Tending to the Flame of Brighid:
Reconstructing an Order of Flame Tenders from Pre-Christian Ireland
By Micheál O’Miadhachain, June 2009
Part I: Introduction
While the practice of tending a fire devoted and sacred to the Goddess Brighid is a very small piece of the entire puzzle of Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, it presents as a very heated one which seems to stir up some very strong emotions.
This brief essay focuses on the process of establishing a modern order of flame tenders devoted to the Goddess Brighid, along with the inherent problems of such a process, from a pagan reconstructionist perspective. This essay in no way seeks to pass judgment on any established neo-pagan order of flame tenders but seeks to present what a Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan order of flame tenders might look like when the establishment of such an order is actually based upon the principles reconstructionist paganism.
I would like to personally thank Kym Lambert ní Dhoireann for helping me to rethink my own perspective on this matter and in inspiring me to take a more reconstructionist approach to the matter.
Part II: The Primary Source
Only one source exists to support the idea of flame tenders devoted to Brighid in Irish lore. Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146 – c. 1223), a Christian ecclesiastic and historian, wrote his work Topographia Hiberniae in 1188 C.E. While some scholars note that Giraldus Cambrensis may not been the most accurate and unbiased of commentators on medieval Ireland,i he does describe a religious order of Christian women whose purpose was to tend to an eternal flame dedicated to St. Brighid with some detail:
At Kildare, in Leinster, celebrated for the glorious Brigit, many miracles have been wrought worthy of memory. Among these, the first that occurs is the fire of St. Brigit, which is reported never to go out. Not that it cannot be extinguished, but the nuns and holy women tend and feed it, adding fuel, with such watchful and diligent care, that from the time of the Virgin, it has continued burning through a long course of years; and although such heaps of wood have been consumed during this long period, there has been no accumulation of ashes.
As in the time of St. Brigit twenty nuns were here engaged in the Lord’s warfare, she herself being the twentieth, after her glorious departure, nineteen have always formed the society, the number having never been increased. Each of them has the care of the fire for a single night in turn, and, on the evening before the twentieth night, the last nun, having heaped wood upon the fire, says, “Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.” She then leaves the fire, and in the morning it is found that the fire has not gone out, and that the usual quantity of fuel has been used.
This fire is surrounded by a hedge, made of stakes and brushwood, and forming a circle, within which no male can enter; and if any one should presume to enter, which has been sometimes attempted by rash men, he will not escape the divine vengeance. Moreover, it is only lawful for women to blow the fire, fanning it or using bellows only, and not with their breath.ii
Giraldus Cambrensis continues to write of the punishments inflicted upon men who tried to pass over the hedge:
At Kildare, an archer belonging to the household of earl Richard leapt over the hedge of St Brigit and blew the fire with his mouth. On leaping back over the hedge, he began to lose his senses, and blew into every one’s mouth he met, exclaiming, “See how I blew St. Brigit’s fire.” In the same way, running from house to house, through the city, wherever he found a fire, he began to blow it, using the same words. At last, having been seized by his comrades and bound, he entreated to be taken to the nearest water. Being conducted there, and parched with thirst, he took such deep draughts that he burst in the midst of them, and died in their hands. Another, who attempted to enter the circle round the fire, and with that intention had already planted one of his legs across the hedge, though he was dragged back and held by his companions, had his leg and foot instantly withered; whence afterwards, as long as he lived, he was lame and an idiot.iii
These brief passages are the only known accounts of a native practice of tending a flame sacred to St. Brighid in Ireland. Nothing is written directly regarding the Goddess Brighid and the author of the account wrote about the practice several centuries after the conversion of Ireland to Christianity. This presented lack of any connection between the a suggested pagan practice and the documented Christian practice in the only known primary source of the tradition, combined with the lack of any unarguable evidence suggesting that the traditions of the Goddess Brighid found a new home in the medieval cult of St. Brighid, poses some problems for reconstructionist pagans who are attempting to infer that this order of keepers of the flame of St. Brighid had its origin in pre-Christian times.
