Vestal Crones

From hearth to heart: A paradigm for action.

We are familiar with the story of Vesta and the virgins who tended her sacred fire. Some are familiar with St Brigit’s nuns who tended a flame in her honour that has been rekindled. It is from this image, of the enclosed fire tender, that I move from here.

Now is not the time for us to tend only the fires of our hearths, when we get past the years of youth and direct familial responsibilities. There is a time when we reach a certain age, when the Cailleach comes calling, whether we like it or not. As I have been leaning to move with her, my work with Brighid, but not as a hearth goddess, has begun in earnest.

Although Brighid has been around me for some time, I have a different relationship with her now. A deepening relationship with she of the forge and healer and poet, whose fire burns in me in the dark shadow of the Cailleach.

It is time for action for us to wave the fire brands of our pens and torches of courage to light the hidden corners of distress and fear in our world for healing to begin. To bring the heat of passion against injustice and for equity, for true equality is not possible because we are not the same. We do not have the same gifts and graces and one cannot legislate for them. What can be legislated is equity and equitability. These are what we must fan the flames for to save our world.

These are days for action: Political, social, creative, economic, ecological, environmental, spiritual, personal, national and international.

We must light and tend the fire that heats the cauldron of our passion. Passion in its broadest possible understanding. For this deep and expansive passion leads to action on large or small scale. The fire the heats the forge on which our resolve is formed and shaped.

The following thoughts were written as I tended a physical fire in my hearth several weeks ago, and in them articulate how I perceive this role as a starting place. I use the image of fire lighting, tending, igniting as a metaphor. In no way am I advocating a brigade of blue rinsed pyromaniacs storming around the country burning buildings of power or incinerating objects of distaste. I do not want to hear of my sisters running riot with zimmer frames being arraigned for arson. Yes, we must light a fire in our soul, in our heart, in our belly and head, but it must lead us to considered, if radical action, but the fire remains within us. We use it to speak out, to write out, to walk out, and thus challenge the status quo. I am not advocating anarchy. I am calling for considered action, honest communication and a resolve as strong as steel set to flame, forged and quenched.

We will each of us carry not a flint, but a living ember in our heart, one we can fan into the flame of action when necessary at a moment’s notice, for we may have only a moment in which to act.

At times we many burn white hot for a time, but then the flame goes weak, we have spent our fuel and need to recover our sense of self, so we are not destroyed by selflessness. So we smoor the fire within us. We seek that which will nurture and nourish us, gather kindling and find the logs we will need in the time ahead. The ember, however, will be kept warm and pulsing as long as we live and breathe. But there are times when it need not flare and flame. Sometimes it is fine to let it die back, but it will never go out, once you take the steps to walk and live the path of the Vestal Crone.

Fire is dangerous and compelling. Beautiful and terrifying.
Fire enables life as we know it and takes it as well.

It is not something to be careless with. We must understand the medium with which we work, whether it be literal or figurative.

There are sparks and spitting fuels. There are comforting fires and ones that are restless. They are unpredictable and cannot be tamed, only managed with care. So it is with the fires we are going to light in our hearts and souls.

One cannot begin and then stop, the fire must be tended regularly. Meditation, visualisation and of course action which is at the core of this paradigm.

Kindling, logs, coal, open fire, campfire, wood burner . . . all are ways to see the work, some more or less constrained. A wildfire is deadly, and extreme. I am not advocating stating wildfires.

I will be exploring this image, pondering ideas further, but I think it time to set out this vision, my vision for being as one touched by Cailleach, and holding the fire of Brighid within me.

© Aurora J Stone 2017

Panthean One

Through no act of intention the deities with whom I work are all goddesses. I’ve not put up a ‘No gods need apply’ sign on the gate of my spiritual practice, but none have hopped over or politely requested entry. In a follow-up to the recent account of my relationship with Elen, I want to write about the other goddesses who are part of my panthean. Whilst I know that in accepting Elen’s leading in my life the relationships with the other four goddesses may/will change or alter, they will not end.

Brighid

You have been with me,
accompanied me,
since before I was born.

On the list of four names
my parents were considering
to go with the Kelly
of my father’s Irish kinship,
was Brigit,
carrying then the link
to the saint though not
at that time the goddess.

You have been with me,
accompanied me,
since before I was born.

The goddess would come later,
long after I took a name for me,
the one which has brought
and led me to the life I lead,
that none of the four
optioned names could have
imagined or enacted.

You have been with me,
accompanied me,
since before I was born.

Now I embrace not the saint
of uncertain lineage
but the goddess guiding
active workings
on levels deep and wide:
personal communal economic,
poetry healing smithcraft,
personal expression to share,
communal wellbeing to share
economic pursuit to share,
each strengthening
for the clan and society.

