IRELAND: IN SEARCH OF THE GODDESS

I hear the call in the deep heart’s core. --Yeats

I heard it across the seas in the rustling forest near my home in Pennsylvania, & I heard it in the sound of the waves, & I heard it the instant we docked in the port of gritty & raw Dublin, one of my favorite cities in the world. I’ve only been here once before, for a wonderful Thanksgiving week with my son Avi, but it was enough to make me want to return. What I remember: the words of James Joyce across the window of the Guinness Storehouse as you survey Dublin over a foaming pint, the musty welcoming smell of old books in the Long Library at Trinity College, the forty shades of green in the parks, the rich, dark coffee, & the sweet sharpness of the language. Whether the Irish speak Gaelic or English, whether they’re joking or telling tales, there’s music to the words, a cadence & rhythm that invokes & evokes the soul’s mysteries the way poetry does. It’s a code to decipher & puzzle over. Letters take on new identities, others are present but silent, while others are heard but not seen. Niamh = Neve. Sidhe = She. The words curve like fingers & beckon into the woods, whisper the divine call of the Sidhe, those mischievous faeries: Away, come away (said Yeats, who heard them, too).

And then they leave us in the woods, our hearts tied in a Celtic knot, our eyes staring wistfully.

I hear the call as I leave the dock with my friend & Semester at Sea colleague, photographer Todd Forsgren. We head in search of the sacred feminine, & the first thing we see is a small statue of Mary guarding the sailors, & those who have sinned.

I hear it stronger inside the crypt of Newgrange, the Neolithic passage tomb, with its prophetically accurate Roof Box, a carved opening that lets in the sun during the Winter Solstice—perhaps the world’s first solarium. I lift my head to the vaulted carbelled roof, layer upon layer of scalloped, fitted rock that reportedly hasn’t leaked a drop of water (in rainy Ireland) in 5,000 years, & gaze at the mystical symbols—tri-spirals, diamonds & zigzags—carved into the recesses. The guard—an irreverent man with a metallic-gray Elvis pompadour & a side-creeping smile—turns off the light & says, “Imagine the Sun God penetrating the Earth Goddess to make the earth fertile.” A dazzling ray of light filters through the Roof Box & lights the crypt. I know I’m not the only one who shivers. It’s very sexual, very Demeter, & very powerful. I’m especially moved when I learn that the 92 massive rocks that circle the round tomb of Newgrange are carved with the same mysterious symbols as Howth (the neighboring passage tomb), but unlike Howth, where the rock carvings face outwards as if to protect those inside from invaders—at Newgrange, the carved symbols face inward, like magic amulets pressed to your heart.

I hear it deeper inside my heart as we enter Kildare, a medieval town dominated by St. Brigid’s Cathedral on one side of the town square. Cill = Church. Dara = Oak. Apparently Brigid, who was a real person before she became a legend—saint, goddess & witch—was beautiful & headstrong, & wandered the country in search of a place to set up her church. She found it here, in an oak ridge & set out her magically expanding cloak to mark the dimensions of the land. She built the first monastery in Ireland, & curiously one where monks & nuns cohabited (separately, but under the same roof). She was the Abbess, but so powerful she was known as a Bishop.

Inside the cathedral, which is as musty as the Long Library, we hear a persistent humming. Is that the call? Todd & I walk from one altar to another, surrounded by dark, damp stone, searching for the source of the humming. Is someone confessing in a hidden alcove? Is the cathedral haunted? The mystery is cleared up when we walk outside & wander the grounds. A weed whacker! An absurd prosaic detail that reminds me of exiting the sacred mysterious crypt of Newgrange to see a pasture of dozing cows a few feet away. The sacred & the profane rub shoulders in Ireland.

Behind the cathedral is a Fire Pit where Brigid started a fire that burned without ashes for centuries. It was tended by nineteen nuns. Every night the nuns chanted, “Brigid, take care of your own fire for this night belongs to you,” & in the morning, the fire would still burn bright.

Brigid died in the year 525, but the fire burned on until a priest magically put out the flames. And that was the end of the fire.

I visit the Fire Pit—rectangular & hard-edged, with a few scattered offerings, including a small photo of a young woman, her eyes closed. Every year, on Brigid’s Feast Day, the 1^st of February, the fire is lit again. But as Todd & I wander the grounds of the cathedral, the call seems fainter. There is a Round Tower, tall & phallic, which the tiny female caretaker, her purse strapped to her chest in a tight diagonal as if afraid we’ll try to steal it, tells us we’re too late to climb, but I don’t mind. I feel no magic emanating from this stone tower, & none from the Fire Pit.

