Episode 165: Brigid, Imbolg & Irish Cosmology (with Sharon Paice MacLeod)

We’re joined this week by Celticist, teacher, and musician Sharon Paice MacLeod who provides a beautiful, nuanced primer for Irish Cosmology. We discuss the Maiden-Mother-Crone, music in Celtic lore, keening, and Brigid’s cross. 

This week, Julia recommends Dooku: Jedi Lost. 

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about religious persecution, child death, monarchy and political power structure. 

Guest

Sharon Paice MacLeod is a Harvard-trained Celticist, grant funded researcher, teacher and author. She is also a professional vocalist and musician, specializing in Celtic, medieval, early and ancient music. Her areas of specialization are Celtic religion and belief, mythology and folklore, and poetic and visionary traditions. She is the author of numerous books and journal articles, including ‘Celtic Myth and Religion,’ ‘Celtic Cosmology and the Otherworld,’ ‘The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe,’ and the forthcoming ‘Early Celtic Poetry and Wisdom Texts.’ 

She is currently researching the earliest known Celtic instrumental music and vocal art forms, in socio-religious context. The award-winning self-titled CD ‘The Moors’ - Celtic, medieval, world and dark wave music - is available on Apple Music.

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Transcript

Amanda:            Welcome to spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.

Julia:                    And I'm Julia.

Amanda:            This is episode 165, Brigid in Bulk in Irish Cosmology with Sharon Paice MacLeod.

Julia:                    Amanda has been so excited to cover this with an actual expert for such a long time that I was so pleased and I just kind of sat there very happy.

Amanda:            Yeah, I was so stoked. It was lovely. Sharon bared with us as we overcame bad internet connections and made this episode happen and I am so glad we did.

Julia:                    Yeah, I think it worked out great. I think our listeners are going to be very happy with the results.

Amanda:            Amazing. And this is well timed because in bulk, the holiday is on Saturday February 1st.

Julia:                    Yeah. So our listeners are going to catch it like a few days before and then they can decide whether or not they'd like to celebrate.

Amanda:            Do you know who I decide to celebrate every week Julia.

Julia:                    Is that our new patrons?

Amanda:            Our new patrons Nerissa, Ross, Cavon and Gerald, welcome. You join the distinguished ranks of such patrons as our supporting producer, level supporters, Phillip, Megan, Debra, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Neil, Jessica and Phil fresh, and our legend level patrons, Brittany, Josie, Kylie, Charlotte Kylo, the Husky, Morgan BME Scotty, Chris, Mark, Mr. folk, Sarah and Jack Murray.

Julia:                    They are always leading the celebration.

Amanda:            Absolutely. And Julia remind us what you were drinking this episode.

Julia:                    Well at Sharon's' suggestion we cracked open a couple of bottles of Fraoch, which is a Heather Ale, made by the Williams brothers brewing company in Scotland. And so, Heather Ales actually date back to at least 2000 BCE and are probably the oldest style of Ale still produced in the world. So, this particular batch is brewed with malted barley, sweet Gail and feathering Heather.

Julia:                    And then the hot ale is also poured into a VAT of fresh Heather Flowers or infuses for about an hour or so before it's fermented.

Amanda:            Oh, it's so cool. This was such an interesting, like lovely taste, not something that I would really think of as like beer generally and I am definitely going to be seeking it out more in the future.

Julia:                    I'm a big fan of floral beers personally, it's-

Amanda:            Me too.

Julia:                    It's very close to my heart.

Amanda:            And Julia were you like reading, watching, listening to anything cool this week?

Julia:                    So I kind of accidentally fell down a star Wars rabbit hole.

Amanda:            Detail. Was it Baby Yoda?

Julia:                    It's always Baby Yoda. It's always the Mandalorian. I just have very strong feelings about all of it. And it was also at the recommendation of editor Eric, who said that we should start watching star Wars clone Wars. And I did. And then I was like, "What if I just picked up a bunch of books that were also Star Wars extended universe, and then I picked up Duku jet I lost, because Duke is one of Jake's favorite Sith characters. And I read it in like three days.

