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.
What I thought I was doing when I started
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I want to tell you something about how this all began for me. I moved to England at twenty-two. I grew up Irish Catholic — properly Irish Catholic, which is its own very specific thing, shaped by history and survival and a particular fierce relationship with certain figures and practices that don't translate neatly anywhere else. When I walked into a Catholic church in England, I didn't quite recognise what I found. Same name. Different texture. The things that had meant something to me growing up didn't carry the same charge. So I did what curious people do. I started asking questions. Not about my faith — not exactly. About the Irish version. Where it had come from. What was Catholic and what was older than Catholic. What we had kept without knowing why we were keeping it. That question took me into Irish mythology. Irish mythology took me into the older layers under the Catholic surface. And eventually, a long time later, I ended up here — running a program about Brigid for women who are finding their way between traditions. I did not see any of that coming when I started. This week's post is about beginnings — what they actually look like, why they rarely feel significant in the moment, and why that's completely fine. [Read it here ] If you're at a beginning yourself — curious, restless, not quite sure what you're looking for — the post is for you. So is the program, when you're ready. 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.
Trigger warning: this email contains a brief reference to miscarriage and pregnancy loss. If you need to step away from that today, please do - the blog post linked below doesn't contain this material and is safe to read. When I first read about Crom Cruach and the first-born sacrifice, I was doing what I usually do with mythology - approaching it academically, looking for the patterns, thinking about what it tells us about how our ancestors understood the world. And then it hit me...
My mother grew up in rural Clare in the 1960s. And one of her fondest memories from childhood is the trip to Lahinch for Garland Sunday - the last Sunday of July, which in her memory was simply a great day out. The men would walk the seafront. The women came too - which was notable, she says, because most of the fairs and gatherings of the time were horse fairs or cattle fairs, places where women didn't usually go. Garland Sunday was different. It was for everyone. Children ran and played and...
My husband and I can't have children. This isn't something I talk about constantly, but it's part of my story and it's directly relevant to why Tailtiu matters to me - so here it is. When I first came across her, I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I was following the thread of Lúnasa back through the mythology, trying to understand what my ancestors were actually doing at this time of year. Tailtiu was there in the sources - the woman who cleared the plains of Ireland until it...