Category: Me, myself and I

Here I talk about myself, my unverified personal gnosis (gnoses?), my thoughts, my actions, my learning, or even just some random things that are going through my head!

Not Looking at Myself Here. Nope. (On Missing Your Own Checkpoints)

What happens when you skip your own spiritual check-in – six months off track, and why building a way back matters more than never going off track at all.

I know, people associate the cauldron with the Dagda far more than with Brigid. But honestly, the Cauldron step is so important on Brigid’s Path. And it’s the one people are most likely to skip…

Well, here we are. Last stop on this walk through Brigid’s Path – Know Yourself, Reconcile the Past, Joy, Three Marks of a Poet, The Path Forward, and now the Cauldron. Six posts. Took me longer to walk it than to write about it, if I’m honest.

What the cauldron actually is

This shows a picture of my Dagda statue inbetween my little brass cauldron and my incense holder cauldron, both of which as about twice the size of the Dagda here! People associate cauldrons far more closely with the Dagda than Brigid...
My Dagda statue and his totally size appropriate cauldrons!

The cauldron is the checkpoint. A fixed point in the year where you stop and ask yourself if you’re still on the path you think you’re on, or any path at all.

I use Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lúnasa, and Samhain for mine. (Have to be honest hear, I stole the idea of 4 checkins a year from the 12 Week Year…) Others use the first of the month. Some people use their birthday, or New Year, or nothing fixed at all, just a feeling that it’s time. Doesn’t matter which one you pick. What matters is that you actually stop and look.

Why this is the hardest step of the whole lot

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud, myself included until recently: the cauldron only exists because we go off track. Not might. Will. Every single one of us, at some point, drifts from whatever path we thought we were walking. The cauldron isn’t a nice-to-have for the odd bad week. It’s built for the assumption that things will go wrong.

And planning for things to go wrong feels antithetical to most of us, cos it feels like admitting defeat before you’ve even started. Like you’re supposed to walk a spiritual path with total confidence, straight line, no wobbles, and if you need a checkpoint system for when it falls apart, doesn’t that mean you’re already failing at it?

I don’t think that’s true. But I understand exactly why it feels that way, because I felt it too, and I built this whole system myself.

We don’t like admitting we’ll need a way back before we’ve even left. It feels presumptuous, almost. Or pessimistic. Or like you’re jinxing it. So we skip building the checkpoint in the first place, or we build it and then quietly don’t use it when the year gets busy (ahem, not looking at myself at all here. Nope.), because using it means admitting there might be something to check.

What actually happened to me this year

Earlier this year, I knew things had to change. I wasn’t getting the time to do everything I needed to do – that was obvious to me by January, if not before. And then Imbolc came around and just… floated by me. I didn’t do my usual check-in. I had no time alone. Definitelydidn’t get the cobweb clearing done inside my own head that Imbolc is supposed to be for (if you saw my Instagram post a few weeks ago, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about here!).

So I went off track. In all sorts of ways.

And now, six-plus months later, I’m pulling myself back together. Slowly. One step at a time. But getting there.

I want to be honest about the order of events there, cos it matters: I didn’t skip Imbolc because I decided the cauldron wasn’t for me this year. I skipped it because life got in the way, and skipping the checkpoint is exactly how “life got in the way” turns into “six months off track.” The checkpoint doesn’t stop life from getting in the way. It stops you from paying attention or acknowledging it for half a year.

The bit that’s genuinely hard to admit

This has happened to me over and over and over again throughout the years. Sometimes massively, catastrophically. Sometimes barely a wobble. Either my path changes, or I change, or my circumstances change – and every single time, the cauldron is what brings me back to check.

That’s not a failure I’m confessing once and moving past. It’s a pattern. A recurring one. And admitting that a pattern is a pattern, rather than a one-off you’re finally past this time, is a much harder thing to sit with than admitting a single mistake. A single mistake, you fix and move on from. A pattern means building your whole approach around the fact that you’ll be back here again, and being at peace with that, instead of treating each return to the cauldron as evidence you’ve failed at this all over again.

What the cauldron actually allows

Not a guarantee that you’ll never go off track. A way back when you do.

The cauldron doesn’t judge how far you’ve drifted. It doesn’t care whether this is your first time back or your fiftieth. It just sits there, ready, whenever you’re ready to come back to it. The whole point is that it works regardless of how badly things have gone, which is precisely why it’s uncomfortable to plan for – you’re building something for a future version of yourself who’s failed, and building it well means genuinely believing that version of you deserves a way back too.

Missing one checkpoint is what let this particular drift go on as long as it did. I’m not going to pretend that’s a coincidence.

So, six posts later – where does that leave the whole walk?

I went into this round of Brigid’s Path because I needed to. Know Yourself, because I’d stopped. Reconcile the Past, because there was plenty to reconcile. Joy, because I’d let it go entirely. The three marks of a poet, because I’m still working out how much I trust what I know without proof. The path forward, because twenty years in, the path looks nothing like it did when I started, and that’s not a problem, that’s just what happens.

And now the cauldron, because none of the above holds if you don’t keep coming back to check.

