Giant Pines reach like a woodland cathedral to the sky. Decorative quarter candles match the bright blues, reds, and greens of the altar cloths. From our ridge we sit on my partner’s handmade iron bench at a crossing of paths in the woods, between circles. In silence we enjoy the view of an orange sunset through the trees.
Tonight is Imbolc. Once again we approach the goddess Brigid to review last year’s pledges, and make promises for the coming year. It’s a reset I look forward to, a conversation about goals with a wise and ancient goddess. From our perch on the bench I spot the small circle and Brigid’s well –a cauldron filled with water and floating candles, which beckon and flicker.
The altar cloths are still visible in the dark as we cross the entrance gate. With perfect love and trust, so we enter. We call the powers of East, South, West, and North, and invite Brigid to join us.
It’s my time, at last. I make the pilgrimage alone to the well and sit beside it. And I can’t hold back –I bring my accomplishment to the goddess in one big excited stream of words. The writing project I call “Brigid’s Ritual” is complete. Last Imbolc, facing an historic year, I made an oath to capture current events with a Druid sensibility. The essays, verse, and memoirs sustained and grounded me through the tumultuous months and a tragic election –all through the lens of solstices, equinoxes, and celebrations in-between.
I bore witness, and will continue to do so. It’s part of my opposition. Truth in the time of authoritarian rule is an increasingly rare and necessary commodity. Fact-checkers and righteous journalists are not the only ones who bear the torch of integrity. Our own personal honor matters too –spiritual and emotional truth.
Yes, we need to speak out when fascists rewrite history. The January 6th insurrectionists have been unleashed from their prison cells. Right now they lurk as a small personal army –beholden to no one but the dictator. Federal law enforcement officers, involved in bringing these marauders of the Capitol to justice over the past four years –they are in the process of being purged from the FBI. And now the newly freed thugs have promised retribution on the officers. All because the psychopath in charge –a felon himself –has declared January 6th convictions a national disgrace. Let us never forget the Trump mob of January 6, 2021 –shitting in the halls, breaking and stealing, threatening to kill people, and beating cops with flag poles, baseball bats, and tasers.
Equally important are the experiences of decent Americans trying to grapple with a rogue, lawless president. Here is my contribution: Love is the basis of Druidry. That love extends to trees, deities, people, animals, lands and –yes –democracy. Strength lay in showing up authentically, with non-violent intent, and bearing witness. So I cry and dance and send protection for the vulnerable out into the multiverse. And I tell Brigid that I will keep writing about Druid magic –juxtaposed against a cruel kakistocracy. I will play music, working toward a pro-democracy concert. I will fight for my country with the best I can muster –artistically, spiritually, and on the ground.
I make my way back to the path and head for the bench in the dark –with only candles to light my way. My partner takes his turn at the well. Later we sit around a fire and toast Brigid, our beloved dead, and hopes for the future. It does our hearts good to find roots and perseverance in the woods, at the well of the goddess of inspiration, poetry, and smith-craft. May we forge a better country.
Also called Imbolc or Candlemas, Brigid is my favorite holiday. It honors Brigid, Celtic Goddess of smith craft, fire, and poetry. She was my first patron. Our ritual involves a pilgrimage to a well, and pledges –but first things first. We adorn quarter altars in the four directions, light candles, and clear the area with salt water (earth and water) and incense (fire and air). A short walk through the woods away from the main circle, the Druid circle awaits –itself cleared and readied with a cauldron in the center. Candles twinkle as the sun sets. We call in the quarter powers, invite Brigid to join us, and now it’s my turn to begin the journey to the well by myself. The path winds over past the iron bench at the crossroads. I see the face of the Green Man, barely visible in the dusk dark, engraved in a rock. Here the path takes a sharp turn behind a pine tree. The Druid circle opens up before me as I enter from the north. Oak trees and shortleaf pines surround the circle, and large limestones gleam white as they mark the quarters. I sit on a rock at the center, facing the cauldron, which is now a well with floating candles dancing amidst fresh picked purple crocuses. Vanilla incense fills the air, the candles flicker happily on the water. It’s a moment I look forward to all year –when I can sit here in the woods, in this magic spot, and talk to Brigid. To begin, we review last year’s pledges, then I speak about vows for the coming year. It’s an intimate and honest evaluation, and a reset for the months ahead.
I explain that I intend to stand balanced, aware, and active in 2024, in the face of the most significant election of my lifetime. Americans will decide whether we want democracy or Christian nationalism. I share about some of the actions I may take –an underground banned book network, providing transportation for any woman who needs to get abortion care in Kansas, working the polls on election day. I ask Brigid for strength to keep my wits and not succumb to fear or despair.
