Imbolc Celebration and Life Balance Work

This past week I spent some time working on some discernment when it comes to my life goals and finding balance. I had a bit of a rough week, with major writer's block for several of my projects (including my columns for SageWoman and Aontacht coming up) — and on top of typical health stuff, I was left feeling restless, frustrated and somewhat directionless. I was also disappointed that my Imbolc detox diet seemed to have the opposite effect as usual. Usually when I switch to a raw vegan diet for a couple weeks, I feel more energetic and kind of "cleared out." This time, I just spent most of the time feeling rather weak and stuck, and my self-discipline gave out somewhat earlier than usual. That, of course, just frustrated me even more. It was, all told, a pretty shitty couple weeks, with the exception of Sunday itself, when we spent the day in the woods hiking and celebrated Imbolc with a very simple ritual.


I'd originally hoped to do a steampunk-inspired ritual for Imbolc, but the more I planned it, the more I realized there were certain ritual tools and such that we didn't have that we'd need to get first (like, of course, a dedicated ceremonial cast iron teapot — the water, tealight warmer and the loose herbal tea symbolizing the three Druidic elements and the three realms, with the teapot itself a symbolic reinterpretation of the Cauldron of inspiration and transformation.... except that we don't have an appropriate teapot that we could use). We tend to do very minimalist, simple rituals, since almost always we do them outside in the woods after a day of hiking, so usually all of our ritual tools and altar objects are practical and easily transportable. But the steampunk aesthetic is much more Victorian and elaborate in a lot of ways, and seems more suited to high/ceremonial magic (think: Golden Dawn and theosophy, both of which have their roots in the spiritualism of Victorian times).... So a steampunk ritual is really, by necessity, the exact opposite of minimalist. Jeff and I have been talking about slowly collecting items to create a specifically steampunk altar, and here and there we've made some progress (like the steampunk pacific tree frog I made recently, which is currently sitting on my naturalist/deep ecology altar), but by and large we still don't have the kind of tools necessary to pull off a steampunk ritual in style.

In any case, the ritual itself was lovely (and I wrote about it a bit here), but for the most part the past couple weeks have been less than stellar. In general, I felt that kind of listless feeling that leaves you dissatisfied but without being able to put your finger on exactly what's wrong. I felt bored and stuck, but no particular project or activity struck me as interesting enough to shake me out of it. So I decided to spend some time in discernment trying to figure out what it is that I actually want, to give me a clearer picture of where this sense of lack and ennui was coming from. I was inspired by Plotkin and his idea of the soul as our "ultimate place" in the world to look back at the placemaking diagram from PPS, which provides a kind of visual formula that helps to pinpoint weakness and areas of improvement when trying to craft a public or shared community space.

I thought it might be useful to tweak this diagram so that it would be more relevant to "soul-making." I liked the basic structure, with key attributes in the center and concentric circles beyond those for intangible qualities and tangible expressions or outcomes. I'm not sure how PPS determined the four quadrants for their placemaking diagram, but I decided to go ahead and use the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water for mine, representing (respectively) the physical, mental, energetic and emotional aspects of my life. I rotated the quadrants somewhat so that each quadrant aligned with a cardinal direction.

I began by trying to imagine an ideal life in which I felt fulfilled and balanced in all of these different aspects — and I asked myself, what were the tangible, outward signs of this ideal life (or, ideal self)? This process of trying to articulate my goals and desires was itself incredibly helpful, since I found some goals much easier to identify than others. For instance, when it came to the physical aspects of my ideal life, it was easier for me to note right away that I wanted a healthy body, a good diet of food that was healthy for both me and the environment, access to nature and the outdoors, a beautiful and comfortable home, etc. When it came to the mental or intellectual aspects of my ideal life, though, I suddenly found that my goals were much less concrete — they were more abstract and intangible. That sent up a warning flag for me, since part of my frustration I think comes from feeling bored, not challenged or stimulated intellectually. Unfortunately, I tend to sublimate this boredom by doing things like eating or watching television... which only serves to undermine some of my other goals (like health and exercise). So simply by trying to organize my goals and my idea about what an ideal life/self would look like, I was able to identify areas where I was undermining myself without realizing it. I spent a few hours drawing up lists of intangible qualities that I wanted to invite into my life, and the tangible results or expressions of those qualities, or the kind of work or activity that would help me embody them. After doing these for all four quadrants, I turned my attention to the "key attributes" and tried to distill all of the different aspects of these four areas into a single word that seemed to encapsulate the attitude or attribute from which both the intangibles and tangibles arose. Below is the diagram that I eventually came up with:


Since the writing may be difficult to read (I wanted to make this a hands-on activity, so I used colored pencils instead of just making the diagram on the computer), here's a typed out list for each of the quadrants.

North - Physical

Tangibles:

• healthy body
• good diet
• regular exercise
• beautiful, comfortable home
• access to the outdoors/natural world
• financial security

Intangibles:

• stability
• balance
• strength
• endurance
• comfort
• rest
• health
• sensuality
• physical pleasure and enjoyment

Keyword:

• Enchantment

East - Mental

Tangibles:

• opportunities to teach
• opportunities to learn new things
• time to read carefully and think deeply
• conversations with people who respect and challenge me

Intangibles:

• perspective
• clarity
• challenge
• engagement
• growth
• patience
• persistence
• understanding and wisdom
• respect
• acknowledgement

Keyword:

• Insight

South - Energetic

Tangibles:

• regular creative writing (fiction, poetry, creative nonfic, spiritual/nature writing)
• expression through visual arts (drawing, photography)
• enjoyment in playing music (guitar, flute)
• time to relax and have fun
• crafting projects (beading, wood burning, clay)

Intangibles:

• energy
• motivation
• creativity
• self-discipline
• exploration
• freedom
• experimentation
• consistency

Keyword:

• Inspiration

West - Emotional

Tangibles:

• supportive community of smart, creative friends
• romance and surprise in marriage with Jeff
• regular get-togethers for fun and relaxation
• solitude in nature
• awareness and appreciation of beauty

Intangibles:

• sense of humor
• fun
• support
• engagement
• respect
• encouragement
• appreciation
• peace
• gratitude
• generosity

Keyword:

• Intimacy

I intentionally left out "spiritual" as one of the quadrants, for a couple of reasons. First, because I tend to associate the south and fire with energy, passion and creative activity, and although that can be very spiritual, I think the belief that it is somehow inherently more spiritual than any of the other quadrants is a kind of bias against the many other ways that spirit can manifest. The other reason was that I wanted to kind of "build up" my spiritual goals from the key attributes and attitudes of the other four quadrants, so that they were supported and shaped by those attributes. So that's what I ended up doing, including the keywords from the first four quadrants as "intangibles" (along with some others that are more specifically "spiritual") and then imagining what kinds of tangible outcomes or expressions would naturally follow from them in the area of religious or spiritual work in my life. From there, I then sought for what keyword or key attribute might speak to all of those things. This was what I came up with:

Center - Spiritual

Tangibles:

• regular meditation
• regular ritual as poetry/creative expression
• shared ritual with community
• simple daily rituals of routine, sacred in the ordinary
• opportunities for deepening theology
• crafting altar/shrines as aesthetic space
• connection with the gods through prayer
• sense of place/deep ecology (sense of belonging in and to the world)
• sharing sense of wonder/gratitude with others through spiritual work

Intangibles:

• enchantment
• insight
• inspiration
• intimacy
• groundedness and centeredness
• connection
• mystery
• love
• joy
• gratitude
• peace
• belonging
• balance

Keyword:

• Love
• Wonder

Since I have been doing more work with the tarot and delving back into some more "witchy" and ceremonial aspects of magic, I've been playing more recently with the pentagram as a symbol. I've always been intrigued by the Feri Tradition's use of the Iron and Pearl Pentacle meditations, though I haven't actually practiced them myself, not being Feri. I'm pretty sure that the basic concept of embodying the pentagram physically in yourself, with points corresponding to your crown and four limbs, is found in many different traditions, though the Feri Tradition's use of this technique is the one I'm most familiar with. In any case, I'm playing with the idea of using this Life Balance/Soul-Centric Self work to craft a personal pentacle meditation that will help me ground in these key attributes and invite them more deliberately into my life. So I spent some time drawing a simple pentacle diagram with the keywords at each of the points.