I’ll be back at this again. Not because I failed at it this time, but because that’s what the path actually is – not a straight line you walk once, but something you keep returning to, checkpoint after checkpoint, for as long as you’re doing this work at all.

When’s your next checkpoint? Not someday – an actual date. Mine’s Samhain. What’s yours?

What the Fuck? I’m Only Paid for 40 (Or, Choosing Time Over Money at Forty-Something)

Twenty years on, the same core values look completely different in practice – a reflection on career pivots, nieces I don’t see enough, and why 70-hour weeks stopped being worth it.

Fifth stop on Brigid’s Path this round, and this one’s less about a single moment. The Path Forward is hugely important on Brigid’s Path. And I keep. On. Coming. Back. To it. (Step one, two, three, and four linked!) Not once, not twice – constantly. Life changes, so the path changes, so here we are again.

A representation of my working week in a spreadsheet, with colour coded meetings showing in a chart but all the info stripped out. I have a path forward that hopefully has fewer meetings in it!
Yes I’m sad enough to have an outline of my week…. and yes the colours do mean things. Anyone working in a manufacturing envorinoment will recognise the signs of a tier system at play here! If you don’t – don’t worry. You’re not missing out.

What is a path, anyway?

A connection between two places or states. A search. A story. A call. A feeling.

And also – hard work. Bloody hard work. I say that because it’s true, and because it’s the bit that gets left out of most spiritual writing. Nobody puts “hard work” on the inspirational quote graphic, but there it is, plain as anything, sitting underneath every other definition. And we’re looking towards the path forward on Brigid’s Path, it nearly always contains hard work!

Why do I keep revisiting this bit?

Because I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago, and my path is looking different because of it.

A few years ago I couldn’t have thought about the thing I’m actually thinking about now – a pivot in my engineering career, away from day-to-day manufacturing support and towards more of a consultancy role, or something global. That wasn’t even a shape my ambition could take back then. But as I get older, I want different things from life.

Oh how myphysical body has changed! My emotional body has changed. My spiritual body has changed. The core values are the same – they haven’t moved – but how I express them definitely has.

I have two nieces I want to spend more time with. I have friends and family I don’t see enough of. Seventy-hour weeks are no longer appealing. Like, what the fuck? I’m only paid for 40. Why am I giving away an extra 75% for free?

Time is far more important now than money, fundamentally. And that’s reflected in the path I’m choosing for myself.

Guides, torchbearers, and pathfinders

These are job descriptions, not descriptions of a person or entity. They might be friends, teachers, authors, voices from the past, deities, saints, things beyond definition. Almost certainly, they will offer suggestions. They can show you the path they walked and how it might help you. They might shed light on a particular aspect of your spiritual path, or they might be extremely specific, or extremely general.

And, honestly, they might not always be what you need. That’s allowed too.

I know Mary, St Therese of Lisieux, Mary Magdalene and all the rest are there for me. But those relationships ebb and flow. There will be times when this work is the most important work you can be doing. And others when it’s really far down the list, because other things are more important. Most of us don’t have the need, want, or wherewithal to devote our entire lives to our spirituality. We find the spiritual in the mundane. And that’s ok as well. It’s always ok.

What is right for you?

Well. That’s for you to decide.

Some questions worth sitting with, if you want a starting point: What values and beliefs are most important to me now? What positive aspects of my previous experience do I want to carry forward? Am I afraid of changing direction, and how do I address that? What practices actually align with what I believe, rather than what I think I should believe?

You’ll notice some overlap with questions I’ve asked in earlier posts on this path. That’s fine. This is about revisiting them now that you’ve done more of the work.

How to keep yourself safe while you’re figuring this out

Set your boundaries. Pay attention to your internal and external feelings, not just one or the other. Know your own lore – the story you’ve already lived, not just the one you’re being sold. Ask questions, and actually assess the answers instead of accepting the first one that sounds nice. And ask the same question again and again until you’re actually happy with the answer, not just tired of asking it.

So where does my path forward actually go?

I don’t fully know yet, if I’m honest. But I know it’s away from where I’ve been standing for the last while, and towards more time, not more money. Away from the version of me that thought 70-hour weeks were just what committed people did, and towards a version that gets to see her nieces more.

That’s the path forward, as far as I can see it right now. It’ll probably look different again in another 20 years. Good.

The Alarm I Set So I’d Actually Listen (Or, What the Old Poets Knew About Knowledge)

The three marks of a poet in old Irish tradition – imbas forosnai, teinm laeda, dichetal do chennaib – and what happens when you ignore the first one for two months.

Well, here we go. Back on Brigid’s Path, (after know myself, reconciling the past and joy) and this time it’s the Poet aspect I’m meant to be sitting with. I say “meant to” because I’ve been half-avoiding this one, cos poetry has never felt like mine to claim – I’m no poet, or so I’ve told myself for years.

But Brigid doesn’t just mean poet the way we mean it now, all verse and rhyme. In the old triads, the ones that list out threes of everything Gaelic culture thought was worth naming, there’s one that goes: three things that constitute a poet – knowledge that illumines, chewing of the marrow, and improvisation. In Irish: imbas forosnai, teinm laeda, dichetal do chennaib.