Amanda:            Ah, that's such a good feeling.

Julia:                    I also highly recommend, so the book itself is in script form, but you can listen. It's designed to be like a play basically. So, I believe that you can listen to it on audible.

Amanda:            That's awesome.

Julia:                    Yeah, it was really, really well done. I think after I finish it, I'm going to actually go listen to it. I read it first, but I want to hear how the performances come out.

Amanda:            I love that so much, and in between doing all that reading, you're also working hard on our LA live show, which is coming up. We are so excited to... On February 15th, do a very fun short to join the party, one shot, open up for a spirits live. Listen guys, it's going to be competitive. It's going to have to do with cryptids. We are so excited to do it. So please, if you live in California or the LA area, definitely come through drive over from another state.

Amanda:            Make it a road trip. Make an excuse to visit LA, and most of all, let your friends know who live in the area. Even if they don't listen to spirits, it's going to be an extremely fun night. We always make sure that our live shows across all of multitude are fun and enjoyable, even if you don't know us or the podcast. So we would absolutely love to see your faces go to multitude.productions/live to get your tickets now.

Julia:                    Yeah, and also Amanda and the rest of the multitude team have been publishing some incredible free resources that you can find on our website at multitude.production/resources. So, they are there for you no matter what you want to make or what you're making online. It is in my opinion, the best way to get started in creating stuff on the internet.

Amanda:            I think so too. And that includes like marketing a creative project or an accounting spreadsheet to keep track of the money you're putting into a given project. So, while some of it's about podcasting, not all, and we just wanted to remind you that that is free to use for anybody who might find it helpful at multitude.productions. So without further ado, please enjoy episode 165, Brigid in Bulk and Irish cosmology, with Sharon Paice MacLeod.

Amanda:            We are so excited to welcome to the show Sharon Paice MacLeod who is a Celtic studies scholar, writer, teacher and professional Celtic musician as well as the author of several books about Celtic mythology and cosmology, which is how I found out about her. Sharon, welcome.

Sharon:               Thank you so much.

Amanda:            Sharon, I would love if you could kind of start off the episode here by just like giving a brief overview of the Celtic mythology cosmology, like if you had to sum it up for a student who's learning about it for the first time.

Sharon:               Sure, sure. When I've done general teaching in the past, I actually went through some of the materials and tried to codify them into nine basic elements, each one of which of course is very rich and deep and something that can be explored in more depth. But I think one of the most important things that we see in terms of pagan Celtic religion and the mythology that was later written down in some early Irish and medieval Welsh sources, is this importance of the existence of a Celtic other world.

Sharon:               It was something that was believed to exist at all times around not something that we connect with only after death, but something that was always present. So the other world existed around us at all times, but it could be accessed more readily at certain places and at certain times of the day or the year. And this other world was considered to be the source of wisdom and skill healing and other attributes.

Sharon:               And in early Irish sources, it was referred to as the realm of the sheath. And that's spelled S-I-D Sheath. And the pagan gods of the early Irish were first referred to through this term, the ice Sheather, the people of the sheath, or in English, sometimes we call them the fairy mounds. And this word actually means seat. Like the seat of the gods, the abode of the gods. And it seemed to have also a secondary meaning of peace, which is a little confusing because when you read the myths as in most mythology, the gods and the spirits are not always at peace or fostering peace or peaceful in their interactions with themselves or with us.

Sharon:               But what we come to understand is that this meaning of peace results from human beings having a right relationship with the other world and its inhabitants. And so that just permeates a lot of the literature that we see where we can isolate different threads that have to do with pre-Christian belief. So, that's kind of one of the most important things that we see. And the second thing that we see quite a bit of is the importance and the sacred quality of the land and its features.

Sharon:               Talking about Hills, Plains, groves and bodies of water, some of which were associated with the gods as well as trees and plants, animals and birds. So those all figure very prominently as well.