Needless to say, this plunged me into the complex issue of which elements/aspects correspond to which points, and why. Turns out, this question is weirdly complicated. I don't feel like I know enough about it at the moment, and it may take some experimentation on my part to figure out which version I like best. But for now, I just went with the most common correspondences (which I'm pretty sure derive originally from the Golden Dawn).

So that's where I'm at.

Shared Insights into Brighid's Stellar Aspects

Something I shared just now over on TC's LotS group:

In November 2010, a bunch of us over on the old Cauldron forum had a moment of what might be called "unverified shared gnosis" about the stellar aspects of Brighid - when our individual UPGs seemed to converge on a shared understanding that, though common among us, was not necessarily reflected in the traditional lore and mythology about Brighid.

I've been thinking more about this phenomenon recently, and how it might be part the evolution of the gods in mutual relationship with our own growing scientific and technological understanding of the natural world. I'm no expert on comparative mythology, but I don't really know of any ancient deities that were both solar and stellar in nature, or any ancient cultures that believed that the stars were actually suns like ours that were small because they were so far away (if there were any, I think they were probably pretty rare at least). Now with our scientific understanding of the relationship between our sun and the stars in the night sky, it makes sense to me that a solar/fire goddess like Brighid would have a latent stellar aspect that might be coming to the surface in light (pun intended!) of our expanding knowledge.

So I like to keep my eyes open for other examples of this emerging understanding of Brighid as a stellar goddess. And I thought here might be a good place to for all of us to share any examples that we come across.

One that I found just today, in fact, was in the book The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality by Jason Kirkey. In one section, he's telling a story about a time in his life when he was "apprenticed to winter" and struggling with a certain spiritual aimlessness, when he decided to go out walking among the hills of Ireland. Lost in a thick mist, he felt the spiritual winter melting away and Brighid's warm presence prompting him to joyous laughter. As he began to make for home, he realized he'd been completely turned around and didn't know which direction to head in to get back to the harbor village where he was staying - when suddenly, despite it being three in the afternoon, a single star appeared in the mist as a guiding light. He set off in that direction, making his way down the hill - and the star grew brighter and brighter as he neared. He writes (emphasis mine):

The impossibility of the moment was weighing on me. How could there be a single star shining so bright through the mist in the afternoon? At any moment, I expected to reach the star, now a vaginal opening of light through the mist, and be born back into the world. A wind blew suddenly. The mist thinned. Briefly I glimpsed a world which was foreign to me, inhabited by streets, cars, and fishing boats. In Ireland people tell stories of glimpsing the faery people and their paradisiacal world. I felt like running back to the stones to tell them my tale of glimpsing a human world full of both beauty and confusion. My star was the sun reflecting off the harbor. So disoriented, my perception within the mist had dissolved all heights and depths within each other; externally and internally. Here there was unity between Heaven and Earth.

He describes this event as occurring in early February right around Imbolc, but of having a feel about it that reminded him strongly of a solstice, so much so that he intuitively thought of the star leading the wise men in the Christian story of Jesus' birth.

This passage struck me so strongly for a couple of reasons:

- First, only a few days ago, I led a Druidic solstice ritual for my family (husband, stepkids, parents and brother, nine of us in total) in which we honored both Jesus as a deity of the newborn sun and Brighid as a stellar goddess. In Irish folklore, St. Brigid is known as the "midwife of Christ" and during our meditation and candle-lighting ceremony I used the story of the star guiding the wise men to tie into the idea of Brighid as a stellar goddess and creatrix helping to "give birth" to our most intimate star, the sun. That only a few days later I should read a passage in a book linking Brighid the goddess not just to Imbolc but to the winter solstice through exactly the same story was pretty powerful.