Three marks. Not three techniques you learn in a workshop – three ways of knowing.

Imbas forosnai – knowledge that illumines

For-osna. Lights up. Brings to light. Makes manifest.

This is the kind of knowing that arrives already lit, if that makes any sense at all. Not information you went looking for, but something that illuminates the second it lands – and you can’t unknow it afterwards.

I had a deep knowing from January this year that something was wrong. It took til March to take the drastic step of taking time off work. And even then I was hesitating about the amount of time I took. It took a few months after that before I could even hold a decent conversation at home.

We all have this deep knowing inside of us. We’ve just very often trained ourselves to ignore it. It’s not scientific, like? So how do it work? Well, I believe it’s our bodies and souls speaking to us. It’s the signs and indications our bodies and souls give us that we can’t put into a so called normal box, so we learn to ignore them. We can call it intuition, self-knowledge, all we want – but we all know things deep down that sometimes it suits us to ignore.

The old sources call imbas forosnai a gift of clairvoyance. I don’t think you need to believe in fortune-telling to recognise the shape of it. Are you telling the future, or creating it? I still don’t have an answer to that one. (Ask me again once I’ve chewed on it properly.) I just know that January me knew something March me eventually had to act on, and the gap between knowing and acting nearly cost me more than the knowing itself.

Teinm laeda – chewing of the marrow

This is the one I actually understand in my bones, cos it’s just rumination. Chewing the pith. I think of a cow working the same mouthful over and over, getting everything out of it slowly, no rush. Teinm laeda is knowledge you don’t get in a flash – you get it by staying with something long after everyone else has moved on. Turning it over. Turning it over again.

Really, this is most of what I do. Most of what any of us do, if we’re honest, when we’re actually working something out rather than performing having worked it out.

Dichetal do chennaib – improvisation, straight from the head

Now, this is the one that stops me in my tracks every time. Dichetal do chennaib literally means from the head – and it’s the mark of knowledge that arrives whole, spoken, in the moment, with no chewing at all. No illumination beforehand. Just composed, extemporaneously, because the moment demanded it.

The example I keep coming back to is Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, standing over her husband’s body, and the caoineadh – the keen – coming out of her already formed. Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire wasn’t drafted. It wasn’t chewed over for weeks. It came out of her, whole, because grief needed a shape and she gave it one on the spot.

That’s dichetal do chennaib. Not composure. The opposite of composure, actually – it’s what comes when there’s no time left to compose anything.

So where does that leave me, walking this bit of the path?

I’ve had my imbas forosnai moments this year – the deep knowing I sat on for far too long before I acted. I’ve definitely been chewing the marrow on some of it for months, cos that’s just how I process things, slowly, going back over the same ground until it gives something up.

What I haven’t done much of is the third one. Dichetal do chennaib asks you to trust that something whole can come out of you without being prepared first. I’m not sure I trust that yet.

But I am doing something about the imbas forosnai bit. I’ve gone back to my old practice of tuning into my body daily, actually asking it what it needs instead of overriding it and hoping it’ll sort itself out. I’ve even put a phone alarm on to remind me – which tells you everything about how easily I still talk myself out of it without one.

A screenshot of my alarm screen from last Friday at 11:13 to remind me to tune in - every day... Acting on our knowing, on our imbas forosnai is as important as knowing it!
Yes, this is my alarm screen from last Friday so I remember to tune in!

That’s the practice underneath everything I teach in one of the courses I’m building for the school right now. More on that when it’s ready. For now, it’s just me, an alarm, and the discipline of actually listening.

So that’s the homework, really. Not to force an improvised moment, but to notice when one’s asking to happen and not talk myself out of it – and to keep checking in daily with the knowing that’s already there, so it doesn’t take til March next time. What’s the knowing you’ve been sitting on? I’d really love to hear it, if you feel like sharing.

Bounce Around Like an Eejit: Joy as Discipline

Why joy isn’t something that just happens to you — the research behind planning for it, ten minutes a day on a trampoline, and Joy’s place as step three on Brigid’s Path.

After the depressing events of the last two weeks, this week I want to talk about Joy. Yes – ye are following me through this iteration of walking Brigid’s Path. I’d say sorry, but I’m really not. Sometimes you get the bad and the ugly before the good comes along.

Me at the beach, in the wind, experiencing some joy. Also my hair all over my face! Sometimes joy as a daily practice takes effort!

I love trampolining. And ok, it requires some hefty underwear – an F cup could blacken my own eye if I’m not careful – but that’s beside the point. Once the damn thing was up (again, so sorry about that day, neighbours), it was a lot easier to go and play on it. But easier isn’t the same as easy.

I bet ye can all guess how my mind was working once I got that trampoline up. What a waste of money. Grown woman playing on a trampoline. What will people think. It’s not like it’s doing any good. And on, and on, and on. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But joy isn’t always about the immediate effects. And sometimes the shadow work isn’t about digging through what’s gone wrong – sometimes it’s about being disciplined enough to actually let joy into your life, instead of quietly ignoring it.

