What do we need? What shall we seed?
Hindsight, foresight, 20/20 vision.
Omen days long by gone
New Year's New Moon beckons
The Cailleach is not yet done!
At this New Year 2018 dark moon, the Cailleach is slashing at my windows with sleet, hailstone, and freezing over the shucks. It is snowing and melting and snowing and icing. Low cloud diminishes the increasing of daylight. Oh, the Cailleach is having great fun! She is not done with us just yet!
But she is potently reminding me that now is the seeding time soon. What do I wish to focus upon this year. And how best to harness the celestial power of the the culmination at next Full Moon, which is also a lunar eclipse, a blue moon AND Imbolc Eve.
An eclipse for Brigid! Tibetan Buddhists aver that ceremony and prayer done at the time of an eclipse is 30,000 times more potent than other full moons. And here we have our beloved archetype of Brigid - as fertility goddess, healer, transmuting alchemist. And in her guise as Abbess of Kildare and saint, we have proto-feminist, trickster and defrauder of patriarchy, Mary of the Gael - not as mother of God, but as midwife of new consciousness.
The Cailleach is the midwife and mother and grandmother of not just spring, but of new consciousness. This may well be the Spring of Women Rising. For to have an eclipse at this Goddess's feast seems especially fortuitous for the revival of the Divine Feminine in our world.
This is much more than #MeToo. This feels like the moment when a mass of women realise that we are good enough, worthy enough, equal to to not be sidelined, second-classed, denigrated and routinely disrespected by institutions or indivuals.
This is a power moment. So choose your intentions carefully. At this New Moon, what do you wish to seed? What does the world need that you can respond to? What can you nurture and cherish? What can you create?
Open your door and welcome Brigid into your home and hearth. She is a tough survivor. But this is her moment.
I call her Activist Brigid. I made her this time last year as a Brideog, a little Brigid doll that is laid in a cradle. She is strong, resilient and she shall prevail. So mote it be! She was raffled off at Wise Woman Ireland Weekend 2017 and now lives in Co. Clare.