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Post by deiniol on Jan 18, 2011 18:33:08 GMT -1
Perhaps we should stop calling the festival "Imbolc"? (While we're at it, we might as well forget about the "ewe-milk" thing: it's linguistically implausible.) Quite. Why don't we call it 'Ambiwolkia' and be done with it?! (or the Utsmolgia...but they both sound like grim Hungarian spa-resorts.) Because, just, ew; can I suggest Brigantīcā, which is a paralell formation to lee's Brigantialia, but using Celtic elements. "Eponalia" would be something like Eponācā using the same method.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2011 18:41:21 GMT -1
In a purely pragmatic approach, I tend to find a visit to the area associated with any deity tends to clear things for me. It's akin to traveling to someone to introduce yourself at their convenience, and it tends to set the intention off on in the right direction, I've never been left without some sort of interaction taking place. RR Paul Williment has some nice photos here - including a Brigantia inscription. www.brighid.org.uk/england2.html
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Post by nellie on Jan 18, 2011 19:13:40 GMT -1
I have never felt at all pulled towards Briganti, as I said. But I think Potia is correct that maybe I'm being urged to broaden my thinking. The conversations on this thread have really helped clear a lot of things up for me. Seems that it's lead to some revision in general!
Lee - I think I'll be doing as you suggested and honouring both Rhiannon and Briganti for my own Imbolc observances. I'd also like to join the members of Clas Brython in their triple toast if that would be ok?
To get my 2p worth in, I actually really like the idea of renaming 'Imbolc'with something that reflects Brython.
Speaking as somebody new to caer feddwyd and as somebody that had never even heard of Brython a few months ago, to begin with I wasn't entirely clear as to what extent Brython was recon. The impression I've got since is that recon is the means and not the end. Is this a fair statement?
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Post by Adam on Jan 18, 2011 19:23:31 GMT -1
And redraven without sounding sycophantic I totally agree about visiting her... I have walked in Yorkshire but didn't bump into her on that occasion Living here for 10 years plus now, I have found she kind of takes a while to become part of you ;-)
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Post by crowman on Jan 18, 2011 19:24:39 GMT -1
May I utilise the triple toast in my observances of briganti's festival too please?
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Post by Adam on Jan 18, 2011 19:26:20 GMT -1
the gods to me are a kind of real illusion (cf. Hindu 'maya') that emerges from the place where natural phenomena set up and are reinforced and haloed by ancient archetypal reverberations deep within the human psyche. Neatly put. That helps to clarify my own thinking. yeah... likee
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Post by potia on Jan 18, 2011 19:47:26 GMT -1
Re triple toasts. You'd be welcome to join in with them but watch this space (or rather the Brython bit) for further information about date/time if you want to join in.
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Post by deiniol on Jan 18, 2011 20:18:26 GMT -1
I never felt much of a "pull" towards Briganti either. In fact, I have a confession to make: there's a number of "big" deities that I don't really have much to do with. Rigantona and I have never really encountered each other, and I don't feel much towards Lugus (I have some really cool stories to tell about him, synthesised and re-imagined from the mediaeval tales, but that's it). My gods are Taranis and Grannos, Matrona and Ogmios.
However, I have developed something of a relationship with Briganti, almost by accident. In my opinion, at least one of her aspects is as protectress of the hearth. So when I cook, I light a candle next to the stove in her honour and say a short prayer. Whenever I engage in rituals of purification before sacrificing, I invoke her as mother of flame to purify the water that I subsequently use to purify myself and my sacrifice. So, approaching her from a purely practical viewpoint has led to regular interaction, which in turn has led to something of a relationship.