Some scholars have suggested that the cult of St. Brighid adopted many of the attributes of the Goddess Brighid for their saint and there appears to be enough similarities between the goddess and the saint to tenuously support this idea.ivv Therefore, like this possible evolution of the goddess to saint, many individuals beginning in the nineteenth century and through to the modern day have similarly speculated that the practice of tending a fire sacred to the memory of St. Brighid also had its origins in pagan timesviviiviiiix. It is still important to note, however, that much of this remains speculation basedupon the common attributes and legends of the saint and the goddess. In the pagan reconstructionist realm, I would argue that we would call such speculation “unverified/unsubstantiated personal gnosis” which is simply a term describing modern spiritual practices that have developed based upon varying levels of inspiration and research, unsupported by factual evidence, but which does not contradict known fact.
Part III: Looking to Other Cultures for Support
The idea of tending a flame dedicated to a specific deity was not unknown to pre-Christian continental Europe nor to the British Isles. There are varying examples of such practices found in the historical record, the most prominent of these examples being the Vestal Virgins of Rome.
The Vestal Virgins:
The origin of the Vestal Virgins is shrouded in mystery. Although the earliest origins of this cult may have developed in the city of Alba Longa before the legendary founding of Rome, these priestesses were supposedly founded by the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius and were charged with keeping the sacred hearth of the Goddess Vesta lit in her temples, particularly at Rome. x
The priestesses were required to take a vow of chastity for forty years and lived in a building, the Atrium Vestae, located near the circular temple of Vesta in the city of Rome. There were strict rules regarding their behavior and their privileged place in Roman society.xi
The duties of the Vestal Virgins included not only the aforementioned maintenance of the hearth and sacred flame in the Temple of Vesta, but also of household chores and the guarding of their storehouse. The condition of their household generally represented the welfare of the entire city and the state of Rome:
“…if anything went wrong in their house the threat was to the whole salus (safety) of the Roman people – not just of the city, but including the health and fertility of the whole community, its animals and its farms.”xii
The parallels between the Vestal Virgins and what is known of the order of flame tenders described by Giraldus Cambrensis is limited to the fact that both orders were made up entirely of women, both orders tended a flame and that this flame was tended within a circular enclosure. No other generalizations can be made and there is nothing to suggest that both practices had their origins in a common source.
The Flame Tenders of Hestia:
According to ancient sources both widows and women who no longer maintained relations with men kept the sacred fire of Hestia lit in her temples throughout Greece.xiii
Again, the only similarities we can find between this example and that of the one provided by Giraldus Cambrensis is the fact that
only women were allowed to tend to the flame.
Aquae Sulis:
Aquae Sulis perhaps provides the most tantalizing bit of information in regards to the existence of an order of flame tenders in a pre-Christian Celtic speaking area and dedicated to a specific pagan deity. Aquae Sulis was a temple complex located in southern England’s present day Bath. It was the site of a natural spring dedicated to the Celtic Goddess Sulis and later to the syncretized Sulis-Minerva, and was
considered to have healing properties.