Amanda:            That tracks with me in the sort of like a common modern understanding of like just don't touch the fairy mound. Just leave it alone, build around it. Like don't even go there.

Sharon:               Exactly. A longtime student of mine has lots of relatives in Ireland and she said when she would be visiting her grandmother as a young girl and the grandmother would warn her away from the fairy mound, but being a young person, she went and was jumping up and down a top of it. She always wondered if that caused any disruptions.

Julia:                    How do I like being different.

Sharon:               And so if you think about well who are these gods from everything that we can tell the ancient counts, and ancient Celts were polytheistic believing in many gods and goddesses. And that's a little bit different than some sources talk about where they get a little confused with modern earth religion, say with the symbolism of the Neo pagan Lord and lady God and goddess. And that's really different from what we see where there are many deities, male and female, and some are associated with the land, but also with aspects of society like wisdom, skill, healing, abundance.

Sharon:               And some of these deities seem to be regional or local to that particular landscape or that tribe, but others might have been more pan Celtic when we see names in gall and Britain and Ireland that are cognate, that are a linguistic equivalence. And so, it's kind of interesting that some of these deities might have had a very wide area in which they were venerated.

Sharon:               So, that's a very complex topic. Looking at all the information and the attributes of these, of these gods and goddesses.

Amanda:            I'm sure, not to mention how they move across places that people perhaps did not frequently move between.

Sharon:               Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of them that really, again, is so important for understanding the mythology is a figure called the goddess of sovereignty. And she has different names in different regions and in different stories, but you can kind of identify that we're talking about this figure. It was only with her blessing that a King's rain would be successful. And in some of the stories she sort of chooses and tests a candidate for kingship to see if he's worthy, is he generous, is he truthful, is he brave? Different things, attributes that he should embody. And if he passes the test, then she will empower him to reign.

Sharon:               But he cannot be successful without connection with her in some way. And in some of the stories they actually have sex. And that's sort of this deep connection that they have. But in later times when people saw these stories, they didn't understand what that was. And so they started to portray her as being, wanting as you know, just different aspects that were twisted after a while, because they didn't really understand who she was.

Sharon:               And she's associated with the land fertility abundance, but also warfare and death and destruction. And most important symbols are the horse and the Ravens. So sometimes you'll see those animals showing up in the myths and she can appear as a beautiful woman, an animal, or an old hag. But this is different from Robert Graves, 1949 basic invention of the term maiden mother crone. That was something he came up with. And I think this is one of the things that might have led him to views upon that.

Sharon:               So she, she's a very important figure that you see showing up in a lot of different guises. It's very, very interesting.

Amanda:            And does she have like a first name or is she just known as the goddess of sovereignty?

Sharon:               She will have a name, different goddesses who seem to have this aspect in Irish tradition. We have the Morrigan, the great queen, whose name seems to have been all new. It looks like Morrigan was a title. She had a sister Makha, who also has that attribute. You'll see some of that in one of the sagas, a figure known as queen Mather or queen Knave in English. And she has some of these attributes, but in that saga they become a little bit twisted.

Sharon:               So there's numerous, I mean I would say there were close to 10 or 12 stories in which you'll see a female figure in Irish literature anyway, who once you sort of look at the whole totality of what's going on that she is this really important figure that we see throughout. And you'll see that also in medieval Welsh literature. You'll see like Rhian, which means divine queen. You'll see that as well.

Amanda:            That is so fascinating and I love this idea that it's to my modern mind, right? Like growing up, not in a monarchy, it seems like having a sort of test as to whether or not a potential ruler is not just like the next male heir to the throne, but some amount of like, "Are you ready? Are you good? Are you just?" That's such an interesting kind of layer to put on top of it.

Sharon:               Absolutely. I think that's a very important point, and I think something that really resonates in this day and age in particular when we have so much concern for the environment, is that there seems to be this connection with the idea of stewardship of the land. You don't see, for example, as you would see in the old Testament where man has dominion over nature, right? There's, there's more of an interconnection as you would see in really any traditional culture.

