Outside the Solas Bhride Centre on the edge of Kildare stands an enormous statue of Brigid, holding her crozier, symbolic of her rank as Bishop in the early Celtic Christian Church. Visiting the centre just before Brighid’s Feast last year, I was drawn to approach this statue, so tall that I had to bend my head back in order to see her face.

I ought to have been overwhelmed, but I was not. I sensed that the woman in whose honour this statue had been created held the wisdom I needed for the next phase of my spiritual journey. I trusted she would have an answer to my question, “Where do I go now? What must I do?”

Statue of Brigid at Solas Bhride

I wait in silence, hearing nothing. I begin to fear there will be no response. Suddenly clear soundless words form themselves deep within me:

“Stay on your path. Follow your call. Go forward. Don’t look back.”

It is then that I notice her fingers, lifted in a Bishop’s blessing, gesturing to my left, the feminine side….

Looking back now to that moment, I see it as the beginning of a deepening relationship with Brigid, the moment when I recognized her as an archetype for my life, for my work of preparing for the rebirth of the Feminine Divine.

As we prepare to explore this third and final segment of Kate Fitzpatrick’s writings on “Cosmic Brigid”, it may be enlightening to look at the concept of Archetype. Carl Jung taught that archetypes are an expression of the collective unconscious.

Jean Houston has written extensively on archetypes, assisting her students to identify the ones who can best support their own coming to wholeness, and assist them in fulfilling their personal calling. Jean teaches that archetypes are “the primal patterns from which you derive your sense of Essence and existence. Quintessentially, archetypes are about relationship. We might think of them as greater Presences which stand behind and inform the personal images of many individuals and influence our very perception of life.”  

Far from being rigid constructs carried over from a distant past, archetypes are fluid, capable of growing, changing, taking on new qualities required for an evolving reality. In Jean’s words: “Always, such beings ask to be seen in new and fresh ways – they ask to grow into the energy and needs of individuals and of the times…. today a new order of archetypes is rising to match the swiftly changing situations we now face. It is our privilege and our particular challenge to witness and assist a new story coming into time.”

A Higher Light of Brigid

by Kate Fitzpatrick

In the 2 years of 2011- 2013, I returned again to work with Brigid and Serpent and I was linking with the significant universal energy shift predicted to happen in 2012. Out of this reflection and journeying came an understanding of Brigid as ‘Cosmic Brigid’ in a far-reaching way. In the myth that was then weaving, it was Brigid’s light that could connect us with the Divine Feminine coming to birth in the cosmos as part of the 2012 alignment. The ancient energies of the Tuatha Dé Danann were always linked to the stars and to cosmic light. This ‘cosmic’ link with Brigid has never been lost and Brigid as spiritual midwife can support the birth of new light into the world and help to ground it safely where it can be used for spiritual development of the human race. I also knew that the higher evolved ‘Serpent’ energy we had been working with in 2000 is ‘Serpent in the Heart’.

In 2013, at Imbolc, I gave  a talk at the Navan Centre in County Armagh that was pulling together these new ideas and I called the presentation: ‘A Higher Light of Brigid’. This extract below summarises the evening where a new energy of Brigid was tangibly felt:

On Friday, 8 February 2013, an audience of some forty people have gathered at Emain Macha in County Armagh to listen to a presentation of the stories of Brigid, together with music, songs and poems. Brigid’s presence is tangible in our midst. Carrying her spirit on the wind, Brigid, Celtic Mother Goddess and Saint, brings to all who might receive her light the qualities of truth, clarity, creativity and healing. Tonight, we dare to call her ‘Cosmic Brigid’ and ask her to bring in an even higher light than heretofore. One that is linked to the sun and the moon and the stars, to all of the heavens above us.

That evening was the naming of Brigid as Cosmic Brigid. And it was a year later that I went to the Brigid of Faughart festival in Dundalk and presented the talk on ‘Cosmic Brigid’. This idea continues in my awareness today as we move onwards in our awakening of the Feminine spirit and witnessing its influence as it filters in to society and is changing our perspectives about women and roles and power.

New paradigms are being born and old, outdated patterns of spirituality are being shed. The idea of ritual and ceremony is still a potent way to link the cosmic energies with the land – thus blessing it and clearing it. The powers of Serpent energy, Feminine light and Cosmic Brigid to assist with this are, I believe, real.

We are linking across universal truths. In Ireland we hold and awaken our indigenous spirituality and we are no longer a separate island but part of a newly emerging world culture of indigenous spiritual potential that is currently giving birth to a healed Feminine Light.

I am knowing Serpent to have risen. From the centre of the Earth she came in Fire. Across the land she came in Water. I know her to have moved up through my body from the below to the above and be transformed in the love of the Heart.

Kate Fitzpatrick

February 2019

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 e mail is katefitzpatrick2@gmail.com