The Roman writer Gaius Julius Solinus wrote of a perpetual flame dedicated to the Goddess Minerva at Aquae Sulis in his work Collectanea rerum memorabilium.xiv Geoffrey of Monmouth additionally describes an eternal flame in Bath originally established by the legendary king Bladud.xv
Very little is known about this flame. Given that it was apparently dedicated to Minerva and the tendency of some to attempt to compare Celtic deities to Roman deities (i.e. Brighid and Minerva), a few early Celtic scholars have linked this to the practice at Kildarexvi but this cannot be proven and is a case of academic speculation. Yet, it should be noted that archaeological evidence does indicate communications between the pagan Irish peoples and the Romans in Britainxvii so one cannot entirely rule out the fact that the Irish had knowledge of this eternal flame located in Aquae Sulis that was dedicated to a pagan Goddess. To make matters even more interesting, some scholars have speculated that “a college of priestesses who tended an eternal flame” served Sulis in her temple complex at Bath, xviii but again this is purely speculative especially in light of the fact that the existence of male priests at this particular complex has been verified by archaeological findings. xix
Overall these three examples can provide little support to the argument that the flame tended by the nuns of Kildare and dedicated to St. Brighid may have been the evolution of a pagan practice. However, we can be certain that other orders of flame tenders did exist in pagan times, that in many cases these orders consisted of only females and that such a practice existed in the British Isles before the conversion to Christianity. While none of these examples can move us past academic speculation into the world of undeniable fact, we can assume that the practice at Kildare, if it did exist in pagan times, was not an isolated practice.
Part IV: Reconstructing the Practice
While t is evident that the idea of a pagan order of flame tenders dedicated to a goddess and evolving into a Christian order of nuns dedicated to a saint remains speculative guesswork, it is conceded that many scholars believe that the cult of St. Brighid may have adopted some of the attributes of the Goddess Brighid for its saint. Furthermore, it is also proven that the existence of pagan orders dedicated to keeping a flame in honor of a specific deity was not unheard of in pagan Europe nor was it limited to outside of the British Isles as the example of Aquae Sulis proves. Thus with an examination of the primary source for the tradition of flame tenders dedicated to St. Brighid in Ireland and the further examples of pagan flame tenders outside of Ireland, we can conclude that perhaps there may have been an order of flame tenders, dedicated to the Goddess Brighid, in pre-Christian Ireland which may have evolved into the example of an order of nuns tending the flame of St. Brighid provided by Giraldus Cambrensis.
So, we have now come to the point where it is time to discern how a community might reconstruct, and not simply adapt to changed lifestyles, such a pagan order in the modern day. I would argue that our first step is to acknowledge that the entire idea of the reconstruction of such a pagan order is an example of “unsubstantiated personal gnosis” (UPG).
Unsubstantiated or unverified personal gnosis is a term developed by pagan reconstructionists to:
“label one’s own experience as a new and untested hypothesis, although further verification from the spiritual interactions of others may lead to a certain degree of verifiability”xx.
Certainly the idea of creating a reconstructed pagan order of flame tenders which is based upon a single mention of an order of Christian nuns charged with tending a flame to a Christian saint fits the idea of personal gnosis. Although there is much speculation, there is also no fact or empirical evidence to prove that such an order of Christian nuns was the result of an evolution of a pagan order. Furthermore, while such personal gnosis may be shared by many individuals to the point of becoming what could be termed “shared personal gnosis”, it is still not confirmed with undeniable fact from primary written sources nor through the archaeological record. Thus, I present the idea of an order of flame tenders dedicated to the Goddess Brighid as an example of unverified personal gnosis shared by a community.
It is therefore necessary to look at how unverified personal gnosis is used by the pagan reconstructionist community particularly those dedicated to the reconstruction of the pre-Christian and polytheistic practices of those individuals living in one of the countries that spoke a Celtic language. In the CR FAQ, the authors assert that:
“No UPG should contradict known facts about the associated culture, and no practices based on UPG should stand as more than modern inventions.”xxi
Given this advice, it is therefore necessary to examine what is known about the practice described by Giraldus Cambrensis so that nothing is contradicted.
We know the following based upon Giraldus’ text:
- 1. [the fire]“…is reported never to go out…”xxii
Judging from this we can very clearly determine that the flame was an “eternal” flame and was never extinguished nor allowed to burn out.
- 2. “…nuns and holy women tend and feed it …xxiii
Giraldus Cambrensis is very clear in that only women were to tend to the flame and states that “nuns and holy women” were the ones who fed and tended it. Nuns are generally unmarried women who have pledged their lives to an order and have taken certain vows and oaths. Whether, “holy women” is used as a descriptive term for the nuns or whether or not it was meant to signify another group of women who joined with the nuns in this task is unclear.