Sharon:               And so, one of the important things that the potential ruler, I like to say that because it leaves it open for male or female, but the potential ruler must be able to serve as a steward of the land. And that is also one of the attributes of this goddess. So it all ties in, and I think people find that just very resonant with all the challenges that we have right now regards to environment and landscape.

Julia:                    I wonder if this sort of interaction between people and the gods in a pre-Christian Ireland and Celtic societies more broadly, how do they interact with the gods? Like how did they interact with the sheet?

Sharon:               That's an excellent question. One of the things that we do see cropping up in the literature is you will see different people interacting in liminal places, places that are sore sort of on the border between this world and the other world. Some of those would be of course the sheath mounts, which originally were non Celtic. They were originally neolithic burial mounds. And so, that was quite a way before the iron age where we first start to see Celtic culture.

Sharon:               But also on the tops of Hills and mountains, the edge of a Lake at sacred Springs and Wells. So places where we come into contact with the other. And I think some of this must really tie in with a belief in a triune cosmos, which would be the upper world, the middle world where we live and the lower world. And that lower world does not equate with hell, and the upper world does not equate with heaven.

Sharon:               This is a quite archaic but also still present in many traditional cultures that you have these three worlds that connect in certain ways. And so, if you think about it, if you go to the top of a mountain, you're at a place where you would be sort of on the edge between this world and the upper world. If you go to the edge of a body of water, say a Lake or a river, then you're starting to connect with this world, as connecting with the lower world.

Sharon:               So at these liminal places, you'll see different rituals take place and the counts... especially fond of making offerings of valuable items either into offering pits. So that was down into the earth or into bodies of water. And archeologists have excavated some of these places and uncovered incredible things that were given things of value. So we're sort of trained to think of the word sacrifice in terms of how that was looked at in Christian tradition.

Sharon:               But the word sacrifice means to make sacred. And so you're giving something of value. And they would create beautiful jewelry. And sometimes it was too big to be worn by a human. So you can tell that was made specially for the gods or things that were put in water, and broken before they were put in to show that it no longer can be used here.

Julia:                    Wow, I love that.

Sharon:               Yeah, it's really fascinating. And also when people were asking for healing, they would carve a little image of a person or the part of the body that needed healing and that would go into the body of water. So, they've uncovered immense amounts of things from these offering hoards, typically in lakes, but also in the rivers as well. And I think that's really interesting to think about that concept.

Sharon:               And when the Romans came in contact with the counts and commented quite a bit on their culture and their religion, they said that when the Celts would have a ceremony, there would be a great mound of valuable things in a sacred place. And they were just left there and no one would touch it. And the Romans were amazed at this, that it could just sit there and no one was sneaking in and pilfering something from it.

Sharon:               So they would be offering ceremonies and we don't have specific liturgy from the iron age because the counts typically did not commit their religious beliefs to write in writing, but we are starting to be able to see aspects of things that could have been liturgy in some of the very earliest Irish literature and scholars are just now really starting to come to a place where they don't feel constrained by Judea Christian belief nor feeling too constrained by the concern of getting tenure so that they can actually look at these things and say, "Yes, nothing like this exists in Christian tradition.

Sharon:               The language is early. The symbolism fits with other things that we know and therefore this likely looks like a pre-Christian verse or a pre-Christian poem. And so, if you look at that literature you can start to sort of piece something together and that's something I'm going to be working on upcoming after I finished the book that I'm currently working on. I've been working on researching the very earliest Celtic instrumental music and recitation of poetry and song.

Sharon:               And once I get that finished, I'm going to be doing a book... that will be a book and CD, and then there will be another book and CD saying, "Well, how would we put that together with what we know about cosmology and ritual?"

Julia:                    I'm pre-ordering it right now.

