Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 14: Bride

Bride;

Sources and Influences

BAM: - (not present in BAM version of the Charge)

Thealogy

Bride is the Celtic Goddess Brigit/Brigid, whose name comes from the Celtic word brig, meaning power or authority, so the Goddess's name means High One or Exalted One. She has a long history of conflation with other figures, being paralleled by the Northern British divinity Brigantia, also sometimes identified with the Roman Goddess Minerva, with her connections with craft and healing, and finally is supposed to have acquired a Christianised identity as Saint Brigid. (Miranda Green: Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers. British Museum Press, London, 1997.)  There is no agreement on these various identities, and Green warns against reading aspects of her role as a saint into her identity as a Pagan Goddess.

Brigit was one of several occurrences of triple figures in Celtic myth, being a guardian of childbirth, mother, and goddess of prosperity, patroness of poets, smiths, and doctors. At Imbolc a fowl would be sacrificed to her by being buried alive at the confluence of three waters. (Miranda Green: Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art. Routledge, London, 1989.) 

St Brigid of Kildare (c.452 – c.524) was abbess of a double monastery of monks and nuns, in a church which was influenced by pre-Christian Celtic culture. At this monastery the nuns kept a perpetual flame burning in the enclosure, and legend has it that after her death St Brigid returned every twentieth night to tend the flame herself. Burns feels that this legend may have its origin in the myths of the Goddess Brigid, acknowledges that there are further aspects of her cult influenced by pre-Christian Goddess mythology, and feels that these two strands are difficult to disentangle. ( Paul Burns (editor): Butler's Lives of the Saints: February. Burns and Oates, Tunbridge Wells, 1998.)

The modern Pagan myth of Brigit is perhaps best summarised by Barbara Walker: Brigit was a triple Goddess of the Celtic empire of Brigantia, the 'Three Blessed Ladies of Britain' or 'Three Mothers', who governed healing and smithing. At Kildare her nineteen priestesses (mirroring the nineteen years of the Celtic 'Great Year') kept a perpetual fire burning. Walker identifies an early shrine at Brigeto in Illyricum, from whence she was taken to Ireland by the Gaelic Celts. Her popularity was such that it could not be uprooted and the Christians were forced to canonise her, and place her feast on the 1st February, the Pagan feast of Bride, and Walker parallels her with St Bridget of Sweden, who was another Christianisation of the same Goddess. ( Barbara G Walker: The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1983.)

Brigid is connected with the pre-Christian festival of Imbolc, but there is no evidence extant as to its origins or early celebration. There is speculation that the festival is connected either to milking of sheep or to purification. Hutton writes that it was only later connected with Brigid, and feels that there is not enough evidence to reach firm conclusions on Brigid's ancient cult, but that there is much room for imaginative constructions. There is no record of plaiting Brigid's crosses before the eighteenth century, nor for the laying of straw dolls in 'Brigid's beds'. Whenever they started such customs were known only to the Irish and areas of strong Irish influence, such as the Isle of Man and the Hebrides, and celebrations on this day show further conflation with the Christian saint.( Ronald Hutton: The Stations of the Sun. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.)  An interesting occurrence of her name in the folklore of the Hebrides as late as the nineteenth century is found in a familiar folk-spell collected by Alexander Carmichael, which is perhaps more familiar in its earlier form with Wode instead of Bride:

Bride went out

In the morning early,

With a pair of horses;

One broke his leg,

With much ado,

That was apart,

She put bone to bone,

She put flesh to flesh,

She put sinew to sinew,

She put vein to vein;

As she healed that

May I heal this. 

(Alexander Carmichael (edited by C. J. Moore): Charms of the Gaels. Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1992.)

The modern Wiccan ritual for Imbolc is unusual for Wicca in that the Goddess is not drawn down into the High Priestess, but rather the God drawn down into the High Priest; a corn dolly – the 'biddy' – is laid into Brigid's bed; three of the women of the coven take the roles of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The Farrars write that the ritual for Imbolc is a fertility rite, welcoming the Spring.( Janet and Stewart Farrar: A Witches' Bible.  Robert Hale, London, 1984.) 

The chief significance of Bride here may therefore be the simple fact that she has a shadowy past, murky origins, a history of conflation with other triple Goddesses, and may be one of the Goddesses 'Christianised' as a Saint. All of this makes her a perfect Goddess to be incorporated into Wiccan thealogy, since this bare account incorporates most of the aspects of this thealogy in one sentence. One proviso here must be that it is important to note that the titles of Maiden, Mother and Crone date only from Graves in the twentieth century (this history is covered in part 5 of this commentary) so that while the history in this part seems to invite an interpretation as evidence for an ancient cult who worshipped their Goddess as Maiden Mother and Crone, the evidence would not support this conclusion. This invitation to misinterpretation, however, illustrates perfectly another aspect of the modern witchcraft milieu: that out of murky ingredients we create things anew, creating both future and a recreated past in the process. The Maiden, Mother and Crone may be seen as representative of this process of creation, birth, growth, death, and rebirth, the central mystery of life.

