By leaps and bounds

I got my ADF materials shortly before Samhain (which was not the best Samhain I’ve ever had, but I don’t want to get into that right now). I started doing Brigantia’s Celtic Devotions in the morning and evening, and I’ve been a lot more centred since starting those. Have yet to anything bigger than those short rituals, but I’m working up to it. I don’t really have a lot of time these days, and even less privacy.

So, ADF is going well, and it was definitely the right choice for me to make regarding the next step in my religious path. And recently, something Huge has happened (though whether or not it’s directly related to my doing ADF, I couldn’t tell you).

I’m a member of the Cill on TC — I keep flame for Brighid (my shift actually ends at sunset today). Several members of the Cill (and several people not in it, but on the general forums) have just had a group epiphany (myself included, obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this post) regarding Brighid. It’s…hard to explain. I’ll see if quoting a bit from my post on it helps.

But to get started — we started seeing Brighid as this…Creatrix type figure. Brighid of the Stars — a Goddess who sits in the center of a spiral (galaxy) at a forge, and Her forge produces starstuff and earthstuff and the very things we are Made of.

I have long thought abstractly about the Star Goddess mentioned in Feri, I have prayed to Her, but I have felt nothing. It all seemed wrong. But when I think about Brighid (or the Lady) sitting in the center of a spiral of stars, hitting a hammer on an anvil, each spark that flies off creating a new solar system…my heart skips a beat. It’s the only anthropomorphization I’ve been able to put to Brighid, is this vision of Her at the forge – and now it’s become the Forge of Creation. She is becoming this Creatrix that I’ve been longing for, the missing piece of the puzzle in my personal cosmology.

[…]

The marriage of starstuff and dark loamy soil. We are the children that happen when cold space is warmed by a spark, when that spark thaws the frozen earth.

And what was really — well, scary about this whole thing is how much our posts were lining up with each other. We’ve all experienced Her in slightly different ways, but the posts were so….well, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” that it brought some of us to tears. Like we’ve really Found Something. She’s Calling us to do something; there’s a purpose here, we know it.

And so we’ve been exploring Her in this new, non-Celtic, more primordial way. Like the Irish Brighid is the manifestation or mask She wears so mortals can begin to comprehend Her vastness. And the Cailleach is in there too; the Light and the Dark, the Fire-in-Water. Light and Dark were the beginning of Creation; not a dichotomy but a duality.

And there’s this weird blend of astronomy and creation here; the Big Bang was the sound of Her hammer hitting the Anvil. Stars are forged; space is the cauldron of transformation.

We’ve formed a group and are doing a group ritual this weekend. Like a first date, to see where we should proceed. Some of us have a strong feeling that there’s going to be a bigger ritual on Imbolc, and that that’s when we’re going to get our messages from Her about what our paths are. And I have a strong feeling that I’ll be dedicating myself to Her on that night.

In this weekend’s ritual I’ll be consecrating my silver ring to Her as a stand-in until Imbolc, when I’ll be piercing my right ear and putting in a tiny silver hoop as a mark of my dedication to Her. This is what She told me.

I just did my daily devotional and added in a chant to Her, and then just stood for a few minutes, basking in Her light. I got the feeling we’re on the Right Path, that this is where I’m meant to be, and that the ritual this weekend will go very well for me. (Here’s to hoping I can find an appropriate outside place for it.)