In the thousand year forest, Brigid’s serpent ripples forth from earth’s womb, and tastes the wild air with her tongue.
This wind, it tastes of midwinter: of the matings of eagles and owls, of frost flowers blossoming along iced river edges.
Goddess of Fire and Creation, let me say that somewhere, living deep inside of me, is a sacred grove; a wild and holy presence.
Somewhere inside that grove lives a wild woman, in wordless conversation with the eternal forest.
Her mystery is mine, have I forgotten?
I must listen for her calling again and again. In this turn of the season, her wordless voice uncoils from half-frozen ground like a sacred spring welling up from the Underworld.
This ancient forest is within us; its ways strange, though we think we know them.
We think we know ourselves, also.
Thinking we know is the quickest way to lose the deepest mystery of our beings, which is unknowable.
Unknowable.
Do we not carry inside still the ancient lineage of the humans we once were, encoded deeply in our cells and ancestral memory? An unvoiceable mystery shared by every wild creature, embodied fully through fur, scales, feathers and skin.
Wordless; yet speaking the language of grace, power, movement and gesture.
Mortal; yet eternal as we reunite with the living ground of our being.
Nationless; belonging only to the earth.
Entranced by, and afraid of, the flame.
Called by dreams, moved by unfathomable intuitions.
Conversing with creation through every sense, every movement, every making.
Changing with the moon, blood coursing on tides of joy, sadness, wonder and desire.
Wandering the bottomlands, I stumble to earth, baptized by river mud.
I imagine coiling forth from the cave like the serpent; rising from this enigmatic soil, feeling fire snaking up my spine. Losing words, becoming again animal. Feeling the subtle energy of the earth this season, glowing like an ember that is waiting to burst into flame.
To our animal bodies, all is a sacred dance. Dance was our first art form, older and more powerful than words. Dance connects us to earth and cosmos, to soil and soul.
Through the dance, we seek out paths strange and other. We speak to the ancestors, to the spirit alive in everything, to the mystery that we cannot voice.
At times when I must hold back my longing, my anger, my sadness and even my voice — even then, I am still a wild dancer through this life.
Long may we dance the land’s awakening, and dance the earth’s dreaming.
Wanderers,
I wrote the above inspired by the artistic collaboration “Thousand Year Forest,” by Rachel Brice and Ilan Rivière. Long may they dance. I feel this wild and strange creation is alive, with its own spirit and agency. I see feral earth spirits rising from the forest floor in eternal mystery, the goddess and her consort — a fully embodied earth worship, both mortal and divine.
I also invoke Brigid, Celtic goddess of inspiration and fertility, linked with fire and serpents. Both Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint are associated with the pre-Christian festival of Imbolc — though the astronomical date of Imbolc falls this year on February 3 in the U.S., while St. Brigid’s Day is always celebrated on February 1. Imbolc predates Saint Brigid, and, like Samhain, feels more like a season rather than just one day.
Imbolc is an ember in darkness. Even in cold, snowy places, where the Earth yet lies frozen, we witness the unfolding daylight, the tentative birdsong, the pointed red buds on the basswood saplings.
Each dawn, we observe how the arc of the sun shifts, by slow degrees, to the northeast. The banked fire of midwinter glows; still dim, but waxing toward flame.
Beautiful, all of it. Thank you.
Beautiful writing, Carmine! I love the lyric essay at the start, I can see Brigid's fiery arrow of inspiration has unleashed a fire within you. The problem with humankind is that the more knowledge we acquire, the more destructive we become. You'd think it would work the other way around. Science cant stand mystery, doesn't believe that there are things that can and must be unknowable. Science thinks it can learn all the secrets and become master of all. How arrogant. And foolish. Thank you for your thoughts on Brigid and the serpent... definitely something to think on. 💕