Z Budapest on Obama

A friend sent me this from Facebook: most people would express it as: 'I'm happy that our president has been elected for another term.' What I love about Z Budapest is that she is capable of expressing it in terms of the nationalization of our lady parts!
I thought her Bobby went through what she wrote & turned it into English before it was published? And surely a second-wave feminist should reject such demeaning phrases as 'lady', unless she's reclaiming the word?
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Laurence Soper (again)

Something I wasn't anticipating when I started this blog was what would bring people here. For example some people find this blog by searching whether gay men are closer to their mothers. That left me unsurprised. But what has flabbergasted me is that people google 'Laurence Soper' and actually come to this blog from that search! And to think he started as one of my little projects. Just think, he may even read this himself. I do hope so, because once you get on my radar you don't get off it until my will is achieved.
This of course is where I differ from the books: the textbook way at this moment would be to say that I've done the spell & must not scratch it or I'll bring the energy back to me & spoil it. Personally I think that's a cop out: of course there is a place for 'spiritual' results in magic, but if I cast a spell in these circumstances it is not achieved until I see results on this plane. So it is at this stage I start throwing everything at the target using multiple methods, & if it draws the energy back I'll just have more to chuck at him. Like this it'll snowball until he comes unstuck. The desired result in this case is he be brought to justice, and before anyone says anything, darlings, his own actions say he's guilty as charged.
Start properly again with a divination. This reading didn't start off with assigned positions, but the positions have become clear once I saw the cards. 6 of Pentacles, hmmm, it's looking bad for him if he's got the 'get in the car, I have candy' card. I have read on the internet that what he's probably living off is money inherited from his wealthy parents (for a monk, what seems to be wrong with this picture?); he may even be holed up with extended family. This combined with the Knight of Wands means he thinks he's got away with (Soper, my boy, I hope you're reading this & thinking, 'I *have* got away with it,' because I'm so looking forward to posting your imprisonment on this blog. You are a project of mine now, so just give yourself in, it'll be *much* less painful in the long run). However 6 of Pentacles is a deceptive card & all is not right there at all. He may of course be holed up with another member of a paedophile ring (do they ever come singly?), in which case they may well take him for everything he's got or else drop him in it if they turn Queen's Evidence. My gut feeling is that he is not in Italy: or anywhere where English isn't spoken. Foreigners always stick out too much, especially if they've something to hide. I feel he may be somewhere like the Channel Islands, where he isn't so obviously foreign.
That aside, the other cards in the reading indicate his impending fate: it may be strange to see The Tower & think, 'that'll be me, then,' but it's clear that I'm going to happen to him. The Page of Swords indicates his safety net being destroyed.
OK, different method: this is from Donald Kraig's Modern Magic. My affirmation is this:
'It is my will to use all the means at my disposal to bring Andrew Soper to justice.'
I will repeat this morning & evening. In the day when I think of him (this is why this method works so well for me who tends to 'scratch') I will visualise him in a prison cell, a broken man, all of his parents' money taken to repay his targets.
Never mind so mote it be, it isn't even as good as, it *is*.
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Tarot: The Chariot today

Perhaps the Chariot is most obviously associated with the car nowadays. With my 1960s Avengersland fantasy, what car could I possibly choose to represent the chariot but a Reliant Scimitar? - especially as this is the other, with the Tower, of my tarot birth cards. Cars represent so much to us: freedom, status, they even have a sexual significance. There is a tradition that the charioteer is leaving his home for the first time. If this is merely based on the placement in the 'fool's journey' through the Major Arcana, then all well and good. But in decks previous to Rider-Waite_smith he is not obviously leaving something, which leaves the journey much more ambiguous: it could well be that the focus is really on his journey to something. The city in the background appears from RWS onwards, to the best of my knowledge.
If he is a young man the chariot may represent his 'first car' experience: this journey may well lead to even greater foolishness, if this is the first time he is living away from home, experiments with drugs and drink, has sex, and grows facial hair, if he can. Hopefully this journey won't end in disaster. Hence the significance often placed on the direction of the horses or other animal pulling it. They can represent decision, indecision, two balancing poles, two poles to be balanced, depending on where you look. The rider may or may not have reins. What I love most about this card is that everyone who's written about tarot or designed a deck has had a go at it, leaving a lot of conflicting information hanging around. Perhaps the best synthesis of this is that this card represents many things to many people, with different directions or journeys and apparently conflicting interpretations. So it may therefore underscore the nebulous nature of divination and the importance in a reading of finding out how the querent understands the question and image.
Another tradition refers to the charioteer in a more martial sense: this places the journey in a war context. Of course whether the charioteer is armoured to protect himself or others is another question!
(Apologies if the pictures on this come out weird: blogger is acting very strangely today and I really don't know why!)