Sharon:               And I think it's so important because like many traditional cultures, so much about Celtic culture and belief that you read in popular books or on the internet is just false. It is so inaccurate and it's really misrepresenting a culture that we don't have the right to alter how they would represent themselves. And so, a lot of my work feels like a salmon swimming upstream. I'm trying to connect people with this information, but I am constantly brought up against this really torrent of misinformation that's on the internet, that's in a lot of the books so that I can then get to the point where people can say, "Oh, that's not it. Okay."

Sharon:               And set that aside. And then, let's be open-minded, open-hearted to what really was going on and then to have people experienced that, embody that, try to live that in some way. So, it's a kind of a gargantuan task and probably a fool's errand. But I'm up for the tasks.

Amanda:            I would actually love to hear you speak a little bit more just because I know that music is your background of the importance of music in Celtic traditions as well as the recitation of those stories.

Sharon:               And that's something we do see so much of in the literature, is talking about they might say that so-and-so sang this or spoke to us or recited this and we have to go, "Well, are they singing in the way that we think of song, with a very elaborate melody." And I don't think at that point that would have been how some of it took place. That might've been a little more like a chant in some ways. You know, where you have a smaller range of notes, and it was just a smaller vocal range.

Sharon:               And I've been really studying how that works in different cultures. And there have been a few conferences where Celtics have gotten together with some musicians who have been trying to sort of research and reconstruct what some of the music might have been like. And it was really wonderful to see them working together and taking some chances to say, "Well, how might it have been?" And I remember one scholar, Virginia Blankenhorn did exactly what I thought in my mind.

Sharon:               She took a bit of a poem and first she just recited it as we would think of, you know, spoken but kind of declaimed and not everyday speech. And then she did it with sort of just a few notes and then she sang it with a melody that she created. And it was just great to listen to not only how does that sound, but how does it work? Because music, poetry, liturgy is supposed to create an effect. If you listen to a song, it should impact you in some way. And so, listening to all of these different experiments, they were all interesting and I think historically fairly sound, but some of them as a musician, I would say a musician would never do that for this reason.

Sharon:               A singer would, would think of it this way and a harpist would think of it this other way. So we're trying to put together this combination of how the instruments sounded, what their strengths were, what kind of a of physical impact they would have on a person's mind, body spirit as they're listening to it. So, that's a pretty intense task to look at this. And I worked a couple of years ago with fester professor William Gillis, who used to be head of Celtic at university of Edinburgh.

Sharon:               And we would sit and look at pieces of poetry and we would both experiment with that same thing. Let me just speak and declaim it. Let me try and sort of chant it. Let me improvise a melody with that. So, we're still kind of in process with how that might have been. But one thing is certain, there's so much discussion of poetry, singing songs, prayers, curses, spells, invocations, incantations that we can just really sense what an important role it had in the culture and in the religion and in ritual, which is something that we want to sort of put back together if we can.

Amanda:            That sounds like such an amazing process.

Julia:                    Yeah. Of collaboration and I think a great kind of endorsement of people with careers having like hobbies, art loves, other things that they can kind of bring to their understanding of their material.

Sharon:               Absolutely. And that's not always the case. You know, some scholars have the thing that they do and they just, and they're good at that, but they might not be able to do the next thing. Like some of the linguists can talk to you a great deal about linguistics and different things like that, but if you ask them to interpret a piece of literature, they would say, "Oh, I don't know. I don't go there."

Sharon:               And I think in more recent times, say in the last decade or so, you see a lot more cooperation between people in Celtic studies with different specialties, but also more interdisciplinary connection with archeologists and historians and people in different fields are starting to come together and really starting to do some very interesting work in regards to say excavation of ritual sites and bringing different people together to say... to kind of show what they know and put it together. And I think that's really starting to yield some very, very exciting results that for me will be very impactful, you know, moving forward with this work.