I have a firm belief that no matter what put us on this earth, or why we’re here, we don’t have to be bloody miserable all the time. There’s real research behind that too – Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” theory in psychology argues that positive emotions aren’t just pleasant, they actually build real psychological resources over time: resilience, creativity, the ability to problem-solve. Joy isn’t just a nice feeling. It’s functional. And one well-known long-running study of a group of nuns found that those who expressed more positive emotion in early adulthood went on to live measurably longer than their less expressive peers.

But somehow, along the way, we all got the notion that joy is childish, or immature, or just not part of daily life as an adult. And there are times I wonder who or what benefits from that. (No, no – not me buying into conspiracy theories about capitalism, particularly late-stage capitalism… of course not. Dopamine produced by spending money is just as good as any other kind.)

It’s a hard nut to crack for most of us. Even those deep into sport aren’t immune – the Mayo football team just won the All-Ireland after 75 years, a story big enough to make the New York Times (albeit behind a paywall, but seriously – loads of free stuff on the net about it), but that was 75 years of loss for the fans first. A curse, they called it. That’s all over now. So no, nothing – or hardly anything – is guaranteed to give us joy. But from reading the literature, I’ve found that building habits that lead to joy can.

This all ended in me actually being disciplined about joy. Sounds antithetical, right? But looking at the research – and trust me, I’ve looked at the research – there’s nothing that says joy is spontaneous. In fact, a lot of what’s suggested – a daily walk, noticing nature, watching comedy – kind of needs to be planned for most of us. So I had to plan this too.

I committed to ten minutes a day. Hail, rain, or shine – and honestly, even getting onto the damn thing in the rain is fun enough. Certainly it was for someone watching me. But I decided: ten minutes, usually in the morning, for joy. And ok, it wasn’t the trampoline every day – sometimes the rain really was too much, so I danced for ten minutes instead. (Yes. We’re back to Shakira again.)

I get it – joy and discipline don’t really mix in our modern world. But there’s joy in mastering a new skill, and mastery takes practice. Not to mention repetition. Going back to something I’ve mentioned before about food – there’s joy in producing my own food too. By which I mean buying it and cooking it, not growing it. Taking the time to put love into what goes into my belly. A homemade fajita isn’t the same as an authentic Mexican dish, and it’s not trying to be. But it means I’m valuing myself enough to actually feed myself properly.

We overlook joy far too often. And it’s so important, it’s step three on Brigid’s Path. It’s not about being constantly happy – it’s about getting regular injections of joy into our lives. And sometimes that means heading out on a cold morning to bounce around like an eejit for a few minutes, before putting on your serious face and heading into the world to adult.

One Thing a Day: What the Reset Actually Looked Like

The list, the new notebook, and the daily practice behind the reset — what actually changed after the twentieth night, one small thing at a time.

Last week I told ye about the twentieth night, and the moment I finally sat down and admitted things weren’t working. So, here’s what I actually did about it.

I made a list. All the little things that had been bothering me – the trampoline sitting in the front hall, the few bits of clothing that needed mending, the clutter that had built up in various corners and really only needed five or ten minutes each to tackle. You get the idea. I love a good list. I even got a new notebook, to make sure I KNEW I was serious. Cos, y’know, a new notebook solves everything. A special trip to Eason’s in town and all.

So I had a plan. And since Al was away, there was no one in the house to stop me doing things and leaving them the way I needed to leave them to pick back up easily. (Yeah. It’s not my first rodeo… unfortunately.)

Now, I knew this wasn’t all getting done before I went back to work. That wasn’t the point. The point was to make the list and commit to doing one thing on it each day. Putting the trampoline together took a few hours – and possibly the neighbours learnt some new words that day – while sewing on a button took a few minutes. But the important thing was, they were crossed off the list.

And yes, sometimes that meant at 9pm, begrudgingly, putting on a load of clothes, and even more begrudgingly hanging them out the next morning. But I’d promised myself. And those promises are the easiest, and the most dangerous, to break.

Y’see, breaking a promise to yourself is the easiest thing in the world – no one is going to hold you accountable. But it also means you stop trusting yourself. Because you don’t keep your word. And whether it’s psychologically right or wrong, I found that treating myself the way I’d treat a friend was the best way to go about it.

So the day I ended up coming home three hours late from work because of a car accident – not mine, but it held up traffic – I changed the plan from “fold the dry clothes” to “shelve the pile of five books by the living room door.” Practicality came into it.

And I slowly worked my way through the house, and my list. Bit by bit. Some things got added, and some got taken away – I decided to outsource and pay for the weeding, because dear gods, those weeds had a mind of their own. And yes, that is a structural thistle we have out the front. It might die of old age before I get to it. That’s ok.

A picture of a 4 foot tall thistle in full, if a bit dry, bloom. It got removed from my list and onto the outsourced list from my daily reset practice. Cos that thing has DEEP roots!
My structural thistle. Yes, it is almost 4 foot high. And apparently roots almost as deep!

Throughout all of it, I could feel the other part of my brain coming out. “How could you let things get this bad?” “You know better than this.” “Oh my gods, what a failure you are.” Not the most supportive.

