workings.

Today, Thelemites traditionally face in the direction of Boleskine House when performing rituals, rather like the magickal version of Mecca. It was exciting to see it in the flesh and imagine how many people around the world might be facing me and casting spells as I sneaked around! NB: It is private property and not open to the public at all.

The view from the patio where Crowley did the outdoor portion of his workings, just as he must have seen it, minus that wooden verandah, over which one can just catch a glimpse of Loch Ness.

Opposite Boleskine House is Boleskine Burial Ground, right on the shores of Loch Ness. According to legend, a secret haunted tunnel once ran between the Burial Ground and the House, but it has never been discovered.

I had been reading a little about Vodou and thought this would be the perfect place to collect a little grave dirt. I couldn't decide which would be the best grave to pick so I tried to find the oldest one. After wandering around in circles for what seemed like ages, I just sat down on the grass in the bright sunshine and relaxed in the breeze coming off the loch. Then I shifted my gaze back to the graves and just allowed my mind to gently let go of forcing the scene to focus, and instead let it do what it wanted. The graves seemed to be moving around one that was standing still. When I approached it, I found it was indeed the oldest in the graveyard, I just hadn't spotted it before as it was surrounded by much newer graves. The shadow of its Celtic cross design fell on the ground like a bullseye, so I took some dirt from the centre of that.

The Mort House.

To wrap up my Boleskine day, I climbed through the window of the Mort House in the burial ground, as the door had been bricked up. Clearly, I was not the first! The Mort House dates from the times of grave robbers, when some lucky person had to sit with the corpse in the Mort House and guard it day and night until it was too rotten to be of interest to thieves, after which, it would be buried. There is an upstairs with a fireplace for the guard and a downstairs absolutely crawling with enormous spiders for the coffin. Today, it is clearly a little pilgrimage site for amateur occultists and stoners alike.

"DO WHAT THOU WILT"

The fireplace.

Just some of the graffiti.

Disappointingly, I didn't feel anything spooky, threatening or generally tingly either at the house or in the burial ground. What moved me was the great sense of wild, untouched power rolling in off the beautiful Loch Ness. I stood on the edge of it and imagined how Crowley must have felt when he stood in the same spot over a hundred years ago and decided that this was the best place on Earth to carry out his Great Work.

Introductions

Very excited that I should (hopefully) be at the famous Findhorn Gardens for my first Lammas this year. I feel more moved by celebrating the lunar holidays usually, so I'll be there for Lunar Lammas, on the full moon.

I think I have a natural affinity with trees and so am particularly interested in researching the notion of plant devas, as the Findhorn Gardens must surely be the best place in the world, most likely the universe, to experiment with it! I'll be there by myself, so I don't think taking magic mushrooms is a sensible option (!)- I'm going to have to go the long way round! But hopefully the bonus will be that I'll learn more regarding technique (although probably at the cost of less actual communication).

I also feel under pressure to have "the perfect Lammas", since I'm in the "perfect" spot. Unfortunately with spiritual things, you can't just Google "perfect Lammas" or order it on Amazon, you have to custom make it for yourself in order to make it as meaningful as possible. Boo! ;)

I would like to put together some sort of ritual I can perform in private that will help me attune, and some sort of meditation on appreciating the fact that my move from London to Somerset was successful and I am now able to live closer to nature. Due to the nature of my job, my partner and I were concerned that we would end up having to move back to London again, but thank whoever that it seems to be working out!

I do have a physical book of shadows, but I've been thinking for a while now that I'd like to put the edited highlights into a blog titled Amateur Occultist. That's what I think of myself as- I'm only learning, I'm not an adept, and I'm interested in the occult more than being religious- i.e. I'm not a Wiccan, and I wouldn't really class myself as Pagan as I don't really "worship" anything, and certainly not anyone; it just feels unnatural to me.

I have studied magick, particularly Wicca, part-time for the last two years, and have cast three successful spells in that time, out of maybe five or six attempts. I'll write about them another time. I'd like to share some of the cool stuff I've learned with others. To my surprise, exploring the occult had the side-effect of making me much more interested in my spiritual life. Two years ago, "spirituality" was something that happened to other people! I wasn't interested in the least. I just wanted to be able to do stuff.

I think that's plenty for a first blog! If you would like to join me in any way, I can recommend reading the second edition of True Magick: A Beginner's Guide by Amber K. It's like doing an A Level in magick- it gives a fairly balanced and robust overview of magick as practised today, with sensible, useful exercises to practise at home, and very little in the way of wishy-washy hippie jargon or unsupported personal opinions.

The first edition is lovely too, and only a penny second-hand on Amazon, but there is SO much more in the second ed that it is well worth the tenner imo! The 2nd ed has the exercises at the end of each chapter that are so professionally done, and have taken me years to complete properly. As I say, I feel like I did A Level Magick for £10 (and I haven't even quite finished the course yet!).

I still haven't come up with my "magick name" yet (I've been considering "Hazel", hmmmm), so for now I'll just sign off as

Blessed be x