I'm dedicated to helping women in particular develop their spiritual path in life. I'm focused heavily on Brigid in Ireland, although not all my followers are! I teach, speak, coach and mentor people to help them along their own individual path, based on what lore we have, but also allowing for each individual path to develop as it needs to.
🌊 We drove to Waterford for the air con. Brigid met us at Tramore.
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Last week, Ireland decided to have actual summer. Thirty degrees. Proper heat, the kind we're categorically not built for. We don't have air conditioning in the house. We do have a €30 mini air conditioner from Amazon that makes a heroic amount of noise for very little cooling effect. What we also have is a car with functioning air con - so I did what any sensible person would do. I invented a reason to drive to Waterford. I had exam scripts to collect. This was true. It was also, I'll be honest, partly an excuse to sit in cool air for 45 minutes each way. My husband came willingly. We both felt significantly more human by the time we arrived. And on the way home, we stopped at Tramore. It was packed. It was a perfect Irish summer's day, which means half the country had the same idea. But we found our spot, kicked off our shoes, and walked to the water's edge. My husband, who has opinions about the temperature of the sea, did not moan once. This is because the water was, for once, genuinely not that cold. We spent an hour there. Nothing dramatic happened. No visions, no major realisations, no spiritual breakthroughs. Just the sea doing what the sea does - cooling things down, washing things off, making the world feel slightly more manageable. We both slept better that night than we had all week. That, for me, is Brigid's water aspect at work. Not the dramatic transformation of fire, but the quiet, consistent support of water. The thing that holds you while it gently reshapes you into something that fits a little better. This week's post is about exactly this - how to connect with Brigid in summer, when Imbolc feels far away and fire isn't necessarily what the season calls for. [Read it here] Bríd libh Órlagh Check out the links below: Website |
Hi, I'm Orlagh, of Brigid's Forge
I'm dedicated to helping women in particular develop their spiritual path in life. I'm focused heavily on Brigid in Ireland, although not all my followers are! I teach, speak, coach and mentor people to help them along their own individual path, based on what lore we have, but also allowing for each individual path to develop as it needs to.
have climbed Croagh Patrick. Once. In 2001, I think, or thereabouts. It took about three hours up and considerably less time down, partly because my knees had opinions about the descent that I couldn't ignore. It was a college weekend away...) It's a remarkable experience. I won't pretend otherwise. Standing at the top of a mountain on the west coast of Ireland, with the islands of Clew Bay laid out below you, is genuinely moving - whether you're doing it for Patrick, for the pre-Christian...
For a long time, I had a problem I couldn't solve. My relationship with Brigid was growing. My Catholic upbringing wasn't going anywhere - not because I was still practising in any conventional sense, but because it's in me, in the way that anything you're raised inside is in you. And I couldn't work out how to hold both things at once. I've written about this conflict recently - the specific discomfort of being a pagan Catholic, of loving figures who belong to a tradition you've also had...
I want to be honest with you about something, because I think it might be useful. The last few months have been hard. I've been struggling with anxiety - properly struggling, not just the background hum that most of us carry, but the kind that makes the ordinary things feel effortful and the future feel unreliable. I'm getting professional help, and that matters. But alongside that, I've been going to the sea more than usual. On the rougher days - the ones where everything felt loud and sharp...