A Brigit of Ireland Devotional – review
Sun Among Stars – Mael Brigde’s devotional to Brigit is a remarkable and fascinating book. It explores Brigit the Goddess, Brigid the Saint, the folklore, modern practice and the author’s personal journey. If you have any interest in Brigit, this will be an excellent read.
My knowledge of Brigit (Bride, Bridget, and many other variants) is fairly superficial. I’m probably typical for a Druid who is not a devotee. I found the material here entirely accessible even when the poetic content was dealing with traditions and stories I wasn’t familiar with. My guess is that for the reader who is more involved with Brigit, this book will have even more to offer.
Brigit is a complicated figure(s) and this book really digs into the issues. As a Celtic Goddess and a Catholic Saint, Brigit is and has been honoured by many different people, but is it fair to think of her as one entity? Mael Brigde explores the many different Brigits and shares her personal experience of being a devotee, and how that’s evolved over time. This is handled through a selection of essays and poems, supported by a wealth of notes and references. It is always clear what has come from one of the various traditions, and what has come purely from the author.
What I loved most about this book was the room it has for complexity and multiplicity. There isn’t a single coherent Brigit tradition to tap into – although it looks like modern Paganism is closer to achieving that than any other take on Brigit. There are Goddess stories, and multiple Saint stories, and maybe in there somewhere, the history of an actual woman. There’s a vast amount of speculation as well. As someone without deep knowledge, I found this exploration really useful.
If you are already well informed about Brigit, historical and modern, then it will be the personal and devotional content that is likely to be of most use to you. This is an unusual book in that it offers considerable richness for the novice and the more experienced reader alike. It is a good read for anyone who is casually interested – it certainly doesn’t require you to be devoted to Brigit or on an Irish polytheist path. You could read it simply because you’re interested in the traditions and enjoy poetry – that was mostly it for me and I’ve found it to be a thoroughly rewarding process.
More about the book here – https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/brigit-ireland-devotional