So I had to take myself by the hand and use my journal. (Yes – spoiler alert, this is the “Reconcile” part of Brigid’s Path.) Sitting down and journaling through a conversation in my head might seem a bit odd, but it works for me. It also forces my brain to slow down and actually think about what I’m saying to myself. A genuinely useful strategy, to be honest – one I use regularly, when I remember it.

I’m still working through the list, if I’m honest – and the more I do, the more I add to it. The chimney cleaning I’m trying to book. The clothes that just need to go to the charity bin in town. Working through the list adds to it, because clearing the house clears my head, and clearing my head shows me the next thing that needs clearing.

It’s not just about reconciling ourselves to what others have done to us. It’s the internal work too – the shadow work, the recognition that this is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done. I’ve always said my spirituality has to be practical, has to fit in with my actual life. And sometimes what I’m doing looks more like good psychology than spirituality. But I also know a cluttered home means a cluttered mind means a cluttered life. For me. Your mileage may vary.

But it’s worth sitting down. Lighting a candle. Taking a deep breath. And starting to write. See what comes out.

How to Celebrate Lúnasa Without Causing Harm – and What to Do Instead

Lúnasa is four days away. August 1st – or the Sunday nearest to it, as our ancestors would have observed it – is almost here. (Well, let’s be honest – it’s always more of a season than a given day in Irish lore!) Given this, there is a plethora of posts around how to celebrate Lúnasa, or Lughnasadh if you’re using pre-Caighdeán Irish. So here’s my approach!

Over the last few weeks we’ve covered a lot of ground. Brigid’s water aspect in summer. The lore behind her. The figures of the Lúnasa season – Tailtiu, Crom Dubh, Crom Cruach – and what they tell us about what our ancestors understood about harvest, sacrifice, and the cost of prosperity. Now it’s time to talk about what you can actually do.

A word about fire first

Lúnasa is primarily a fire festival. That’s along with Imbolc, Bealtaine, Samhain. And some people want to celebrate Lúnasa with a flame or a bonfire.

This year – and increasingly every year – I want to ask you to think carefully before you do that outdoors.

We have had one of the driest summers in recent memory in parts of Ireland and the UK. Across southern Europe, Australia, North America, and elsewhere, wildfires have caused devastation that is increasingly connected to climate change. The same Brigid who tends the sacred flame also – as we talked about earlier in this series – has deep roots in water, in wells, in the healing and patient work of rivers and the sea.

If you’re in an area with dry conditions, a fire risk, or a hosepipe ban, please don’t light an outdoor fire to mark Lúnasa. Light a candle indoors instead. She’ll find you just as easily.

an image of a candle in a jar. OUr ancestors might have celebrated Lúnasa with bonfires, but we can adjust to help prevent wildfires!
A candle is just as good as a bonfire when you’re worried about wildfires!!

What Lúnasa actually asks of you

Putting the fire question aside, Lúnasa is fundamentally a festival of stocktaking. The harvest is beginning. What has come in? Has anything left? What did you plant in the spring – literally or metaphorically – and what has actually grown?

I use the four fire festival bank holidays in Ireland – Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lúnasa, and Samhain – as structured check-in points across the year. Lúnasa specifically is where I look at what I’m harvesting in relation to what I’ve sacrificed. Not in a punishing way. But honestly.

Am I sacrificing too much in some areas and ignoring others? What has grown that I didn’t expect? What did I plant with great intention that simply hasn’t come in – and do I need to let go of it, or keep tending it through the darker months ahead?

These are worth sitting with before the festival arrives, rather than on the day itself. Give yourself a few days to let the questions settle.

Practical ways to celebrate Lúnasa

You don’t need an elaborate ritual. You don’t need to be in Ireland, or on a hilltop, or in possession of any particular objects. Here are some things that are accessible, grounded, and genuinely connected to the tradition:

Go to the water. The seaside connection for Lúnasa is ancient and still very much alive – Irish people head to the coast on the August bank holiday without knowing quite why. Know why. Go deliberately. Wash your feet. Sit with the sea.

Put flowers in the house. Garland Sunday – the last Sunday of July – is part of the Lúnasa tradition. Flowers strewn, beauty acknowledged, the earth’s abundance honoured. A bunch of wildflowers or whatever is growing in your garden is enough.

Make or share food. The harvest festival was always communal. Cook something from scratch. Share a meal. Acknowledge that food comes from somewhere and from someone’s labour.

Do your stocktake. Sit down with your journal. Look honestly at the year so far. What has grown? Was something meant to grow but didn’t? What are you carrying into the second half of the year, and what needs to be set down?

Visit a well. If you’re in Ireland, there will be one near you. Most counties have multiple wells with Brigid associations. Visit one with intention.

Going deeper into the lore

If this series has sparked a genuine curiosity about the figures behind Lúnasa – Tailtiu, Crom Dubh, and Crom Cruach – the courses at Brigid’s Forge School are the next step. Celebrate Lúnasa with learning!