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Sharon:               Oh, that's an interesting question. One possible segue is that this figure that we referred to as Brigid, as far as we can tell in a pagan incarnation, her name would have been Brigid, and sort of anglicized Brigid to some extent. And she was a goddess with three very important attributes, which were poetry, healing and Smith craft. And so having just been talking about the importance of poetry and music, she's a goddess that really resonates with a lot of people these days and you'll actually find groups of women or groups of men and women who feel a special devotion to her and they read everything they can about her and we don't actually have an enormous amount of information about Bridget the goddess.

Sharon:               There is this one reference as I just mentioned, where the description says that she has two sisters also named Brigid, but what we're really seeing is a goddess with three, and again this is different from modern ideas about say, maiden, mother crone. This is a different kind of tribalism that you see a lot in Indo-European cultures. Beyond those three aspects. She does show up here and there in the mythology, but not a huge amount.

Sharon:               And one of the biggest sagas, the battle of MoyTorah. It says that she was the person who developed keening, which was a way of sort of wailing and lamenting the dad that still was going on in Ireland into fairly recent times despite efforts of the church to stamp it out. So keening has been quite important in Scotland and Ireland for a very long time. And that was something that was said to have been, I guess originated with the goddess Brig, because she had a son that died and then she was wailing and lamenting him.

Sharon:               And that's sort of the origin legend on that. She does also seem to have a connection with fertility and abundance, and you'll see that going forward in time into the folklore. So we have that figure about whom we know of a few things. And then we have a figure called Saint Brigit, and she has a lot of really interesting stories, a lot of miracle stories, working magic, different things. And if you look at the life of Saint Brigid, you can see certain elements that may have once been associated with the goddess.

Sharon:               We can't say that for certain, but a lot of people who are very interested in her, I think feel that there's sort of a continuity, kind of an umbrella of attributes. And so they will, even if they are pagan, they will look at the light of Saint Brigid, to see some of the amazing things that she did. I remember one story, it was at Easter time and there wasn't enough ale and she did some kind of miraculous working and there was copious ale for everybody at Easter.

Amanda:            It was the best of all things. Very Irish.

Sharon:               Or in another story, a man came to her and he felt like his wife was no longer interested in him or romantically enamored of him, and she did a Lovespell so that they would sort of fall back in love with each other. So, St. Brigid has a lot of really interesting stories and I think some of them, not all of them, but some of them I think we would be fairly secure in saying that they represented attributes that the goddess might have also embodied.

Sharon:               So, she's very interesting, very interesting figure. And, of course st Brigid is one of the three main saints of Ireland along with St. Patrick and St. Columba. So she has been around for quite some time. That leads us to our holiday that's upcoming few days after this broadcast on the 1st of February is Imbolc, which is a pre-Christian holiday that seems to have been associated with the goddess Greeg.

Sharon:               And it was really the beginning of spring time doing divination to prepare for planting the seeds in the ground in a little while, not so much in new England or Northern Canada, but in Ireland and maybe Southern Scotland. You could start talking about when it was going to be time to plant seeds. So, there was a preparation for reconnecting with the land. But it was also a time when the animals will start to give birth. And if you think about the food cycle in these traditional cultures, you had food growing all through the summer and you started to harvest in the fall and put food away.

Sharon:               But by the time you got to Imbolc, there was food scarcity. You really were concerned, where are we going to have enough food to make it through the winter? And so when the sheep gave birth and they would create this very rich milk for their offspring. But that was the time of the year where people could reconnect with having fresh milk and then cheese. And this was hugely important for survival to make it through the four seasons with different types of foods being available in the different seasons.

Sharon:               But at Imbolc, you not only had the birth of animals, but you had the return of milk and this preparation for working with the land and so just a very important time physically. But the folklore I think so beautiful at that time. And there's so many interesting traditions and one of the most lovely to my mind is that they would take grain and they would fashion it, not the grain itself but the stocks, and they would fashion it into a doll. And they would dress her and this was the representation of Brigid.

Sharon:               And they would take her from door to door and people would decorate her with ribbons, shells, stones, just lovely things. And they would go from door to door so that people could be in the presence of this representation of Brigid and they would show veneration to her. And the people that brought it around would also be obtaining some food as they went around to each house. So there would be a feast afterwards. So, the folklore is very, very rich at this time. So many different types of folk traditions that people can connect with in this time, and they can reembody them, re-enact them.