The call nearly disappeared outside the cathedral, but it resumes as we follow the obscure directions to Brigid’s Well, get lost, retrace our steps, & try again. We pass signs for the National Stud (a horse farm), the Black Abbey, & an outlet mall. And then a small sign to Brigid’s Well, with an arrow pointing vaguely in the distance. “How can there be signs to Brigid’s Well & an outlet mall on the same post?” I muse aloud. Is that a sign that there is no distinction between the sacred & the profane, that it is all one?

Evening is falling when we finally find the well, a green sanctuary on the side of the road. A fence separates this enclosed area from a field. I should have been prepared for the juxtaposition of the mystical & the kitsch—a small shrine at the entrance contains tiny dolls & statuettes, burnt candles, & a large snow globe of Mary & disciple (without the snow). We walk deeper into the sanctuary to the well, guarded by a life-size stone figure of Brigid holding up her hand in welcome. Under one arm, she grips a cane & flowers. The well is a small stream, murky & lily-dotted. A series of stones marks a path to another stone circle, a place to sit & meditate. At the end of the clearing is a tree, its branches strung with colorful Tibetan flags, ribbons, keychains, & pieces of yarn. It reminds me of a tree in Safed, a town of mystics in Israel, where I visited the shrine of a saintly Kabbalist rabbi. His tree was weighed down with hundreds of ribbons & scarves, all bearing prayers & yearnings.

A sudden green breeze carries me back to that windy day on top of a hill in Safed (pronounced Tzfat—Hebrew, another coded language with letters that function as doorways into the unknown). I’d been given crazy-chaotic directions to his sacred tree by a mystic. It took 90 minutes of winding through wooded dead-ends & wildly careening roads to find the tree. Later, I learned it was an easy 15-minute ride from the center of town, but when I asked my friend why I’d been given such a maze to follow, she said, “It shouldn’t be too easy to find the sacred. That ride through the dark & the unknown was your preparation.”

Todd & I are silent, but it is clear we both hear the call. Something magical is happening. We have entered a sacred space, & we try to remember this moment—each in our own way. He takes pictures, & I sit at the edge of the well & write. We linger & lose track of time.

After a while a woman climbs through the slats of the fence & enters the sanctuary with a small white muzzled Rottweiler. We talk dogs with her for a while, as she sits on a bench, smokes, & lets Daisy, the Rottweiler, wander. Dark-haired, pale, long-limbed, she won’t let Todd take her picture. She seems to fit perfectly in this space, & when she finishes her cigarette, goes to check on the shrine. When she returns to us, it’s as if she’s made up her mind to confide in us. “You know this isn’t the original well?”

Todd & I exchange glances. What?

She explains that there was no parking at the original well, & so her father donated part of his land—their property is just beyond the fence—to build a new well in 1955. The old well is minutes away.

We find it quickly, in the shadows of the ominously named Black Abbey, a grim abandoned stone tower with tall grasses blowing across Celtic cross-topped tombstones. I can’t stop laughing. I’m a little giddy—we did feel the sense of the sacred, I know in my bones that we did, but does the fact that we were in the wrong place invalidate that? What defines a sacred space anyway? Is it sacred before we arrive? Does our presence make it sacred?

The original well is smaller & simpler, lonely, guarded by a weeping willow and a tree branch strung with about a dozen ribbons & wishes. We’d never have found it without the woman. After the sacred experience at the other well, I still feel magic dripping from me, & sheer joy: we are here, in Kildare, at the original well, & all of this has come about because months ago I scribbled a few words about Goddess sites, including this: “Brigid’s Well, Kildare.” I didn’t know if I’d ever make it here, didn’t know where or when or how, but the intention was there.

There is power here—in the other well, & in this one, too—& I wonder if it was always there, or if we, the seekers, are the ones who bring it.

Water softly gurgles, & leaves scattered over the green green grass remind me it’s autumn. I climb over rocks to the center of the well & sit, cloaked in golden light. For a moment, I feel like a Goddess myself.  

Before we leave, I send a prayer—words, my magic—into the water & green-blue air. I hope she accepts my offering.