February 6, 2019

Yesterday, I wakened from a dream:  My niece Kate is teaching a literature class where I am one of her high school students. We have just completed a reading of some story or novel. Kate announces that we will now move on to something new, no time to lose, curriculum to cover… But I feel a sense of loss so keen I have to speak up. “Why don’t we spend more time with what we’ve already read? Take it deeper? Go down, down, down. That’s where the treasures are.”

The dream ended there. I awoke, already planning to dismiss it as readily as Scrooge dismissed Marley’s visit as “a bit of underdone beef…”

Then I “got it”… Kate? My beloved niece, whose name reminded me of Kate Fitzpatrick and her astonishingly layered and profound “Cosmic Brigid”.

No, we won’t move on to something new. We need more time with “Cosmic Brigid.” So here it is as an encore. Like Scrooge’s three spirits in their three visits, we shall, over the next weeks, “take it deeper”… “go down, down, down…where the treasures are.”

Let’s begin with Kate’s introduction where she tells us of the twin interests that led her to explore Brigid’s deeper meaning:

“I am interested in tracking the changing role of Brigid over many centuries,” Kate writes,”and coupled with my interest in the cosmic shifts that are happening in our world today I asked: How is Brigid relevant today? and Can we call her a Cosmic Goddess?“

An old Celtic blessing for a woman in childbirth called “The Moon of Four Quarters”repeats the number four in some of its lines.

Four corners of the bed

Four angels at her head

Mathew Mark Luke and John

God bless the bed that she lies on

New moon, New moon God bless me

God bless this house and family.

                                    (Michael Dames, Mythic Ireland, London: Thames and Hudson, 1992)

Kate cites this as an early example of how people of past centuries saw Brigid in her cosmic aspect. She writes:

…Brigid has always held the role of being a cosmic Goddess. There are many areas of life that she governs. Her symbolism is vast and covers all elements – the power of transformation of the Fire, the healing qualities of Water and holy wells, and in the blessings of the Earth in the ritual prayers for crops for the year to come. The inspiration of her creativity given to poets and crafts people is the intuitive faculty associated with the element Air.

Fire, Water, Earth, Air: the elements of life honoured by indigenous peoples from ancient times. These cosmic elements associated with Brigid, both as goddess and saint, we have explored in past years in our reflections. But Kate invites us to go further. In her decades of facilitating spiritual journeys for healing and transformation using the myths of the Celtic Goddesses, Kate has worked to bring these ancient ones to life in the context of the present day. Here Kate’s writing becomes lyrical, passionate:

Let the myths live on. Let the myths change, transform and become a new thing as we work with them at profound depths. Become the myth. Listen with your heart and allow it to weave magic within you. Allow Brigid to be with you and to assist you in your own life. It is not theoretical knowledge but wisdom we are speaking of. It is the teaching of ages that we want to call in from the cosmic dimensions to help give meaning to our lives today. Let the women sing out the stories that the Goddesses will hear and they too will be changed in the process.

There is fire in her words. They lure us to respond: “Yes. Yes, that is what I also desire.” In my heart they resonate deeply and become woven with the truth I am coming to know: The Sacred Feminine Presence, by whatever name we call her, is an embodied presence, not some ideal or intellectual concept. Brigid, like Isis, like Sophia, like Mary, wants to be invited to enter our lives. She will not become us, nor will we ever become her. Yet we can offer her a place to live and grow, to reach out from within us in wisdom and love to other people, other living beings, to our planet in this time of its wounding, perhaps even its dying.

Kate asks: Can we allow the myths to change? Give permission for the music to evolve? And help Brigid to become an even bigger version of who she is? Archetype of the Divine Feminine in her full power, equality and wisdom. She is a guide to us such that we too can reach for the stars and have a model to find the map forward in this new age of Feminine wisdom returning. There is a higher light coming in to support us in these changing times. A living myth of cosmic dimensions is living through and beyond us. Will we lean into it to assist us in these challenging times?  

How do we respond?

Kate Fitzpatrick is the author of Macha’s Twins, A Spiritual Journey with the Celtic Horse Goddess. She is currently writing a book about her experiences of shamanic work with the evolving roles of Brigid saint and Goddess.

Her email is katefitzpatrick2@gmail.com