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Post by Francis on Jan 18, 2011 21:24:52 GMT -1
I've been a poor contributor over these past few months and I'm not sure I've much that's useful to add to this matter, but it does relate to two things that are currently important to me. Two of the things I've been working on recently are relationship with Fraid and getting through this winter . No relationship can hang in mid-air and must of course be supported by history and geography - that is by your personal circumstances for it to be vital and real, else it's just a lifeless, catalogued and researched pressed flower preserved in a museum collection - albeit one you like. Although I live in Wales it's an area that's been heavily influenced by the Irish. The living mythology of Fraid in my valley is both Irish and ostensibly Christian. This is my situation, and it's the lense I use to focus the being that I perceive as "Brigit" into my understanding. It's a locally grounded perspective. It's not the mythology that superficially most excites me, and it's certainly not the one that I would have chosen. It's the one that's rooted where I live though - and there's an accessible power and resonance in that. My approach to relationship with 'Sant' Ffraid is shaped by what I can glean of the relationship others of my Valley have had with her before me - I don't draw a line, or impose any needless potential blindspots by the end of the iron age or the coming of christianity. (I don't mean for that to sound quite so didactic as it does!) In terms of celebrating Imbolc then my UPG is that this feast is a big one. This has been a hard winter for me. The solstice and the big commercial secular feast of our time that follows it days later are wonderful. They are a light in the dark. But irrespective of the their other names they do not mark Midwinter. At best they're the "End of the Beginning". At the beginning of February though you can start to hope that you're celebrating the "Beginning of the end"- by the end of the month the grass is likely to have started growing again - and for much of the period 500 B.C. to 600 A.D. it almost certainly would have. Obviously my perspective is very heavily influenced by the increasing proportion of my working life that I'm giving over to raising livestock - but I would argue that your actual lifestyle is important in how you approach the ritual and meaning of festivals, and most importantly the nature of your relationships with the big ineffable Ones! If you have the good sense to work in a heated/air-conditioned office, and Tesco allows for a consistent diet year round- then what is it that compels you to celebrate the beginning of February? And if you do feel compelled then that is both interesting and useful, albeit subjective, evidence we can work with here - particularly if many of the group feel this strong urge?
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Post by Heron on Jan 18, 2011 21:46:13 GMT -1
I was wondering whether to throw the extra complication of the Welsh names Ffraid (and sometimes Bride) into the debate when I saw Francis' post above. Like him I've always thought of the February festival (by whatever name we are going to know it) as important and felt particularly close to the goddess that I originally called Brighid but feel I know more intimately, particularly at this time of year, as Bride or Ffraid - or even to use the dialect of one very limited part of Wales where she is commemorated in place names as Frêd (I hope the ^ accent over the 'e' comes out for everyone!) There is a place near me and one other member of this forum called Glanfrêd where some springs well up and run into a stream. Like Francis, although I don't work with livestock, I feel this relationship as part of the fact that I inhabit a particular landscape. If I can 'reconstruct' the worship, the names, the attributes of this goddess then I am keen to do so. But when you feel that the relationship exists already and has undergone transformations by being deepened in different contexts, these things are amplifications rather than starting points.
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Post by megli on Jan 18, 2011 22:19:04 GMT -1
I also have an understanding of Briganti/Brigit that comes out of a long relationship---both of lambing when I was a child and teenager and of her aspect as goddess of poets and what the Irish called éicse, 'poetry, knowledge, scholarship, seership'---the force that Cormac's Glossary identifies one of the three Brigits as goddess of. So at imbolc I put notebooks and bits of written work on the altar (borrowed from a Hindu custom---Indian schoolkids put their exercise books out to honour Saraswati, whom Briganti/Brigit rather resembles.)
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Post by Lee on Jan 18, 2011 22:42:26 GMT -1
Nellie and Crowman: PLEASE do join in it is a bad analogy to use i know but hope it makes the point. Caerfeddwyd is like a church congregation -everyone mucks in and gets involved. Brython is more like the bible study group (i was going to use church committee but it isnt as appropriate) in that it is the more 'involved' side of things. In time i would like to think that after contributing and being part of the "brython congregation" you will be asked to join in Brython itself and get into some of the nitty gritty. This might come across as somewhat elitist - it most definately isnt, it is just a way of operating things, with us welcoming everyone, but making full use and advantage of those who REALLY want to be involved with what we do.
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Post by Lee on Jan 18, 2011 22:43:55 GMT -1
very much so. it is more about reconnectionism; reconnecting with the gods and an interaction with the landscape somewhat lost. we live in a modern world and the recon side of things is a means of establishing what worked in the past before we rework it almost to be relevant, useful and meaningful for us now in the 21stC
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Post by Lee on Jan 18, 2011 22:47:01 GMT -1
this year more than ever i get the sense of wanting and needing to mark this time of year and what it implies. As much as i love the winter and its cold and snowiness. nothing beats seeing the shoots and buds or feeling the warm sun on your face. this winter has been harder than many before; i have my own flat, a limited income at the moment so issues such as heating have been something i have had to watch more than ever. also, this is going to be my first year on a move towards vegetable self sufficency, over the coming weeks i will be starting the new year work on my allotment; lots of digging to do, manure and getting a planting plan in place and preparing for that. perhaps more than ever i will be weather watching this year.