- Second, the very fact that after describing his sense of Brighid's presence, Kirkey goes on to describe a profound experience of being guided by a star.... a star that, in fact, turns out to be the sun! And not just the sun, but the sun reflected in water! Ummm..... Fire In Water anyone? This experience of disorientation where distance blends "up" and "down" until they are indistinguishable and a reflection below can seem like a star from above is something I myself experienced earlier this fall while on my honeymoon - traveling through the flat desert of Utah at sunset, gazing westward it seemed to me that I was not looking up into a rose-gold sky, but looking down from a great height out onto a strange sea whose waters were illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun, with the dark shapes of clouds scattered like islands in that water. So again, there's this blending of fire and water in connection with the sun. In my case, this was just before our first night of camping out beneath the stars in a national park that's considered one of the best star-gazing sites in the country.

What's interesting is that, even though he mentions Brighid only a paragraph earlier and in the context of this same story, Kirkey doesn't himself make any explicit connection between her presence and the sudden appearance of the sun-[i]qua[/i]-star. It's not as though he's intentionally trying to make that connection with his story - but the relationship seems almost inescapably obvious considering some of the Unverified Shared Gnosis of this group.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this, or if anyone else has come across examples of this kind of unexpected shared gnosis in other places!

Diary

Days of Note: first robin of spring

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:22am - 5:47pm
Moon: waxing crescent, aries (fire/cardinal)
Earth: snow overnight, layering a few inches this morning and still coming down in large, lazy flakes

This morning as I was getting dressed, I glanced out the bedroom window to spot the first robin of the still-so-new season of spring — in fact, a whole flock of them! Flitting and gliding between the neighbor's low bushes across the street, and the bare branches of the sycamore tree just downhill of our driveway. I counted at least fifteen of them, feathers ruffled and puffed out fat and fluffy against the cold, the unmistakably familiar red breast and dark wings. In among them was a single, brilliant red cardinal. I watched them for a good five minutes, dancing and weaving through the falling snow, dark creatures swinging through a dim white-and-gray landscape.

I could hardly contain my excitement about them. Playing through my mind again was the admonition of Brigid, from the Sassafras Grove Imbolc ritual three nights ago when the priestess drew the omen after our offerings had been made: "Spring comes through nature. Go out into nature to observe the real signs of spring coming." I took this to heart, as it echoed the advice I've been sensing from her for a while. The need to get back out there, ground in the woods and fields unrolling beneath the sky. I've allowed the winter's cold to intimidate me and keep me huddled in my home, feeling frustrated with the restless energy of cabin fever. The priestess interpreted the omen to be a gentle warning: do not sit in your warm, cozy homes and simply visualize spring coming — go out into the woods, go out to walk upon the earth, and see what is truly around us.

I can't help but think that this is also a plea for our attention and attending. That there are whole flocks of robins here and yet it seems so early.... It's been a long, unusually cold winter, yet already the robins are here. Part of me worries about the health of our planet, the extremes in season that seem to be increasing with every year. I think Brigid is not only asking us to attend to nature for our own good, but because the earth desperately needs us to be paying attention, to be listening for the signs of the dancing, turning seasons so that we can better recognize when that dance is out of balance or disrupted too drastically. In past years, sometimes I've felt spring hardly lasted — only a few weeks of mild, muddy weather before the heat of summer began to creep back in around the edges. Will that pattern repeat itself this year? I cannot know if I am not attending to the signs in the natural world around me, if I am too busy inside in front of a computer screen to notice the real world outside.

Still, a flock of robins is a blessing, and they were so beautiful! Spring cannot be so far away, when I can remember the fields bespeckled with dozens and dozens of robins hopping over muddy ground seeking out worms and bugs in the newly green grass. Just a little longer....

(I do intend to write about the Sassafras Grove Imbolc ritual. As soon as I have the chance!)

