Before St. Patrick, There Was Brigid

A transmission from Brigid

Daughters of the earth, keepers of the well, women of the flame—

I have been with you all along.

In the flicker of the hearth when the night was long and cold.

In the forge where metal met fire and something new was born.

In the gentle hands of the healer who knew which herbs to place on the wound.

In the voices that rose in poetry, turning sorrow into song.

I am Brigid. I am the sacred fire that never dies.

Once, they spoke my name with reverence. They laid offerings at my wells and whispered their prayers to the water, knowing that I would hear. They called on me in childbirth and battle alike, for they knew that fire is both creation and destruction—both the warmth of the home and the flame that clears the old fields for new growth.

But then, they turned my name into something else.

They wrapped me in a nun’s veil and placed me inside stone walls. They made me obedient, pious, safe. And in doing so, they thought they had tamed me. They thought they had turned a goddess into a saint.

And yet, my fire still burned.

Sisters, do you know what they truly feared?

Not a woman who prays.

Not a woman who heals.

Not a woman who sings her poems to the stars.

They feared a woman who remembers.

They feared the woman who knows her power does not come from a throne or a title but from the earth beneath her feet, from the stories passed from mother to daughter, from the spark in her spirit that will not be dimmed.

They feared you.

They feared that you would remember the time when power did not mean conquest, but tending. When strength was not measured in domination, but in devotion. When women were the flame at the center of the village, the ones who carried the knowledge, the ones who kept the world alive.

And that is why I come to you now.

Because it is time to tend the flame again.

I am not the goddess of war, though I have seen battles. I do not rage like the storm, though I have watched empires rise and fall. I am the fire in the hearth, the slow-burning ember, the light that remains when all else has turned to ash.

And I say to you: Hold the flame.

Hold the flame of your knowing, even when they tell you to forget.

Hold the flame of your voice, even when they call it too loud.

Hold the flame of your craft, your work, your hands that weave and heal and create, for in them is the power they tried to take from you.

This world does not need more conquerors.

It does not need more kings.

It does not need more men who wield power like a blade, cutting down all that does not bow before them.

It needs the ones who tend.

The ones who nourish. The ones who build. The ones who remember how to bring life back from the coldest winter.

And that is you.

So on this day, when they tell you to raise a glass to a saint who drove the serpents from the land, I ask you instead to light a candle, place your hands on the earth, and remember what was never truly lost.

The fire is in you now.

Tend it well.

With the warmth of the hearth and the unbroken flame,

Brigid

On this St. Patrick’s Day, as the world toasts a history rewritten, may you reclaim the deeper truth. Brigid was never meant to be hidden behind a saint’s veil. She was—and is—the fire that will not die.

If you feel her calling, light a candle, speak a truth, and remember: the flame is yours to carry now.

And, a little something to keep in your pocket today—leprechauns are fairies. And you know we have a deep love for working with fairies in the realms of magic. Let’s just say… not all of the old ways were lost.

With love and fire,

Sarah & Kelly