You can take each course individually at €37 each. Or, for the next week, you can get all three together as the Lúnasa Bundle for €97 – saving €14 on the individual prices. The bundle covers Tailtiu, Crom Dubh, and Crom Cruach in depth, drawing on the primary sources and sitting honestly with what we can and can’t know about figures this old.

If you’ve been reading along for the last nine weeks and the Lúnasa season has started to feel like something worth understanding properly – now is a good time.

Beannachtaí Lúnasa oraibh. Lúnasa blessings to you all.

How are you planning to mark Lúnasa this year? I’d genuinely love to hear – drop it in the comments.

Six Months from Imbolc: What the Opposite Side of the Wheel Teaches Us

Imbolc and Lúnasa sit directly opposite each other on the wheel of the year. Six months apart, as far from each other as it is possible to be.

If Brigid is your primary deity – as she is mine – that means that right now, in late June and into July, you are at the furthest possible point from her festival. Imbolc is behind you. It won’t come around again until February. And Lúnasa, which belongs to a different set of figures entirely, is approaching fast.

This is not a problem. But it is worth paying attention to.

A picture of daffodils in my driveway
Yes I know, daffodils aren’t July flowers – it’s the only pic of flowers I have! lol

What the opposite point on the wheel actually means

The wheel of the year (as much as I dislike the term, it is commonly used…) is not just a calendar. It’s a map of energies, of what the land is doing, of what our ancestors understood about the rhythm of the year. And every festival has its opposite – a point of tension and balance, six months away, that helps define it.

Imbolc is about beginnings. The first light after the dark. The earliest stirring of spring. Brigid’s flame lit against the cold. It’s tender, hopeful, and small – a green shoot, not a full harvest.

Lúnasa is its opposite in almost every way. It’s the height of summer, the beginning of harvest, the moment of abundance before the slow turn toward darkness begins. Where Imbolc is about potential, Lúnasa is about what has actually grown. Where Imbolc is Brigid’s, Lúnasa belongs to Tailtiu, to the old gods, to something that predates even the Tuatha Dé Danann in the layers of Irish tradition.

Understanding that opposite point doesn’t diminish your relationship with Brigid. It deepens it. Because you can’t fully understand a festival without understanding what sits across from it on the wheel.

What sent me looking at this time of year

I started exploring the Lúnasa figures – Tailtiu, Crom Dubh, Crom Cruach – because I wanted to know what my ancestors were actually doing at this point in the year. Not what the books said in general terms, but what people in Ireland were specifically doing, in specific places, in specific ways.

I found my way to Duchas.ie – the Irish Folklore Collection, which is one of the most extraordinary resources available to anyone interested in Irish folk tradition. And what I found there stopped me in my tracks.

Garland Sunday. Also known as Reek Sunday. The last Sunday of July, celebrated in two main ways across Ireland: the strewing of flowers, and the climbing of mountains. Both traditions appear in community after community across the folklore records, often with details that suggest something far older than Christianity underneath them. Far older, in some cases, than the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves.

The flower strewing connects to the idea of honouring the earth at its most abundant. The mountain climbing – most famously on Croagh Patrick in Mayo, but not exclusively – connects to a landscape-based devotion that predates any of the named deities we know. These are the traces of your ancestors’ practice. They’re worth following.

Brigid at this time of year

Brigid doesn’t have a specific role in Lúnasa – and I want to be honest about that rather than force a connection that isn’t there in the lore. She and Lúnasa belong to different layers of the tradition, and that’s fine. Not every deity needs to be present at every festival.

What she does offer at this time of year is continuity. The relationship you’ve built with her doesn’t go dormant because her festival has passed. She’s still there. The water aspect is still available to you. The forge still burns.

But Lúnasa invites you to expand your attention. To begin to know the other figures who belong to this season, to ask what your ancestors were doing in late July, and to let the wheel of the year be a genuine guide rather than something that only matters at Imbolc and Samhain.

What’s coming

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about the three figures most associated with Lúnasa in the Irish tradition – Tailtiu, Crom Dubh, and Crom Cruach. Each of them has a course at Brigid’s Forge School for those who want to go deeper into the lore. And each of them has something genuinely interesting to say about what this time of year meant to the people who lived here before us.

If you want to mark Garland Sunday this year, you don’t need to climb a mountain. Put flowers in the house. Go outside if you can. Remember that the last Sunday of July has been considered significant in Ireland for longer than anyone can fully trace – and that your ancestors were part of that.

That’s enough. It’s more than enough.

Have you ever marked Garland Sunday or Reek Sunday? Or discovered something in the folklore records that surprised you? Drop it in the comments – I’d love to know what you’ve found.

Brigid and Water: Healing, Wells, and What the Sea Teaches Us

Brigid water healing is not the first thing most people think of when they come to her. The forge, the flame, the sacred fire at Kildare – these are the images that tend to dominate. And they’re real. They matter. But they’re only half the picture.

Water runs through Brigid’s tradition just as deeply as fire does. Her wells are scattered across Ireland in their hundreds. Her healing aspect is documented across centuries of both pagan and Christian practice. And for those of us who work with her actively, the water side of her tends to show up at the moments when fire would be too much – when what’s needed is not a dramatic transformation but a slow, patient, consistent one.

