The Rise of the Goddess

We are almost halfway through winter ❄️
Isn’t it time for a celebration?

Winter has its points - stillness and silence, grounding and introspective - but slowly and surely I’m getting impatient of the long winter nights, of the body tensing up in cold. Where is the vibrant life, the sensuality - the opening into the new?

Around this time of year, the ancient Celts honored Brigid - the radiant goddess of wisdom, healing, the forge, and more... She was and is the muse of many artists, a bringer of inspiration, and a keeper of sacred fire. She rises in flame and light, is fertility and mother goddess at the threshold to life - the great midwife herself.

These days, many people speak about Imbolc — the midwinter festival around February 1st, associated with Brigid. It is a time of candle-lighting, cleansing rituals, weaving straw crosses, and sharing dairy foods - symbols of the returning of life in the still deeply frozen earth.

Maybe this is the long awaited crack, where the light gets in… the end of the Yule-time

Who is that Brigid?

And why is she celebrated at midwinter - the time between winter solstice and spring equinox?

Is she and the festival of Imbolc somehow connected to Carnival, or to Candlemas, the Christian feast that falls around the same time? And why does her presence feel so universal, so familiar across cultures?

I’m telling this story by following one root into the past, knowing that there are many more.
If you choose to walk with me for the time of your reading, we can move from the intellectual knowledge of the mind into the deep pool of mythology – into words the soul can understand.
It is my hope to inspire you to find this goddess in your own world, to feel her touch somewhere beyond plain knowledge ❤️

From Goddess to Saint

Brigid’s origins are deeply hidden in the past - while some ideas about her are quite new-age, some others reach back into the bronze age and eventually even further - at least into times when gods and goddesses were expressions of natural forces.

The ideas of gods are transforming with each generation

Brigid’s latest transformation happened in the last years is an evolution from a historical pagan deity and later a syncretized Christian Saint into a universal, archetypal divine feminine, associated with personal growth, bridging old and new - and environmental awareness.

Tracing her story backward, one of the first things we notice, is her integration into Christianity as Saint Brigid of Kildare / Ireland. As with many such transformations, there is both light and shadow in this process. I’m happy that she was not erased, demonized, or forgotten — a fate many deities did not escape.

Beyond the Christian writers, written sources become scarce but we know that she was a major Irish goddess. The goddess of poetry, healing, smithing, and fertility, embodying spring and fire. A goddess with tripe aspect as healer, smith and poet and honored during the festival of Imbolc.

Her name means the “Exalted”, “High” , “Elevated” one - and that is where her story can be traced further back.
As Language itself offers us a trail.

The Name That Rises

Linguistics allows us to look back four to six thousand years, to a reconstructed ancestral language spoken during the Bronze Age. This language is known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE) - the root of most European languages and even Sanskrit, the sacred language of ancient India.

Here we learn that the root of Brigid does not mean “bright,” as is often assumed.

Its root is actually *bʰerǵʰ-, meaning “high,” “elevated,” or “to rise.”
From this same root we find:

• Berg (German) mountain

• Burg (German) fortress, elevated place

• Barrow (raised mound)

Brigid, is not merely the bright one - she is the rising one.

Sisters of the Dawn

After our deep dive into the bronze age, lets zoom out again and see how this idea of “the rising one” may have hound different expressions in the great pantheons of the Indo-European world.

Here, Brigid finds herself among sisters:

• Eos (Greek)

• Aurora (Roman)

• Ushas (Vedic / Hindu)

• Hausos, one of the most ancient and revered dawn goddesses of the Bronze Age world

We could add many more to that list of dawn goddesses and even zoom more out and invite the Egyptian Hathor or the Sumerian Inanna - but that is for another time, when we want to trace the sources of the great goddess herself, the Shakti as the vedas call her: the divine energy, power, or capacity.

Lets keep our attention to one aspect of her: the moment when darkness loosens its grip and light returns.

While Brigid is not named as a dawn goddess in the old stories - many things about her speaks of rising: the fire, the breath of inspiration, the roots of her name - and being the midwife and gatekeeper.

It’s feels natural to me to imagine her as the glowing promise of a day after a long night.

Brigid Re-imagined

I don’t see her as a virgin dressed in white that image carries a more Christian tone - I see her more grown-up, more colorful and rich.

She is present at the moment when the world holds its breath, when clouds in the east ignite in fire, announcing a new sun yet unseen - when it dawns in nature and also in us.

As she is rising in brilliance form the horizon she is wearing a crown of stars, shawls of saffron, rose, red, and depp crimson. We might see the sparks and the fire of her forge glowing in the sky from where she radiates her irresistible smile like a flower opening herself for the first time.

And just as the sun breaks the horizon and the day begins, we can catch a last glimpse of her - her golden shoes.

The goddess of the dawn in Greek and Roman mystery is called sometimes The Rosy-Fingered - she, who lives on a paradise island in the far eastern ocean from where she dances her way into the sky. She arrives with irresistible sensuality, carrying new ideas and inspiration, she is the muse with the power to end the night - and has seduced countless lovers among humanity.

Her sacred task is to open the doors for the heavenly sun to arise.

And bringing the analogy of the day into the year, where winter is the night she is also a midwife to the summer and beyond time and season to everything which dawns inside of us

Maybe, when we light the candles and the fires, sing, feast, gather and clean in her name— perhaps she opens doors for us as well. Doors within. Doors toward warmth, creativity, an end of inner winter.

A Festival of Return

Let us celebrate this the dawn of summer - the early spring

Let’s wear her colors and brighten us up. Let us bathe in wells for inspiration and sensuality - and join the returning dance of life.
Let’s remind us that the rays of sun are come back, that winter has an end and that wherever she walks the snowdrops and winter aconites are blossoming.

A Carnival for Brigid

Let’s see when she arrives this year - maybe at the 1st of February maybe later
As she is known of oversleeping some mornings, rebellious and unwilling leaving her bed -

don’t we all know these morning? 😁

Happy Imbolc - St. Brigid’s day - Candelmess - Mid-Winter