Diary

Days of Note: Brigantia Ritual with Sassafras Grove

Sun: aquarius (air/fixed), 7:26am - 5:43pm
Moon: waxing crescent, pisces (water/mutable)
Earth: chilly and rainy, gray, much of the snow melting away leaving behind slick ice and patches of old, dead grass

I have decided to cease updating this diary on a daily basis. Although it was a practice recommended by DOTR as part of their aspirant work, I have found pretty consistently that it was leading me to a place of frustration and blockage. I'm sure the daily diary wasn't the only source of these feelings, but beyond a doubt it contributed. The process of sitting down to list out the thoughts and activities of each day, for weeks on end, often left me feeling as though I were being scrutinized under a microscope, each day analyzed for its valuable or important content (and, more often than not, coming up lacking). The practice was, at least for me, one that was overly analytical — in the original sense of the word, as the opposite of synthesis, meaning to "break apart" or to separate out and make judgements. The etymological roots of "analysis" also have to do with "setting free, loosening," and for some people I'm sure that this kind of practice, with its simple daily structure, could do just that. (It seems like the kind of thing that Jeff would appreciate and enjoy doing.) But for me, I long for the composition of "synthesis," and the silence of the space-between the moments of that process. Trying to keep a brief diary structure every day kept me stuck in a hamster wheel of analysis while still failing to give me the space to compose my thoughts and feelings and express them as fully as I wanted. I don't think I would have been comfortable rambling on in this way about a subject seemingly tangential to the purpose of this diary, for instance, in the old format.

So the daily diary format recommend by DOTR just does not work for me. I have been keeping a journal of one kind of another for most of my life now, starting back in middle school at the recommendation of one of my mother's friends (who was a school counselor). The practice comes and goes, and when I look back I have only a patchwork record of my life, most of it boring or silly, or both. I admit, the idea of creating a daily record of events and thoughts appealed to my intellectual side — being able to look back over the course of a year and look for coincidences and patterns seemed fascinating. But in the end, the effort of creating such a record would defeat its purpose. Since taking up the practice, most of my entries have focused on feelings of frustration and restriction. The days when I've been most alive and eager have been those days when I most wanted not to bother with the diary. (This is how it often goes, I've heard.) But that's how it should be. We shouldn't necessarily want a nice and accurate daily record of life — we don't experience it that way, and we don't remember it that way. Trying to keep such a record is almost entirely future-focused: it's an activity you do now so that you can benefit from it in the future. There's not anything wrong with that per se, but I was finding that it interfered with my ability to ground myself in the present. Since making the decision about a week ago to officially "give it up," I find myself feeling much freer and more relaxed about the structure of my days. There is not so much a push to Accomplish Great Things, and so my days are quieter and gentler and a little bit more playful. Sometimes, that's exactly what I need. I am not a machine. Not every day will be interesting or full of relevance. I'm okay with that.

But I do want to continue to use this diary as a place to chronicle my progress through the DOTR Aspirant lessons which, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, I stopped pursuing for the last several weeks. Now, feeling grounded in the present and freed from constant self-consciousness about my days, I feel up to the task of returning to that work.

I also want to include in this the developing aspects of my relationship with Brigid Star Fire, and the online "Lady of the Stars" group that has grown up in response to her inspiration. That was an unpredicted event, but one that I am so grateful for — being involved in this group has continued to strengthen my relationship with her and give me many opportunities to explore her Mysteries. I will probably be writing a longer entry on this some time in the near future, I hope.

I also want to note in this diary whatever other Druidry-related activities or events are going on in my life. For instance, tonight I am planning to attend the Brigantia Ritual being hosted by the Sassafras Grove, the local ADF grove in Pittsburgh. This will, for all intents and purposes, be my first non-festival, non-family group ritual as a Pagan. Most of my work until now has been solitary, or working with Jeff and the kids in small family rites on the solar and fire festivals throughout the year. When Jeff and I attended the Festival of Lights (I think that was its name?) with Cat and Peter up in Massachusetts last year, we participated in the large group ceremony that opened the festival weekend — but in my mind, that hardly counts as an actual ritual, since it was mostly all of us standing in a crowded conference room while a few people spoke prayers or songs of welcome. To me, it's not a real ritual without a few candles and some incense, at least. (Years ago, I also attended a summer solstice ritual with a group of eclectic Pagans in the woods — but I attended as an academic researcher and "token Christian" then, so... not quite the same.)