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Post by Rion on Jan 19, 2011 0:01:15 GMT -1
The winter where I currently live being more of a "hmm, I should probably wear shoes today or my toes might get chilly" than a "my extremities are falling off from the cold", I have difficulty relating to Briganti in the way Lee has just described. My approach has been a mixture of Deiniol's and Megli's; practical, everyday ritual honouring her as mother of the hearth has led to recognition of her other aspects, particularly that of inspiration of the writer (you'll forgive me, Megli, if I completely ignore that you originally said 'poet' ). While it has (quite rightly) been said above that Brython is not about just "going with what feels right", as so much neo-paganism seems to be, there will always be bits we don't know for certain. We know (for a given value of 'know') early spring was a time for honouring Briganti, but we don't know how it was done, or how the people conceived of her at this time. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for you to get acquainted with her for the first time and find the aspects of the goddess that speak to you in this period.
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Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2011 7:54:19 GMT -1
Obviously my perspective is very heavily influenced by the increasing proportion of my working life that I'm giving over to raising livestock - but I would argue that your actual lifestyle is important in how you approach the ritual and meaning of festivals, and most importantly the nature of your relationships with the big ineffable Ones! If you have the good sense to work in a heated/air-conditioned office, and Tesco allows for a consistent diet year round- then what is it that compels you to celebrate the beginning of February? And if you do feel compelled then that is both interesting and useful, albeit subjective, evidence we can work with here - particularly if many of the group feel this strong urge? I really enjoyed that post... Speaking as a sedentary self employed individual I would say, not compelled to celebrate (maybe because the real life/death urgency is not present), but compelled to appreciate... deifinitely. I moved into the west Yorkshire from Milton Keynes... a city that I wouldn't say was soulless, but one that denied me a relationship with any real sense of spirit of place. Here, the Worth Valley is very much a spirit alive with a personality I identified and related to almost immediately... over time, that has given me access to a sense of something even deeper or maybe older... slower... who I am coming to recognise as Brigantia in her tutelary and sovereign aspect. To feel welcome in such a place is to feel appreciation ;D
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Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 9:29:54 GMT -1
I went to bed last night feeling a little like a scolded child. This got me thinking about the whole Briganti/ Bridget thing. I asked myself what she meant to me. Absolutely nothing. So I thought why doesn’t she mean anything? I’m not proposing im anything special or that I have a gift or any other new age nonsense like that. The only way I can describe my feeling is like when you’re on holiday, no matter how nice or well appointed the hotel you’re not home, it doesn’t feel right and you don’t really feel at home until you walk through your front door.
I took a look through gods with thunderbolts and lo and behold, not as many shrines or finds linking to the deity Briganti as you would imagine, I think I counted 3 with others linked to Romano British aspects of her. More importantly none were south of Staffordshire. I found this strange if she was pan British there should be more shrines to her I would have thought. Nevertheless, I fell asleep trying to think of ways of connecting with Briganti. In a new agey sort of way woke up this morning with a bit more clarity. I read Francis’s post first thing and things began to get clearer to me.
The following is what I’ve come up with in the last few hours and revelation style its forced me to look at what I thought to be true before Nellie started this post last night.
In attempting to resurrect the Brython tradition it is important to utilise hard evidence, historical research, linguistics et al. This is undeniable. But also I think it’s important to try and work out why they did what they did. There is no hard evidence to draw from so surely it’s down to us to bolster what is available by experimenting with ways in which to see why they did what they did, to understand where they were coming from.
Some things would have been a constant with everyone in Britain the sun, the moon, the changing seasons, the weather, the sea (if you weren’t land-locked and had no concept of the sea) The land would also have been constant but in different forms.
I hear what some people are saying about Briganti….this is who we recognise, she’s linked to spring and that’s the way it is…. but surely that’s exactly what the current trend in neo paganism is doing… presenting a tradition and pantheon but picking and choosing because Briganti was followed by other Celtic cultures and it had a similar name etc so therefore everyone must have thought the same. I’m saying she wasn’t a pan British deity based on lack of shrines to her south of the midlands and also less features in the south beginning br (I can think of Brent knoll in Somerset but I do think its more to do with the fact that it stands out in its landscape so the ‘on high’ could be representative of it being the highest point around)
Think about the land the Brigantes occupied, fertile lowlands and valleys; ideal farmland but also craggy peaks that dominated the landscape all around. Possible the meaning of ‘on high’ or ‘exalted’?