3. “…nineteen have always formed the society, the number having never been increased. Each of them has the care of the fire for a single night in turn, and, on the evening before the twentieth night, the last nun, having heaped wood upon the fire, says, “Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.” She then leaves the fire…xxiv
It is unambiguously stated that nineteen women formed the society and that the practice of tending the flame during the evening hours was divided amongst those nineteen women in cycles of twenty days with a different woman tending the fire for each single night during the twenty day cycle.
It is also clear that on the twentieth day, no vigil was kept by any of the nuns and that it was believed that St. Brighid joined the ranks of the nuns and tended the flame on the twentieth night of each cycle.
We do not know whether or not the nun assigned to tending the flame was expected to tend to the fire during the entire day or only during the nighttime hours. It may be that the community as a whole tended the flame during the daytime hours amidst household chores and cooking while a single nun keeping vigil at night or it may be that one nun tended the flame for an entire day every twenty days. This is something of which the record is unclear.
It is also unclear as to whether the women charged with tending the flame lived as a community in a central location or lived in separate households. The former would have been the likely of the two given what is known of 12th century religious life and obviously the women had to have lived within close geographical proximity to the physical flame, but the latter cannot be ruled out.
- 4. “This fire is surrounded by a hedge, made of stakes and brushwood, and forming a circle, within which no male can enter… xxv
The passage is again very unambiguous. There was a central flame surrounded by a hedge in the shape of a circle. The flame was not passed from location to location nor was the flame carried to the location of the nuns. Each nun came to the location of the flame.
It is also very clear that men were not permitted to enter the hedge nor were they permitted to tend to the flame. The reasoning behind this is not provided and the author does not elaborate save to give two examples of what happened to men who tried to cross the hedge. In both of these examples the men suffered both psychological and physical afflictions as result of physically crossing the hedge boundary.xxvi
5. “…it is only lawful for women to blow the fire, fanning it or using bellows only, and not with their breath.” xxvii
This is a very interesting example of what could be termed “ritual practice” associated with tending the flame. Giraldus Cambrensis states that women fanned or used bellows to keep the flame alight, but were prohibited from using their own breath. The underlying reason for this prohibition is sadly lost, but this one piece of ritual practice does survive and does provide an example of possible orthopraxy for pagan reconstructionists.
One can surmise that the ideal reconstruction and the practical reconstruction of the practice of tending a flame devoted to the Goddess Brighid will differ considerably. Ideally, the reconstructionist would want to follow each fact presented by Giraldus Cambrensis as a guideline when establishing the order. Therefore, such a reconstruction would consist of a shrine area dedicated to the Goddess Brighid. This shrine would be surrounded by a circular hedge and in the center would be a flame of some sort that would never be extinguished. The flame would be tended by nineteen women. These women would live in the same geographical area and preferably in the same building in order that they would be able to travel to the shrine where the flame was kept. Each woman would be expected to tend to the flame once during a twenty day cycle. Whether or not the woman tended the flame for the entire twenty-four hour period or for just the nighttime hours would be at the discernment of the community as this is unclear in the original account. The women would be expected to tend to the flame by fanning it or using by using bellows and one could imagine that these could easily become ritual emblems of the order.
I would also suggest that given that there is no other guidelines provided in the primary source, the community would have to develop a set of ritual guidelines for the practice and some sort of “rule” governing their behavior. These of course would be entirely made up of unsubstantiated and/or shared personal gnosis, would have to be presented as such and would most likely have to be discerned by those women finding the order. However, any guidelines would have to include the practice that the women would not breathe on the fire, that on the twentieth day none of the nineteen women would tend the fire and that the fire would remain lit on the twentieth day but with the Goddess left to tend it on her own.