Sharon:               And not all the folklore that we have lends itself to that. For example, I'm trying to think of one. They might say go out into the backyard and go to the corn‐ricks and do this thing. Well, I don't happen to have corn‐ricks outside of my backyard. So I can't do-

Julia:                    It's not a common.

Sharon:               Although I do live in the country and you will see that, but I don't have any right here, so some of the folklore is interesting symbolically, but not something that can really be brought forward in time very easily. But some of the Imbolc traditions, they're very home oriented and they lend themselves to people being able to connect with the symbolism and the authentic folklore that people find very enriching at this time.

Amanda:            As a former cheese-monger, I got very excited when we started speaking about the coming back of the milk times and the cheese and whatnot, so.

Julia:                    And sheep milk is so rich too.

Amanda:            Oh, it's good.

Sharon:               It's very, very good.

Amanda:            We've got to do an episode on cheese-making folklore at some point

Julia:                    I promise.

Sharon:               That's great.

Amanda:            It's also a time of the year that you really need a holiday. My birthday's at the end of February and so I've always felt that it's, you know, well, I can't have a pool party or anything, I do appreciate that it's a time of year where like you really need something to just put on the calendar and like Mark your days toward. So the timing of this makes complete sense to me.

Sharon:               And I'm living in new England currently and you know here, that's about the coldest time of year. It's literally cold and you're like, "Really? We're talking about spring that's months away." But these holidays originated in probably in Ireland, and so, you will have a different climate there. And so you will find people around the world. Well of course people in the lower, the Southern hemisphere have to flip the whole calendar upside down to play along seasonally.

Sharon:               But it is a challenge for people in different regions, say, I'm in Massachusetts, but I have friends in Western Canada and they have having a different climactic situation than I have here and people that are in California or Texas or New Zealand or South Africa. And so people do have to do a little tweaking of the calendars to work with the place in which they find themselves Celtic. People with Celtic ancestry are all over the world now and so trying to connect with these traditions, some of it works very, very well, but some of the folk traditions we do have to shift a little bit to make sense where people are now, in the diaspora.

Amanda:            That makes sense as well because you know, applying dates, which we just kind of make up to the calendar, especially something that has so much to do with the land, and cycles of production. I don't know, if that makes complete sense to me that they would move it. I'm also looking now at images of Brigid's crosses, which is actually a quilting pattern. I don't know why this kind of like forearmed like rush symbol looks so familiar to me, but it's a quilting pattern that I know and I have a quilt in my home with a Brigid's cross on it, which I didn't realize was related.

Sharon:               And you'll see, you'll actually see that particular symbol in some very ancient artwork and it's believed to be a solar symbol. And that's not to say that Brigid is a "Sun goddess." But you'll you'll just see that in different... like I said, in different of European cultures. And some people call it the swastika and of course that got terribly mutated and abused. So, I don't like to use that word, but a solar symbol people forearm solar symbol. And there were some very elaborate weavings of the stocks of grain that were done at this time.

Sharon:               I have one that I got from my Scottish grandmother after she passed away, just absolutely masterful creations of folk art that you'll see. And so that was another tradition that we see it and look. One thing that was kind of interesting is there was a belief that if you were cited the genealogy of Brigid, that this was a verbal act. You know, using words of power that would confer great protection on people.

Sharon:               And that's the song that I was speaking about on the more CD that people might be interested to hear is a recitation in English and in Scottish Gallic where this particular prayer comes from, that this was something that would happen at a gathering at this time, this recitation of the genealogy of Bridget to bring protection at this really very precarious time of year and we did that with some harp accompaniment. So, that's something that people might enjoy hearing.

Sharon:               A piece of authentic folklore from the Scottish Gallic tradition at Imbolc.