In the past politics would not take center stage in the expression or observance of my spiritual path. During the course of my life I have engaged with witches, Wiccans, Asatru, Odinists, and Druids. Like Protestant denominations, we have conservative and liberal factions. I was always versatile. In San Fransisco I avoided the far left new-age pagans because they had no rules or commitment to a particular course. But I loved my witches’ coven where we sang together in rituals, practiced kitchen magic over pots of stew, and provided a structure for study, advancement, and initiation. It was here I began volunteering in prisons as a visiting chaplain. I created Wiccan rituals for young women behind bars. It was joyful and eye-opening. As the prison experience grew to include men and higher security units in the federal system I moved into conducting Asatru and Odinist rituals. Some of these men were gang members with white nationalist beliefs. I shared spiritual and emotional tools and got along well with everyone. Gang members should be allowed to observe their religious holidays just as anyone else. The white power movement never interested me, and nobody spoke about blowing up buildings or shooting anyone. My role as a chaplain was to genuinely show up for human beings, not judge the uniforms and numbers. Politics –even nationalist politics– didn’t matter. Politics was not my focus — neither theirs nor mine. By then I had moved to Tennessee and joined a local Asatru group. The current and former military members and conservatives in that group didn’t bother me. Indeed, from west coast witches to free-world Asatru to Odinists in prisons, I made friends across the spectrum and we all learned a lot. This was over 20 years ago. I have long since retired from prison work and the politics of the country now render ideology impossible to ignore.
Here in 2024 normal times are like a fog horn, forlorn and unseen in the distance. I live in Arkansas now. I’m a Druid, a polytheist, and a witch. My partner and I enjoy our private rituals and celebrations. We used to visit with the Asatru group for Summer Solstice, but not anymore. I can’t find the motivation to break bread with the Maga cult members who believe convicted January 6 insurrectionists are hostages in their jail cells. Nationalists are mainstream Republicans now, no longer on the fringes of society. Republicans are no longer conservative. True conservatives want to conserve the constitution and have locked arms with people on the left who believe in democracy. Right and left have no meaning anymore in the face of the fascist threat. The world has changed profoundly since my experience in prisons.
I tell Brigid I want to embark on a writing project for the year. I want to combine a Druid sensibility and practice with action and write about it in the coming months leading up to the election and beyond. In the before-times, this melding of the spiritual and the political was rare. Now it feels necessary. How can I, a polytheist who believes in feminine and masculine divine, turn a blind eye to women bleeding out in emergency rooms across red states? Women and their doctors don’t have control anymore –only the Christian nationalist legislators can decide abortion access. In Republican states where abortion is illegal, most have no exceptions for rape or incest. In Idaho not even the mother’s life matters. In these red states with no exceptions, almost 65,000 pregnancies from rape have occurred since Roe fell –26,000 in Texas alone. Travel restrictions for pregnant women have sprung up in Texas municipalities. Bounty hunter laws reward snitches who tell on doctors and women who end pregnancies. Some of these red state legislators are looking at tracking women’s periods, and investigating miscarriages. A few have asked for citizen medical records from providers outside the state. In Missouri legislation is on the table to apply the death penalty to women who get abortions. It’s a nightmare.
Speaking of the death penalty, Alabama recently executed a prisoner via nitrogen hypoxia. Death by nitrogen gas. The American Veterinary Medical Association deemed nitrogen hypoxia too inhumane for animal euthanasia. Yet there he was, a Maga on TV, touting a successful new way to kill convicts and promising a bright future for the death penalty across red America. He left out that the nitrogen hypoxia experiment lasted 22 minutes. It was tortuous. I don’t think he cared.
One of the most stunning achievements of doublethink (see 1984, by George Orwell) is ascribing the term pro-life to fundamentalist Christians. Executions and forced births are anything but pro-life. Christian nationalists care about power and control. That’s it. Two plus two does not equal five, and we were never eternally at war with either Oceania or Eurasia.
I want to write and shout for democracy, truth, and genuine spirituality, which should inspire us to seek love, beauty, and happiness for sentient beings –including planet earth herself.
My tears now blur the lights in Brigid’s well. The malice and cruelty I have spoken about breaks my heart. I continue with my pledges, and end with hope of comfort and justice for victims of barbarity, corruption, violence, and lies.
I vow to return in 2025 before Brigid’s well with a year of writing about each of the eight Druid holidays, the world of spirits, and the truth about rising autocratic theocracy and the struggle against it.
I leave the well, touching the bright standing stone at the exit. Darkness is now complete. My partner waits at the bench at the crossroads. I sit next to him for a few minutes in companionable silence. Then he walks off to the well and I find myself alone in the big circle, lighter and more clear. I’m determined to meet these next few seasons with poise, and to write about my small contributions to the unfolding events ahead.
A neuroscientist I follow on social media suggests we look forward to small things every day to raise dopamine levels. I look forward to morning coffee and meditation, and my visits to the spirit grove. What do you look forward to, friends, and what will you do for democracy?