Low church witch

It seems that every witchcraft & pagan blog except this one has had a post about 'Samhain' this week. I was thinking about this as I got off the bus & walked to work one morning this week. For me the year is divided into two halves, which don't really have names for me, so I suppose could be arbitrarily called - guess what - summer & winter. The division into winter is when I first go to work for a morning shift and the street lights are on, & obviously the division into summer is when they are first off. The strange irony is that while some modern pagans may feel that I'm in some way not a 'proper' witch or pagan for not keeping the wheel of the year that it seems *everyone* else does, the modern pagan wheel of the year only dates back to the twentieth century. In Britain (I may conceivably mean England when I say this, I'm not absolutely sure of the boundaries of this practise) the year had an overall division into two seasons, in reality making my practise much more historically authentic.
To my surprise I've wound up a very 'low church' witch from a liking for bells & smells. This is another way in which we as witches can seek & find authenticity. This blog originated in my dissatisfaction with the 'how to' books about modern witchcraft that I have some across. My opinion is that beyond a basic learning of techniques (which anyway I would feel free to pick & choose) witchcraft can only be learned experientially: it is a path on which you soon get beyond any signposts & how-to books. That is why, after several attempts at writing a book, which invariably turned into how-to books or became so vague that they could be written on the back of a fag packet, my book has become a blog. This is what it is like to be a modern witch, this is the experience, this is how it feels.
Don't forget that the word 'pagan' started off as an insult: the early Christianised city Romans saw the pagans as country bumpkins who did not accept their sophisticated new faith. And of course the word comes from the word for field, which like our concept of the hedge can represent a feeling of rootedness in a particular location. This is what makes my 'low church' approach authentic *for me*: I am rooting my personal way in what I personally experience, so that it means more to me than an invented calendar based on an agricultural life which I have never experienced & don't understand. If you want to accept the wheel of the year cobbled together in the mid-twentieth century be early leaders of Wicca & Druidry, feel free, I don't have a problem with that, but don't claim an ancient origin for it & don't attempt to impose it on me!
Similarly I'm getting much less ritualistic: how I want to scream when I see instructions in books for how you simply must set up your altar! I started off with the Children of Artemis's simple circle cast & have never got much more complicated than that. I'm finding I don't need to follow instructions for ritual: when the time is right it comes together, sometimes without me having to do anything at all! And in case you're wondering, I did have a little chat with my dad on Wednesday, but then I can do that anytime, I don't have to wait for a particular day.
To end, this is Robert Cochrane's definition of what a witch is (don't forget his bitter feud with the Gardnerians, and my only caveat to this is that a witch may frequently be particularly gifted in a particular magical art but not always others):
If one who claims he or she is a witch can perform the tasks of witchcraft, that is they can summon spirits and spirits will come, they can turn hot into cold and cold into hot, they can divine with rod, fingers and birds, they can claim the right to omens and have them. Above all they can tell the Maze and cross the Lethe. If they can do these things, than you have a witch"

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Discerning God/dess

We are accustomed to think that witchcraft is a goddess religion & that this is somehow different to a monotheist tradition. Typically we have no way set in stone to understand divinity, but I am uncomfortable with the approach sometimes expressed by monotheists that since god is one all understandings will somehow lead to him.