A picture of me, standing in the sea enjoying life!
The husband did not enter the sea on this particular day, but he was thinking about it!

The wells

Ireland is covered in wells associated with Brigid. St Brigid’s Well in Liscannor, Co. Clare is one of the most significant – a living pilgrimage site with an extraordinary atmosphere, visited by people who are neither particularly pagan nor particularly Catholic but who recognise something there worth attending to. It’s not the only one. Almost every county has its own, and the folklore attached to them is rich and specific and worth exploring.

Wells in Irish tradition are liminal places – thresholds between the surface world and what lies beneath. They are associated with healing, with wishes, with the resolution of difficult things. Water rises from the earth, cold and clear, carrying something of the deep places with it. Brigid tends these places. She has done for a very long time.

If you have access to a well – Brigid’s or otherwise – visiting it with intention is one of the simplest and most grounded ways to connect with her water aspect. You don’t need a ritual. You don’t need to know the correct prayers. Showing up and paying attention is enough.

The sea

The sea is something else again. Brigid’s relationship with the sea and healing is less often discussed than her wells, but it’s there in the tradition and it’s there in practice.

Whenever I have something troubling my mind – a problem to chew over, something that won’t settle, a weight I’ve been carrying longer than I should – I go to the sea. Even on the roughest days, even when the weather is doing something dramatic and the waves are throwing themselves at the rocks, I find something there to help me. The wildness of it on difficult days. The gentleness of it on calmer ones. The salt air that gets into everything and clears it out.

What I’ve come to understand is that this is Brigid’s water aspect working in a way that fire simply can’t. Fire transforms fast and completely. Water works on you gradually, patiently, wearing away at what needs to shift until you fit the shape that was waiting for you. It’s slower. It’s often gentler. And it tends to go deeper.

Healing that doesn’t announce itself

One of the things I’ve noticed about Brigid’s water aspect is that it rarely announces itself. The healing doesn’t arrive in a flash. It accumulates – visit by visit, tide by tide, glass of water by glass of water. You look back after a few weeks and realise something has shifted, and you can’t point to a single moment when it happened.

This is different from the fire model of healing, which tends to be more immediate and more visible. Both are valid. Both are Brigid. But the water model is particularly well suited to the kinds of healing that need time – the long-standing patterns, the deep griefs, the things that have been with you so long you’ve started to think of them as permanent.

They’re not permanent. Water is patient. So is she.

Brigid as a bridge in troubled times

This quality – the capacity to hold you steadily while change happens gradually around and through you – is part of what makes Brigid such a useful figure in difficult periods. She doesn’t demand that you be transformed immediately. In my experience, she doesn’t require you to have it together before you come to her. She meets you where you are and works with what’s actually there.

That’s what the wells were for. That’s what the sea offers. And it’s available to you whether you’re in Ireland or not – water is water, and she finds you wherever it is.

Going deeper

If you want to understand Brigid’s healing aspect more fully – where it comes from in the tradition, how it’s documented in the historical sources, what the old texts actually say about her – the St Brigid of Ireland course at Brigid’s Forge School (€37) is a good place to start. Next week I’ll be writing about the lore courses specifically – the primary texts that mention her, and what they reveal.

Do you have a relationship with Brigid’s water aspect? A well you visit, a stretch of coast that feels significant, a river that settles something in you? I’d genuinely love to hear about it in the comments.

Brigid Beyond Imbolc: How to Connect With Her in Summer

Brigid in summer can feel like a contradiction. She is so strongly associated with Imbolc – with February 1st, with the first stirring of spring, with candles lit against the dark – that when the long days arrive and Imbolc feels months away in either direction, it’s easy to find yourself coasting.

I know this because I do it every year. April hits and my spiritual practice goes a bit quiet. I’m not abandoning anything, I’m just… less active about it. Less intentional. And then, at some point in early summer, something shifts.

The pull of the sea

It starts with an urge I’ve learned to pay attention to. I need to get to the coast.

Brigid in summer leads us to the sea - well she leads me there a lot! But this image of Tramore on a sunny summer's day shows why - the crowds, the balmy water, the blue sky - and it's almost on my doorstep!
The Irish seaside on a summer’s day

Not for a holiday. Not for a swim, necessarily, although if the weather is right I’ll take that too. Just to be near the water. To walk to the edge of it and let the sea do what the sea does. Wash my feet. Splash my face. Stand in the cold shallows and feel something settle that had been restless.

This year, with Ireland hitting 30 degrees – yes, you read that correctly, 30 degrees in Ireland – the urge arrived with extra urgency. And it delivered, as it always does.

What I’ve come to understand is that this is Brigid. Not Brigid of the forge and the flame, but Brigid of the wells, the rivers, the healing waters. The side of her that works slowly, patiently, wearing away at whatever needs to shift until it fits the shape she’s looking for.

Why fire doesn’t always suit summer

Brigid’s association with fire and water is something I’ve written about before. Fire transforms fast – it’s urgent, total, immediate. Water transforms slowly. It supports, encourages, and gradually reshapes. Both are Brigid. Both are useful. But they suit different moments.

