Brigid, Brewing the Alchemy of Changing Seasons
fermenting change beneath the surface
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It’s the cross-quarter-days that are dynamic; they point to the shift that’s beginning to happen. They are about motion, process, transformation, and change. They are either gathering energy like at Imbolc and Beltane or releasing energy like at Lammas and Samhain. They are the actual energy sources that turn the Wheel of the Year, while the solstices and equinoxes hold the pauses.
Imbolc is traditionally the great festival and honoring of Brigid (Brighid, Bride, Brigit), so loved as a pagan Goddess that her worship was woven into the Christian church as St. Bridget. She is a Goddess of healing, poetry, and smithcraft. She is a Goddess of Fire, the Sun, and the Hearth, along with wells, springs, and rivers. She protects domesticated animals. She brings fertility to the land and its people and is closely connected to midwives and newborn babies.
Historians believe that Brigid was largely a personal goddess, with people in many places finding unique and individual practices to honor her, which is basically the same way that people honor the Saints, in personal and individual devotions. I invite you to enter into the practice of acknowledging Brigid at Imbolc in whatever aspect aligns with your understanding of her.
Brigid is a worker of alchemy, the magical art of transforming or transmuting one thing into another. She inspires the mind to turn ordinary words into poetry. She turns death into life and winter into spring; she instructs the smith on how to turn earth into valuable metals and turn them into tools and weapons. She turns milk into butter, plants into medicine, wool into cloth, and grain into beer.
We see her in command of all four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Her gifts are practical and useful in the physical realm. These are all transformational (magickal) processes. Fire, the most transformational element of all, is her element.
Brigid, Goddess + Saint, is the archetype of Imbolc.
In Celtic mythology, Brigid has a complex and varied history that weaves a fascinating and complex story that holds many threads of ideas linking the very ancient with the modern.
One thread sees her as the transformed Callieach, the powerful, elemental land spirit understood as the Hag of Winter who brings snow, ice, storms, and death to the land. In the spring, she transforms into Brigid, the young maiden who ushers in the spring, fertility, and the abundance of the growing season.
Another thread of her story sees her as a triple goddess but not the maiden, mother, or crone sequence typically found among Greek goddesses like Persephone, Demeter + Hecate.
Rather, she is seen as three of her attributes: The Poet (Inspiration), The Healer, and The Smith/Brewer (or Alchemist), a configuration more typical of triple Celtic goddesses.
Brigid’s Day is Celebrated on Imbolc on February 1.
The first few days of February have several special days clustered together, indicating that this is an auspicious moment during the wheel of the year that's been observed over many centuries. These special days include...
February 1 - Imbolc / Brigid's Day
February 1+2 - St. Brigid's Day
February 2 - The Feast of the Purification of Mary, Groundhog Day, and Candlemas, the Blessing of Candles (On Candlemas in medieval Germany the hedgehog was the weather prognosticator)
Brigid has many names Brid, Brighid, Brigit, Briginda, Brigdu, Brigid and Bride, attesting to her widespread presence over distance and time with many local variants. Her names generally mean “the Exalted/Bright One,” and her mythology speaks of her tending the triple fires of...
smithcraft (physical fire)
healing (the fire of life within)
poetry (the fire of the spirit)
Turning water into Beer?
Many of you will be familiar with the biblical story of Christ’s first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding at the insistence of his mother. I’ve always found that such a peculiar and curious story. We have the God of all creation incarnate, who has not yet revealed himself to the world, announcing his arrival by supplying wine when the groom has run out and then only reluctantly at the insistence of his mother. Now, obviously, like all sacred stories, there are layers of meaning here and plenty of symbolism as well. Knowing that we can also take that approach to the stories around Brigid.
Brigid, the goddess, is in charge of brewing beer, but the changing of water into beer stories come from her time as a Saint. They mirror many of the symbolic elements in the biblical story.
In the most famous, Brigid is working in a leper colony, and they run out of beer. This is important because fermented beverages like beer protected people from contaminated water, which was common. It is said that Brigid turned the leper’s bathwater into beer, and not any old mid-quality beer but, according to an article in the Irish Post, “a genuinely brilliant beer that was enjoyed by one and all.”
The legend goes on to say St. Brigid also turned dirty bathwater into beer for clerics when they visited the leper colony.
Furthermore, Brigid is said to have used a single barrel of beer to supply eighteen churches with enough beer to last from Holy Thursday through to the end of the fifty-day Easter season.