This is an example of an ideal reconstruction. Such a reconstruction is probably not likely in a non-pagan society. We do not currently live in a society where nineteen women could devote themselves entirely to living in a community and tending to flame without any other responsibilities save for those needed for membership in the order. Furthermore, even if nineteen women could be located, the current pagan community would be unlikely to financially support such an order as any order would have to either be self-sufficient or would have to be supported by a community of fellow benefactors. Therefore, we must look to a practical reconstruction.
A practical reconstruction would follow many of the same guidelines. There would be one fire in a central location that would never be allowed to be extinguished. Instead of a separate shrine, this would most likely have to be in a devoted individual’s home or on private property. I would argue that it should be surrounded by some sort of circular enclosure. The shrine would have to be in an area where it would not be bothered and where others would not have to enter for mundane reasons as only flame tenders would be allowed to enter the shrine area.
The order would be entirely made up of women living in the same geographical area or made up of women who would be willing to travel to a central shrine. Preferably, there would be nineteen women with each woman devoting a single day every twenty days to the upkeep of the flame and shrine. The women would organize and develop protocols for tending to the flame based up their own unsubstantiated and shared personal gnosis. Such protocol could include the postures to be taken, the attire to be worn and the prayers to be said when tending the flame. Again, it might also include a “rule” of the order or a generally agreed upon standard of living. The given examples of only fanning or using bellows upon the flame along with the tradition of having the Goddess Brighid tend to the flame on the twentieth day would again have to be central to any evolving orthopraxy
Even with this simplified practical reconstruction, one can see how such a task would be both arduous and time consuming. Furthermore, given that we are not living in a predominantly pagan society the problem of finding nineteen suitable women who would be willing to take on such a task would inevitably arise and individuals would have to be willing to determine some difficult questions. Would such a vocation be for life or would it be temporary? Could a woman state that she only wished to make a vow to tend the flame for a year (or some other specified period of time) or would she be expected to continue it her entire life? Could the order be established with less than nineteen women with members perhaps tending to the flame more than once in a twenty day cycle and still be considered reconstructionist in approach?
Part V: Conclusions
I have presented this brief essay as an overview of what a reconstructed order of flame tenders devoted to the Goddess Brighid might look life if the principles of reconstructionist paganism were followed in their entirety. There is no argument that it would be a difficult and time consuming process requiring true devotion to the goddess. It would not be easy for the women involved nor would it be without its trials, but I am sure the effort and piety involved would definitely be rewarded by the Goddess.
As the pagan movement grows, it is my sincere desire to someday see a group of woman, entirely devoted to the Goddess and willing to sacrifice their time and work to her, develop such a truly reconstructed practice.
References:
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“Unverified personal gnosis.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Jan 2009, 07:27 UTC. 4 Jan 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unverified_personal_gnosis&oldid=261850088>.
Wood-Martin, W.G. Pagan Ireland: An Archaeological Sketch. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. , 1895.
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i Rollo (1995)
ii Wright (1905: pgs 96-97)
iii Wright (1905: pg 106)
iv Hilgarth (1986)
v Green (1996)
vi Wood-Martin (1895)
vii Bonwick (1894)
viii Monaghan (2004b)
ix Green (1996)
x Worsfold (1942)
xi Worsfold (1942)
xii Beard et al. (1998)
xiii Worsfold (1942)
xiv Cunliffe (1984)
xv Giles (1842)
xvi MacCana (1970)
xvii Raftery, Barry (1994)
xviii Monaghan (2004a: pg 433)
xix Green (1997)
xx “Unverified personal gnosis.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Jan 2009, 07:27 UTC. 4 Jan 2009
xxi Price NicDhana et al. (2007: pg 50)
xxii Wright (1905: pg 96)
xxiii Wright (1905: pg 96 )
xxiv Wright (1905: pg 97)
xxv Wright (1905: pg 97)
xxvi Wright (1905: pg 106)
xxvii Wright (1905: pg 97)