No. No. No! NO! For me divinity is *not* one and that attitude is merely a way of saying that their understanding is superior to mine & that I will arrive at their revealed truth eventually. Starhawk says somewhere words to the effect that it is not necessary to believe in the existence of the Goddess because she just is, no more than you believe in the existence of a rock or a chair underneath you. However since we are not complete pantheists (if divinity was all it would be impossible to invoke her into a person), there must be some way to differentiate the presence or activity of this being we call God/dess around us.
I think the first has already arisen above: Goddess consciousness is marked by many ways, and a valuing of that diversity. I find it less uncomfortable when, say, an Asatruar talks about their divinities, even though they're not mine.
Goddess consciousness is marked by responsibility given to the individual, rather than a set of 'thou shalts' which gives the onlooker the idea we have no morality. Compare us with the 'thou shalt' merchants have broken virtually all of their thou shalts! In Goddess consciousness you will never need to feel bad for having broken some arbitrary rule.
The reason is that the 'thou shalt' merchants feel a need to clean up the world. There is a problem in their theology explaining the presence of evil and also a problem with trying to contain the messy stuff, like the power of sex. Goddess consciousness instead focuses on the difficult stuff: integration of ourselves and us in the world is made possible by a frank acceptance of our wilder desires. Pretending that the messy stuff doesn't exist is what leads to it splurging out when you least expect it.
In fact Goddess consciousness will rarely lead one to assert power over another: you know where the Goddess is active because those are the areas where people individually and collectively have the power balance right in their lives. You are free to be you and me to be me. The exception to this is that Goddess consciousness will not oblige me to turn the other cheek if you impinge on what I believe to be rightfully my terrain.
Similarly, the lack of a concept of 'sin' in Goddess consciousness means there is no mechanism for forgiveness. I would doubt that paedophile Catholic priests did it thinking they could confess & get it forgiven (more like they progressively justified their criminal fantasy to themselves), but the possibility was there. I personally can see no way in which I can undo my actions. The potential effect on myself and others beyond this life *should* make me think twice about what I do. And by 'I' I mean me alone, without an external locus of authority, who can be blamed. I am without sin, but rather I create my own future, in a totally matter-of-fact, valueless way.
Goddess consciousness therefore focuses on the agent: if I bollocks up my own life, I needn't expect other people to pull me out of it, & similarly because in Goddess consciousness each action is valued, I do not feel the need paternalistically to 'rescue' people from situations of their own creation. Obviously I mean a situation where their own 'stuff' or life task is in action, not someone who's fallen over the edge of a cliff! Helping in a Goddess milieu will also therefore focus on empowering the individual to help themselves.
Finally Goddess consciousness is marked by ecstasy: we do not feel the need to be sad or solemn, & there is no place for needless suffering. The Goddess is alive & active in our world, through us! And you can tell where she is by the liberty & ecstasy that follow wherever she is invoked.
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Spirit of Place: Spaghetti Junction and City Sigils

Today I 'did' the charity shops in Erdington. Birmingham is a city of two halves & you tend to feel comfortable in only one or the other. I have never liked north Birmingham, and Erdington is best known to me for its psychiatric hospital. My great aunt Lucy died in there: she used to bite people. One of her brothers was a drag queen, & the other was a gunsmith (another local industry) whose business went down the pan & he shot himself. One of the weirder things about my mother's side of the family is that after all this I was intrigued to find out what another man, whom she always called the 'black sheep' of the family, had done. When I eventually wheedled it out of her, it turned out that 'he drank, dear,' was all.
So anyway Erdington doesn't feel homely to me. Then some hatchet-faced cow in the Scope shop told me that a carrier bag would be 1p, which I told her was fine, put it on the bill. So she told me she clothes I bought came to £10, and I told her £10.01 with the carrier bag, and she told me she couldn't ring up the carrier bag until I'd paid for the clothes, which was plain nonsense. So I told her again that my purchase came to ten pounds one pee: you may tell by this time that since I'd decided she was being a cow volitionally I was going to match if not exceed her bovine behaviour. So she told me to pay ten pounds, so I gave her my debit card and told her to add the penny on and I would pay the whole lot by visa. At this - I'm not making this up - she stamped her foot and called for manager. It turned out the manager when she came was a woman who'd already walked through me so I was looking forward to pursuing my campaign of awkwardness. Unfortunately the manager took the wind out of my sales by being nice as pie, adding the penny to my balance and letting me pay. She did try to tell me that some people like to pay a penny in cash for their carrier bag, but didn't try to pursue this when I told her that that may be some people but I had actually told the woman, who was scowling at me, that I didn't want to do that & she still wouldn't let me. I then smiled sweetly at the woman, said, 'There, that wasn't difficult, was it?' And left, leaving discord and ill-feeling in my wake. Another successful morning.
On the way back into the city centre the bus passes over part of the famous Gravelly Hill Interchange, better known as Spaghetti Junction. It turns out that there are other roads called Spaghetti Junction in the world, but this was the original, started in 1968 and opened in 1972. The pattern is as iconic of Birmingham as the rotunda or bullring, which is the real point of this post. Magically sigils mean something, and often the plan of a city, or some part of it, will become an egregore of the city itself.
The local knowledge is important because it contributes to tapping in to the whole spirit of the city. I suppose another example of this would be knowing where the station names on the London Underground map come from, to add psychic depth and shades of meaning to what the sigil represents. The Spaghetti Junction equivalent could include the rather esoteric knowledge that since the interchange passes over several canals and rivers, the pillars had to be placed the allow the passage of horses on the towpaths: quite different to the apparent imposition of a concrete monstrosity on the strangely verdant background in the first picture. The other thing it is famous for locally is the famous 'Birmingham beach': a sandbank under Spaghetti Junction, completely surrounded by heavy industry & totally unsuitable for building sandcastles.
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