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Plan to Celebrate the Festival of Brigit
On Saturday, January 16th, 2010, IFR is planning to have a one day event for those who wish to celebrate the Festival of Brigit in their homes, local communities or groups.
Our aim is to provide resources and training in how to recuperate our ancestral memories around the festival of Brigit/ Imbolc on February 1st. We will ask these questions:
- What stories of Brigit speak to us today?
- What are her images and artefacts?
- How do you make Brigit's Crosses?
- What is a Brigit's Crios?
- What is a Brídeog?
- What songs and dances can easily be taught to a group?
- What makes for effective ritual experiences in terms of comfort, safety, and engagement?
The event will be held in the Catherine McAuley Centre on Herbert Street, (around the corner from Baggot Street) beginning at 10:30 for coffee, with a definite start at 11:00. We will aim to finish by 5:00 at the latest.
Please bring: Comfortable clothing suitable for movement; A packed lunch; Somethiung for taking notes.
Registration: Fee for the day, includes tea/coffee, photocopied resource packet, CD of songs and chants for you to learn and teach.
Early Bird Full fee: €60.00. Concessions, SW and full time students. €35.00. (Early bird date: January 8th 2010)
Registration on the Day: €75:00: To guarantee a resource packet and CD on the day, please register in advance.
Facilitators: Mary Condren author of the Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland, and a forthcoming book: Brigit of Ireland: Female Spirit of Old Europe, and director of IFR.
Merovee Guerin: Artist and folklorist, specializing in Brigit’s traditions.
Sponsored by: www.instituteforfeminismandreligion.org
Send registration fee to this address:
IFR, 30A Parkhill Rise, Kilnamanagh, Dublin 25. Make cheques out to Institute for Feminism and Religion.
UPCOMING SPRING WEEKEND WORKSHOP
Brigit: Birthing a New Spring for Our Time
29th January – 31st January 2010, Dublin
In this weekend event, we will experience the quickening energy of Imbolc and nourish Brigit's energy (the neart) in ourselves while we gather the seeds of our Spring dreams. Imbolc marks the beginning of Spring in the Celtic calendar, and is traditionally a time when Brigit is celebrated as goddess, poet, healer, smith worker and saint.
More info and Registration (pdf)
Also read more at www.mariandunlea.com
Celebrating
Brigit
Guide to Planning, Preparing, and Presenting
A
few pictures from the Festival of Brigit 2004
(click for larger image)
Brigit's Cloak
Unfolding and Reclaiming Women's Ground
In the ancient stories, Brigit asked a rich man for land. He said he would give her as much as her cloak would cover. When she spread her cloak, it covered the Curragh of Kildare where she is said to have built her monastery. The theme is found through many ancient mythologies and we thought it appropriate for this year as the world faces the threat of all-out war.
Brigit as Goddess, saint, and Abbess was opposed to war. She gave away her father’s sword. She would not tolerate weapons near her sacred oak-tree. She mediated between the warring sides. She put clouds between fighting groups so they could not see one another. On one occasion, she put the warring factions to sleep and gave each of them sweet dreams of success. When they awoke, they went home happily.
With Brigit as our model, how can we women struggle to find a room of our own, in metaphor, symbol or reality, to live lives of integrity, justice, honour, and love? How can the metaphor of Brigit’s cloak serve to remind, protect, and encourage us in the journey ahead?
These are the questions that inspire us to celebrate her festival. The Institute for Feminism and Religion comprises community activists, artists, poets, weavers, therapists, religious sisters, singers, dancers and musicians who ground their spiritual search in our ancient traditions for the sake of the present and future. We come from many faith and cultural traditions, and welcome those searching to live lives of integrity through whatever traditions and symbols enable their search.
In this, our third Festival of Brigit to be held in Belfast, our programme will be a little different. Residents can arrive on Friday evening, but we start our programme on Saturday morning and continue through to Sunday lunchtime.
We will continue the theme of Brigit’s Cloak throughout the event. This is the collective aim of the planners, poetically expressed: "At this time of winter’s mystical darkness and the magical light of spring, our aim is to provide a safe tent for every woman to weave a shawl of protection, a veil of mystery, a mantle of hope, a cloak of courage."
Three questions will be taken up throughout the weekend?
1. What is the ground
I need to claim?
2. What is holding me back?
3. What resources do I need?
We invite each participant to bring materials to the event to design, create and/or begin the cloak most appropriate for her needs in the coming year. The cloak can be a prayer shawl for meditation, a magical veil for yourself, an altar cloth for our precious images and symbols, a comfort wrap for someone who is ill or distressed, or a protective cloak for those engaged in non-violent resistance: the form will be limited only by imagination and creativity.
Our work together will include meditation, story, theology, and ritual. Experienced women Keepers of the Flame will lead each small Home group (so that we get to make friends very quickly). The whole event will be woven together by Kate Chadbourne (Celtic scholar and musician); Mary Condren (theologian, and feminist theorist); Ann McKay (poet); and Janet O’Hagan (dramatherapist) together with dancers, singers and musicians. Carol Graham (artist) will create a centrepiece and our great team Northern team - Margaret McCullough, Noreen Christian (community and social activists) will hold it all together.
Early Saturday evening we will hold our traditional Brigit’s party and make crosses and brideogs (Brigit dolls). On late Saturday evening we traditionally have a bonfire going into the early hours for hardy souls!
On Sunday morning we will hold our traditional Brigit ceremony. Drawing on elements in old Irish traditions, participants will be invited to draw on Brigit’s inspiration and make their spiritual, personal, and political commitments for their journey in the year ahead. The event will finish with lunch on Sunday.
Click here to read one woman's experience of a past year's festival. Celebrating Brigit in Belfast
For more information, contact the Institute for Feminism and Religion.
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