In summer, particularly for those of us with more natural energy in the warmer months, the fire aspect can tip into overwhelm. There’s already heat, already momentum, already a lot happening. Adding more fire to that can be too much.

Water, on the other hand, meets you in the heat. It cools. Soothes. It holds you while it works. And Brigid’s water aspect is, in my experience, just as transformative as her fire – it just takes longer, and it tends to be gentler about it.

A note for those in wildfire regions

If you’re reading this from Australia, California, southern Europe, or anywhere that summer brings the threat of wildfire rather than an invitation to swim – I’d suggest working primarily with Brigid’s water aspect this time of year rather than her fire. Light candles carefully and with awareness. But let the wells, the rivers, the rain, and the sea be your primary points of connection with her until the season turns.

Brigid and the sea have a long relationship, and it doesn’t require living in Ireland to access it. Water is water. She finds you wherever it is.

What summer practice with Brigid can look like

You don’t need to overhaul anything. Small, consistent contact with the water aspect is enough. Some possibilities:

Seek out natural water where you can – the sea, a river, a lake, a well. St Brigid’s Well in Liscannor is one of the most significant, but every county in Ireland has its own, and if you’re not in Ireland, look for what’s local to you.

Bring intention to water in your daily life. The shower you take in the morning. The glass of water before you begin work. These aren’t just practical acts – they can be devotional ones, if you choose to treat them that way.

Let the season inform your pace. Summer is a good time for healing work, for the slower processes, for allowing things to be gently worn into a better shape rather than burned through quickly.

And if you feel that pull toward the coast – go. Trust it. In my experience, it’s rarely just a desire for a nice afternoon out.

Going deeper with Brigid

If the summer feels like a good time to learn more about her – who she actually is in the old texts, how she appears across Irish mythology, what the sources tell us that devotional practice alone can’t – the courses at Brigid’s Forge School are a good place to start.

The St Brigid of Ireland course (€37) is the accessible entry point, covering her historical and hagiographical legacy. And over the next couple of weeks I’ll be writing more about the lore courses specifically – the texts that mention her, what they say, and why it matters.

Have you felt that seasonal shift in your practice? Drop a comment below – I’d love to know how summer sits with you and Brigid.

I Didn’t Know I Was Starting. On Beginnings and What They Actually Look Like.

Starting a spiritual path rarely feels like starting. Most beginnings don’t announce themselves. They arrive quietly — dressed as curiosity, or restlessness, or a question you can’t quite put down.

Mine arrived when I was twenty-two, confused, and standing in an English Catholic church wondering why everything felt so different.

An image of a post staying "Start" in white writing on a red background, on a woodland path. But in real life, starting a spiritual path isn't always this clear!
Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

When I moved to England

I grew up Irish Catholic. And Irish Catholicism, if you didn’t grow up inside it, is its own specific thing — shaped by centuries of history that has no equivalent in the UK or the US. The relationship between the Irish and their faith is complicated in ways that are hard to explain briefly. It is threaded through with colonialism, with survival, with a particular fierce tenderness for certain figures and practices that don’t map neatly onto the universal Catholic church.

When I arrived in England at twenty-two, I walked into a Catholic church and didn’t quite recognise what I found. The texture was different. The cultural weight was different. The things that had meant something to me, growing up, didn’t carry the same charge here.

So I started asking questions. Not questions about my faith exactly — not yet. Questions about the Irish version. About where it had come from. About what was Catholic and what was older than Catholic and what was somewhere in between.

That was the beginning. I didn’t know it at the time.

What starting a spiritual path actually looks like

They rarely announce themselves. They rarely feel significant in the moment. Most often they feel like curiosity, or restlessness, or a mild dissatisfaction with the explanations available. They feel like a question that keeps returning even after you’ve set it aside.

My beginning was a young woman in an English city trying to understand why the religion she’d grown up with felt different here. That question led me to Irish mythology. Irish mythology led me to the older layers under the Catholic surface. The older layers led me to Brigid.

None of it was planned. All of it was necessary.

On starting something you can’t yet see the shape of

If you’re at the beginning of something — if you’re in that curious, restless, not-quite-satisfied place — I want to offer you something.

You don’t need to know where you’re going. You don’t need to have the whole path mapped before you take the first step. In fact, the most important beginnings I’ve witnessed, in myself and in the women I work with, tend to start from exactly the place you’re in: somewhere between what you’ve left and what hasn’t yet become clear.

Brigid is a threshold figure. She has been for a very long time. She meets people at the beginning of things — at Imbolc, the first stirring of spring, when the light is starting to change but winter isn’t quite done. I can assure you, she doesn’t ask you to arrive fully formed. She asks you to show up.

The Guided Path founding cohort has just begun. The self-paced programme is there for whenever you’re ready. And if you’re not ready for either yet — that’s fine too. Stay on the list. Ask your questions. The path will still be here.

[Find out more ]

Something landed here? Drop a comment below. I’d love to know what your beginning looked like — or what it’s looking like right now.