Which means tonight, I'll be attending my "first" group ritual with fellow Druids. I am actually quite nervous about it (had a dream last night about almost everything going wrong: getting lost, forgetting my offerings, not being able to dress appropriately, etc.), mostly because I'm shy in person and tend to clam up around strangers. I'm not sure what to expect. I've been wanting to start making contacts in the local community for a long time now, and looking at Sassafras Grove in particular as one of the most active Druid groups around, and well connected within ADF. But their public rituals throughout the year have largely focused on Norse or Saxon pantheons, and their workshops and discussion groups have been scheduled during times when I couldn't go (or didn't know about them until too late). Even this ritual is dedicated to Brigantia — Brigid in her Romano-Celtic context — which is not often how I work with her. But then, I work with her in a way that is probably fairly unique and not necessarily supported by current academic research. (She's not exactly known as a Star Goddess.) But I decided that I could spend a lot of time coming up with reasons why the Sassafras Grove wasn't a good fit, lots of reasons why they don't do things quite the way I would.... in the end, these were just excuses to stay in my solitary practice instead of reaching out to make contact and forge connections. In honor of Brigid, and her holy day of Imbolc, a day of new beginnings and coming spring, I thought it would be a good time to suck it up and face my nerves.

So I will also be updating this diary about my ritual and meditative experiences, as a way to process my experiences and sift through the thoughts, feelings and spiritual shifts that arise because of them. I hope that I'll be attending more group events in the future. If and when I do, I'll be writing about them here.

Brigid Star Fire, An Imbolc Meditation

I began in a field, a green expanse full of flowers and bright sunlight unrolling on all sides. A figure danced in green and gold rippling, barely distinguishable at first from the wind shifting and dancing through the long grasses — yet as she moved closer, I was able to make her out. Eyes that flashed black and full of stars, a glimpse here and there in her turning and spiraling of a darkness, glinting cold and dark, then slipping, spinning back into green and gold. The mantle she wore spun out around her as she turned and danced, the colors of its threads flung out like sparks from a fire, leaping, or like flower petals of purple crocuses and myriad colored wildflowers — some falling to the ground to spring up as blossoms from scattered seeds, while others fluttered, took flight as a thousand butterflies flirting with the warm breeze.

So unlikely a scene, in the midst of this cold and bitterly long winter, that it took me a moment to adjust, to sink more deeply into the sense of place and allow myself to enter, to engage, the awakened land. The candle on my altar — the golden fire-in-the-water afloat among golden flecks of glitter in the blue bowl, the flame of transformation and forge fire that marked the opened center way — hissed and sparked as it consumed the offering of butter. On either side, the red candle of fire, poetry and inspiration and the blue candle of water, healing and integration burned steadily in their holders. But my eyes were closed, as I sunk deeper into trance. The green, gold meadow grew more intense in my mind's eye as I slipped down into my true center.

What is this dancing? I asked her, running to keep up as she laughed and twirled. What do you have to teach me, Brigid? Is spring here already? It seems so cold still. She seemed to ignore my half-frantic questions, challenging me with her movements to stay on my toes. Suddenly, she flopped down in the grass like a small girl, giggling, laying on her stomach propped up on her elbows, running her fingers through the grasses and flower blossoms. Her gold-flamed auburn hair fell around her face in braids, and the soles of her bare feet were slightly darkened with the dirt of the earth. I looked more closely at where her fingers were playing and dancing through the rich flora of the meadow. She plucked a white-fuzzed sphere of a dandelion and sat up, cross-legged, and held it up between us for me to examine. "Funny," she mused, "How the same flower that can be so golden and bright as the sun — turns to white, soft fluff carried on the wind when it goes to seed...." She took a deep breath and blew, closing her eyes for a moment as if making a wish. The we both watched as the seeds one by one let loose and drifted like snow across the wide field — some snagging in the nearby grasses and trembling there, others carried far and high until they were lost to our sight against the bright sky. "How much they look like tiny stars!" Brigid exclaimed, and she was on her feet again, running and dancing among the flowers. The field seemed suddenly full of dandelions, most of them golden yellow and bristling with sunshine. When Brigid found one ready to seed, a crystal fuzz-ball of intricate webbing in white, she'd flick it with her toe as she danced past, sending the seeds scattering to the wind.