You have been with me,
accompanied me,
since before I was born.

For years around the
sweeping plains
dense woodlands
running steams
of my internal sacred space,
you have been with me,
at the fire where I sought
and found answers,
guidance and consolation,
you are yet there
when I seek you though
the bones of the land
and the intentions of my heart.

You have been with me,
accompanied me,
since before I was born.

Elen of My Way

As I recently blogged I am now traveling with Elen, or perhaps have acknowledged that She has been traveling with me for nearly five decades.

For many years I have had a connection to Brighid, not the least since one of the names on my parents’ short list for me was Brigit. When I began to walk my Druidic path I approached Brighid to see if we might have some sort of relationship. Having Welsh and Irish ancestry She became an important link. As a result, I have been engaged and working with Her for the longest of any of the goddesses of my panthean (yes, the spelling is intentional from thea the Greek word for goddess).

Another of the goddesses I have a relationship with is Nemetona. Not surprising really, since my space is Important to me and is also sacred. With her guardianship of the sacred grove and by extension the sacred space I live in and that is in me. When I leave and enter the house I affirm three things: Nemetona bides here. Badger wards here. Awen flows here. I picture a triskele as I say this and it affirms the presence and protection around me and my home. Again, I invited Nemetona into my life.

Cerridwen is the member of my panthean whom I invoke as I begin an important project. Quite literally I do this sitting before my cauldron. I place the notes, jottings of ideas, or just the name of the project into the cauldron and meditate on where I wish to go with it, or ask that it take me where it wants to go.

The fourth presence with me now, and I did not invite Her, but given my age She just showed up and said: ‘I’m here, and you are going to have a relationship with me’. Who was I to argue? A presence not to be messed with. A presence of force and wisdom. The Cailleach.

And now Elen. Unlike the Cailleach, Elen did not just plonk down in my life, She hunted and haunted me for all those years. She sought me out. After many years since beginning my journey to find my true spiritual home, my real soulscape, it came at last to turning and facing one whom I can no longer deny or ignore. I have been reminded and nudged that there are certain things I must do. Activities, creative works and workings, that I must engage in or my body will pay the price. Well, now it is paying the price, and the only way to change that is to engage faithfully, and fully with those activities I have been told and shown that I must. The goddesses have been patient, well one goddess has been patient, but They/She are no any longer willing to wait. I have been confronted. I have been challenged. I have been called. I can no longer pretend that I have not been.

Now that Elen has made her presence felt in a way that is unmistakable, in a manner that is unavoidable, I have to turn and face what I have so far managed to duck away from, the full understanding of what I must do and how I must do it. And I must do this in a way that is rigorous, disciplined and radical. Radical in the sense of fundamental, not necessarily outrageous, although I can’t say for sure it won’t seem so to others.

In my original About page, I said I worked shamanically, but changed the wording at one point, because I was not a shaman. The word not being that of my ancestral lineage. It was a borrowed word and concept that, in my opinion, has become well recognised and too well and easily used in the past twenty years. Besides this, I couldn’t really use the term then in good faith because I was a casual traveler, using the methods and techniques to put me in touch with the source of creativity for me. Now I am called to be more than that. I am called to work in ways that are ways my ancestors in these islands worked, both Welsh and Irish. My religion is Druidry, but my vocational path has a different name – a name I have flirted with, but not been able or willing to commit to until now: Awenydd, to become a Awenyddion. At some point, I may have thought I was ready and may have said so, but I now know that was not the case. Now, in turning to embrace the reality and persistent presence of Elen, by beginning to work seriously with Her, I can take the steps to making an open eyed, open hearted, open souled commitment to follow Her where She will lead me as I follow Her trods.

I am still adjusting to all of this. As I am becoming more open, as the barriers I built over the past decade and a half are crumbling and disappearing. Day by day I am more and more able to sense and feel the world around me. I can sense and see energies better. I can hear again behind the words, and see beyond the projections. I can feel what rests more deeply beneath the surfaces of things and events. This is not always comfortable, and in some instances downright unpleasant. But it is the way I am learning to live.

There are consolations as well as challenges. There are delights no less than dangers on the Way of Elen as I experience Her. She showed extraordinary patience no less than persistence, and I honour that now by following Her leading. Her way now frames all the other relationships I have with the other goddesses to whom I turn and who uphold and companion me on my journey. And, it feels right. In saying so I am admitting there has been something subtle and essential missing in these relationships: The Context. The Matrix. The Shaping.

That is now present, though I do not fully comprehend and apprehend the nuances of this context shaping matrix, I know it’s there and and I accept the unfolding mystery it presents. As such, I have reason to give thanks. More reason than ever before to move onward in gentleness and genuine humility.