We see in these stories the qualities of healing, transformation, purification, compassion, generosity, hospitality, abundance, and command over natural elements. These are true for Brigid as both goddess and saint, underscoring how little she really changed in the minds of the people across the centuries.
The Alchemy of Fermentation
However, there’s something else even deeper that I want to unearth as we talk about Brigid.
People have been using fermentation since at least the Neolithic (7000 to 6600 BCE), primarily for fermenting beverages and making cheese. However, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that scientists started understanding the process. ~ https://sciencenotes.org/what-is-fermentation-definition-and-examples/
Clearly, our distant neolithic ancestors used fermentation, but it wasn't until relatively recently that we actually understood the process. To them, the process must have seemed magical. To turn one thing into another, like milk into cheese, to purify something so that it could be safely consumed, to preserve precious food sources so that they lasted longer must have been a highly revered skill. How was that knowledge discovered? Was it a highly guarded secret or shared freely? We don’t know. But I think we can speculate that, like the knowledge the smith held, which was highly regarded, kept secret, and looked upon as magical, fermentation may have been viewed in the same way.
The inner, unseen process that turns one thing into another happens within us and within the earth. I think it’s no surprise that Brigid who ushers in the very first observable turn of the season from winter to spring also oversees the mysterious process of fermentation.
At the beginning of February, when we celebrate St. Brigid at Imbolc, the upper world is cold and still, yet deep under the earth, the process has begun. Despite all apparent appearances, the cycle of the seasons turns in secret, working its earth magic out of sight. Who could know it? Who could even guess at it?
Even with the snowy conditions above, the gradually returning light triggers something in the earth. The earliest harbingers are charmed out of their sleep and begin to move. Snowdrops, crocus, and early narcissus are awakened, and they begin to transform from brown dormant corms and bulbs into growing shoots that push up through the cold ground. When they break through they begin to green. In this, we understand a symbolic kind of fermentation is happening. Just as yeast ferments and causes bread to rise, the changing season causes viriditas to rise. Viriditas is 12th century mystic Hildegard of Bingens unique word for the greening, life-giving power infused in the natural world by the Divine Source.
Viriditas is a word meaning vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth. It is particularly associated with abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who used it to refer to or symbolize spiritual and physical health, often as a reflection of the Divine Word or as an aspect of the divine nature
~ Wikipedia
I particularly pay attention to the aspects of veriditas that reference spiritual and physical health. In this, I see a connection to inner alchemy. Just as no one really knows exactly what force begins to awaken the earth at Imbolc, neither can we say exactly what inner force awakens our own souls and causes them to green with vitality, resulting in spiritual (and sometimes renewed physical) health.
The veriditas that greens us is necessary and returns to us again and again when we need it. Perhaps it comes to restore you after grief, loss, physical ailments, depression, setbacks, confusion, or simply a time of feeling flat and disconnected from light, life, and goodness.
Spiritual renewal is possible just as the renewal of the earth is possible after the winter. Brigid, goddess, and saint, can be your guide.
To help you discover what is stirring within you at this change of season, what is fermenting in your body, mind, and soul, and what may be ready to transform through inner alchemy, I offer you an Imbolc Exploration & Experience.
Many of you will have already downloaded the 2023 Wheel of the Year Guides, including an Imbolc Guide. This Imbolc Exploration and Experience is entirely different, richer, more interactive, and more expansive than the Imbolc Guide PDF. It is meant to guide you into a deeper relationship with Brigid, the season, and the ways that earth wisdom can support your own inner growth, healing, and transformation. It will be hosted on the Hedge Mystic Website (if you haven’t yet taken the video tour of the Hedge Mystic Website, you can find that HERE).
Asking for Support
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I deeply enjoy writing to you and creating materials that guide you on the inner journey and through the seasonal cycles. It doesn't feel right to restrict access to these. Thus, they will remain free for everyone, yet donations would be such a great help to me, allowing me to continue to build community and interact with you.
What is fermenting underneath the surface of your world? What is beginning to bubble up and rise to the surface? If you accessed the Imbolc Exploration & Experience, what did you discover?
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.
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Thank you Jan for such a rich sharing! I wonder if the protective power of fermentation is why Guinness advertised that drinking their beer would give you strength? I always thought those ads were ridiculous, but perhaps there is some scientific grounding to them!
So informative, thank you 🙏🏻