Amanda:            I think that's a wonderful note to close the episode on. But before we do that, is there anything else that you would like to share with us about Brigid and the world in which she had some significance originally because she still does today?

Sharon:               Well of course before writing we see it's hard to know that, the word brigid means exalted. And so, sometimes there's a worry is this her name is this her title? And you'll see for example, there was a God as a Brigantia who was venerated in Britain. And so people are like, is that the same goddess or is that just a goddess who was exalted?

Sharon:               Some of the representations of Brigantia some elements look, they might have a connection with Breeg, but we can't say for certain, but as a pagan goddess who seems to have her roots in Ireland. We know quite a bit about Pagan Ireland and about, we don't have written records from the iron age, but we are very lucky in terms of the very rich body of literature, when the Christians came in they brought writing in their style to Ireland.

Sharon:               And so different things started to become part of the written record where we can start to look at how people were living originally, all over the Celtic regions. They would live in tribes of anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of people in a tribe with tribal names. And so that's sort of the on the ground cultural setting in which we think about these day cities. I think sometimes people want so much for them to be just natured deities. And I say just meaning solely.

Sharon:               But we really have to understand all of these deities as having a very strong connection with culture. Not just the land but culture. Like I said before healing, Smith, craft, poetry, warfare, wisdom, poetry, music, crafts. And that's something that I think is a little bit misunderstood about Celtic deities. And so when you see a goddess like Brigid with her three primary attributes of poetry, Smith, craft and healing, you can kind of see that they had a different way of arranging concepts, of thinking about the sacred and how it reflects and connects with the mundane world, which is a little bit different than... I think we have been led to understand when most of us learned about Greco Roman mythology in school.

Sharon:               And that was really the only mythology that we were given any access to. And you can't really say that all cultures, all ancient cultures organize their Pantheon in the way that the Greeks and the Romans did. Each one is its own thing and really needs to be taken at face value and to be understood on its own terms is very important.

Amanda:            Absolutely.

Julia:                    Absolutely. It's kind of the mission of our show. And I'm so grateful to you for coming on and telling us all about Celtic Cosmology. I can absolutely see how this could be a podcast all of its own, but Sharon, would you let everybody know where they can follow you online? And certainly starting with your books, Celtic Cosmology and The Other World, Celtic Myth and Religion, and The Divine Feminine and Ancient Europe are great places to start.

Sharon:               Absolutely. Those are all available online. And the first book I did was actually on McFarland under a pen name, I'm sorry, not McFarland, Red wheel wiser under a pen name Sharon MacLeod NicMhacha. And that's called Queen of the Night. And it's looking at lunar symbolism in Indo-European but mostly in Celtic cultures. And that was followed by Celtic myth and religion where I took 20 years of my teaching notes and put them all into one book to try and bring people up to speed on this culture and this mythology.

Sharon:               And then we put out the Divine Feminine and Ancient Europe, which I had written for another publisher, but it ended up being put out by McFarland and then more recently, Celtic Cosmology and the Other World came out last year, and that's gotten very good reviews. The next book, which should be out next year sometime is Early Celtic Poetry and Wisdom Texts. And as I mentioned before, that will be followed by a book on Early Celtic Instrumental Music and Vocal Art Forms. And then a book on Celtic ritual, Celtic deities, myths, Druids, poets and Sears.

Sharon:               There's so much that needs to be put together. So, I am on Facebook. There's also a public Facebook group that people can join called Tuatha Imbais, which is T-U-T-H-A I-M-B-A-I-S. And that's a place where more people can connect. I'm online quite a bit on social media, different groups, so I'm not too hard to find and I do teaching and music as well. So, there's always something going on with Celtic Myth and Religion.

Amanda:            Fantastic. And give so much for us and our listeners to look forward to.

Sharon:               So, it's very grateful for having me on this show. It's an exciting topic and wishing everybody a very blessed Imbolc.

Amanda:            Thank you so much.

Julia:                    Thank you.

Amanda:            And listeners remember, stay creepy. Stay cool.