I’m assuming when dun Brython was founded the initial founders were predominantly from northern Britain? This would make perfect sense to them to choose Briganti because she does mean something to them. That’s fine and im in no way saying I don’t want to be part of what your doing but if you’re recreating a tradition then you need to make sure you’ve covered every angle, if its subsequently proven that Briganti was pan British then I’ll gladly include her. Lots of people do have a fantastic and very real connection with Briganti and im not saying she should be dropped wholesale, all im saying is don’t bully those of us that don’t feel at home gazing at her beauty. It’s like I mentioned with the well appointed hotel, its lovely but its not home.
If im honest (and I think you’ve got to be with this) this is also the way I feel about epona, who was predominantly gaulish and brought over by roman cavalrymen… there’s actually no proof she was pan British, yes horses were important but I cant make the link im afraid between survival and horses. I also understand the way rigatona is hypothetically representative of the land , If im really honest I really cant make a connection with the grey mare and rigatona either. In a way its like saying Briganti is the same as Britannia, which she isn’t.
This is what’s forced me to re-evaluate what I thought I knew, im still reeling at the thought of it all (just when you think you know something something else happens to bring it all crashing down)
In my opinion and as Francis points out the relationship with your own personal landscape and therefore your personal sovereign deity is a personal thing based on the land in which you live. It’s your personal link to survival. I believe our British ancestors would have worshipped a deity which was a representation of their local land that nurtured and kept them. The triple aspect of her would have represented the changing aspect of the land as it moved from barren winter, to the promise of fertility and finally the full bloom of motherhood. Briganti is exactly that sovereign deity but only to the people of the north just as Cuda is the sovereign deity of the Cotswolds (she’s not even matron to the dobunni, just the area of the cotswolds), it’s the representation of the land that should point you towards which deity you recognise as giving you life and whom is important for your very survival.
I’m only guessing here but if you mentioned the festival of Briganti to someone in Devon they’d probably scratch their heads and have no idea who you were on about. I’m not saying they didn’t hold some sort of festival to recognise the changing seasons, in fact im sure they did but it was the representation of the local land in the form of a local deity that defined them and made the tribe who they were.
I’m currently looking to my local area to see what’s important to me, a bit like starting again really, but it’s making perfect sense to me.
I hope this makes sense and im not duly rounded up, ritually stabbed and dumped in a nearby bog for this heresy.
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Post by potia on Jan 19, 2011 9:33:39 GMT -1
If you have the good sense to work in a heated/air-conditioned office, and Tesco allows for a consistent diet year round- then what is it that compels you to celebrate the beginning of February? And if you do feel compelled then that is both interesting and useful, albeit subjective, evidence we can work with here - particularly if many of the group feel this strong urge? I do work in an office but the heating in it is poor and I get my shopping at Asda rather than Tesco as we have an asda just up the road. But yes I feel and have always felt a compulsion to mark the changes that appear in the beginning of February in the land around me. Midwinter is like a promise of light and life to come but now as the first shoots begin to appear, as the scent of the earth changes, as the light increases. Now that hope is becoming manifest. For my family it has significance as a time of new beginings. For me at this stage in my life this time has taken on even more significance. And for me also it is Brigantia that is intimately tied up with these feelings for me in all her aspects.
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Post by potia on Jan 19, 2011 9:56:07 GMT -1
Crowman, you have to do what is right for you but you also need to accept that if the the current Brython group disagrees with you then you will need to choose between the group and your own personal path. In some of your earlier posts in this thread you seemed to me to be trying to convince others that as Brigantia is not important to you she shouldn't be important to Brython as a group but she is and that has been ably demonstrated by the wide range of responses. You may not have intended to come across that way just as I'm pretty sure the others didn't intend to make you feel like you were being scolded like a child. You are at the beginning of your path with this group. Things won't fall into place as easily as you might have hoped, they never do, so try and keep an open mind and take time to listen both to your own heart and the words of those around you here. The people here are not easy ones to know. They will challenge you, ask you difficult questions and make you look at yourself in a whole different light - they do it to me all the time But on the other side, you will wonder how you ever did without the support of their freindship once it is given to you.
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