Tag: Irish goddess

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.

Brigid: The Irish Saint and Goddess Who Makes Sense After You’ve Left the Church

Why did I end up working with Brigid, Irish saint, goddess, on my spiritual path? Well you might ask.

It was a Travel Lodge in Holyhead. Two in the morning. I was waiting for the night ferry back to Ireland after a women’s empowerment weekend, sitting on the edge of a bed that had seen better days, crying my eyes out and asking for guidance from anything that might be listening.

What arrived was not what I expected.

The Dagda 0 father figure of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the old Irish gods – turned up. Not dramatically. Not with thunder or visions. His first suggestion, after I’d poured out everything I was carrying, was to drink some water. By the time the night was over, he had one more piece of advice: go and look into his daughter.

His daughter is Brigid.

Brigid is probably not who you think she is

If you grew up Catholic in Ireland, you know Saint Brigid. February 1st. The cross made of rushes. The secondary patron saint, the one who wasn’t Patrick. Maybe a school named after her, or a church, or a prayer you learned and forgot. (Indeed, and a GAA club either!)

What most of us weren’t taught is that Saint Brigid possibly/ probably absorbed an older figure: a goddess of the same name, part of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pre-Christian Irish pantheon. A goddess of poetry, smithcraft, and healing. Protector of the vulnerable. Keeper of the sacred flame at Kildare, which burned for centuries and was tended by women.

Listen, a spiritual path away from organised religion doesn't have to start with Brigid Irish saint & goddess. But like this candle in the picture - it doens't hurt either...
I know, I often use a candle to start people off with Brigid. But there’s reasons!!

The two figures of Brigid, saint and goddess, are so deeply entwined on the spiritual paths they walk that scholars still debate where one ends and the other begins. For our purposes, that ambiguity is not a problem. It’s actually the point.

Why she works for women like us (saint or goddess)

Women like us – ex-Catholic, ex-evangelical, ex-whatever-it-was, still spiritual, not sure where to go next – tend to have a complicated relationship with religious figures. We’ve spent years being told what to believe about them. The last thing most of us want is another authority telling us who to pray to and why.

Brigid doesn’t work like that. She never really did.

Brigid sits at a threshold: between Christianity and what came before it, between the institutional and the personal, between the historical record and lived experience. Most certainly, she doesn’t require you to become pagan to approach her. She doesn’t require you to abandon whatever remnants of your Catholic upbringing still feel meaningful. She has been navigating that in-between space for over a thousand years.

Unusually, she is also a figure who has belonged specifically to women for most of her history. The flame at Kildare was tended by women. The traditions around her in Irish folk culture were carried by women. Her feast day, Imbolc, marks the first stirring of spring: a threshold moment, a beginning, which is exactly where a lot of us find ourselves.

What she’s not

She is not a replacement religion. Approaching Brigid doesn’t mean you’re signing up for paganism, or Irish polytheism, or any other label you’re not ready to take on. Brigid, Irish saint and goddess know better than to try to force anyone on a spiritual path that’s not right for them.

She is not going to fix everything. No single figure, practice, or tradition does that.

She is not exclusively Irish either – though her roots are deep in this land, and if you have Irish ancestry, that connection is worth exploring. She has travelled all over the world with Irish emigrants, and as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a chance she might have originated with our neighbours to the East.

What she is, in my experience, is a reliable point of entry. A figure grounded enough in history to withstand scrutiny, flexible enough in tradition to meet you where you actually are, and specific enough to give you something real to work with rather than a vague spiritual fog.

How to start with Brigid, saint or goddess, on a spiritual path

You don’t need to do anything dramatic. You don’t need to build an altar or declare a belief or join anything.

Start with curiosity. Read about her: both the saint and the goddess, and the places where they overlap. Notice what resonates and what doesn’t. Light a candle on February 1st if it appeals to you. Look into the history of Kildare. Find out which stories about her have been told in your own family’s county, because there will be some. (And if your family doesn’t come from Ireland, check out the other posts in the blog to get you started!)

Most of all, stay honest with yourself about what you’re actually drawn to versus what you think you should be drawn to. Brigid has been around long enough not to need your performance. She just needs your attention.

Your spiritual path may align with or veer away from Brigid, either the saint of the goddess. That’s ok. She won’t mind at all.

Where this is going

Next week I want to talk about what the actual inner work looks like – not the aesthetic of spirituality, but the practice of it. What it means to sit with uncomfortable questions, and why that is worth doing.

If you don’t want to miss it, make sure you’re on the list.

Have a question about Brigid, or something from this post that’s sitting with you? Drop it in the comments or reply to any of my emails. I read everything.