But, I called out, what about my work? What work should I be doing? I have been so tired, it's so hard for me to work up the energy to stick to a discipline. You are the Goddess of the Forge, of the steady and unglamorous work of transformation! Don't you have any advice for me? She laughed with that laugh that always seems to mean, "You just don't get it, darling!" She continued dancing through the green, sun-bathed fields, calling out behind her, "The dandelion is not always sunny. Sometimes it must go to seed to survive, sometimes it must put down deep roots! Not every season is the season of discipline and work! Things change! I am not just a goddess of transformation — I am also the goddess of inspiration!" As if in response to these words, on my altar the red candle sparked and hissed, and its flame danced in its holder. "Now it's time for you to indulge in some joy, my darling!" Brigid announced, catching me up with her hands and swinging me around trying to urge me to dance. "Now is a time for the joy of inspiration — do what brings you joy, find again the playfulness in yourself. Now is not a time for work — I am sick of work — now is the time to play! As the spring comes and the days warm, play and be joyful! These are your duties now, to dance the spring in, to welcome it as it deserves!"

Her words kept coming, urging me to seek again the source of my joy, to sing my soul-song in playful notes, and set aside my worries about obligation and progress. Moved by her words, I joined her dancing, and together we spiraled and swirled and skipped through the grasses, singing and laughing beneath a high, bright sky. After a time, I asked her, Should I — I mean, you are my goddess. Should I take an oath to you, a formal vow? She scoffed kindly at my question. But others in our group have done so — and I have no doubt in my heart that I am devoted to you... Her dance slowed beside me so that she could gaze more deeply into my eyes. "For others," she said, "An oath is like the spiderweb that connects and weaves them together in my service — and it is on those strands that the jewels of transformation, devotion and inspiration collect like dew. But you — you are already too full of duties and responsibilities, shouldering too much of the world as an obligation. No, you do not need to make any more promises to me that you have not already made. What you need to learn.... is a little bit of joy and freedom!" And with that, we were spinning again, dancing. The red candle on the altar sparked and danced along.

And as the trance deepened, as I slipped in and out of the rhythm of the spiraling dance across the meadow, it seemed that suddenly she caught me up in an embrace full of passion and joy, kissing me deep on the mouth — her breath becoming my breath, sweet and warm with the scent of flowers and greenery in springtime. I opened my arms to embrace her, and found I was embracing nothing but breeze and sunlight, as my body shivered, transfused with a sudden warmth tingling in every cell. She had entered into my body, or merged, or blended — I found myself to now be wearing the lush green robe and mantle hemmed with golden knotwork ribbon weaving its patterns along each edge, and as I spun, it rippled out around me in long undulating waves that seemed the very expression of joy and creativity rooted deep within the earth. The dandelion seeds drifted white around me, and soon the field was full of them, wafting as thick as snow but warm and soft. I found the meadow had grown dark and the seeds drifted upwards to mingle with the stars against the darkness of the night sky. I seemed to hear her voice from within — yet from a great distance — "What you need to learn, child, is how to plant the seeds of joy in your heart and nurture them as they crave. What grows of these — leave that to me...."

Then slipping quickly back, the trance came to an end and I was sitting before my altar again, watching the three flames burning steady and silent in the still air. Dipping my finger in the butter again, I consecrated a fourth candle, a large white pillar in a red-and-orange stained glass hurricane jar. This was to be my flamekeeping candle for the coming year, lit and tended every twenty days during my shift. What promises you have from me are already enough, Brigid? I pray this is so, and that I may keep them dear....