When the Daughters, and Why?

From the 1994 newsletter, by Hawthorne

One of the Daughters of the Flame sent me an email today asking, "...when did you set up Daughters of the Flame? And what inspired you to do so?"

I wrote a brief reply and after doing so thought maybe others would be interested, as well.

So:

"I began working on it in 1992. I'd devoted myself to Brigit a few years before, and I thought it would be good to have the practice of tending her flame reintroduced. At that time it was not being tended anywhere, not even by the Brigidine nuns, and that felt sad to me.

I didn't have a lot of energy for organizing, but I thought this I could do. So I asked some women friends if they wanted to do it, and a man friend offered to make a computer program for scheduling worldwide, and we lit the flame for the first shift on Imbolc 1993.

I didn't know for several years that the Brigidine sisters relit the flame in Kildare on that day, as well. Very cool. Obviously the time was right."

Still is.

Blessings.

From the first Daughters of the Flame newlsetter: the astonishing news that by word of mouth we had grown from five to twenty flamekeepers between Imbolc and Bealtaine. Astonishing because I knew almost no one in The Community.  Remember, this was pre-internet, and I was not yet on email. Another world, it was...

Tending Her Flame

sketch by Daughter of the Flame
Hawthorne, in Australia

to our knowledge there are three groups actively tending Brigit's perpetual flame at present, after a hiatus of a few hundred years. the flame of the Goddess had burned for no one-knows-how-long in Cill Dara--Kildare, Ireland--the Cell of the Oak. as Christianity took root the Goddess was replaced by the Saint, Her flame tended instead by nuns, who kept it for hundreds of years.

in 1993, on the same day--Brigit's Feast of 1 February--a group of Catholic Brigidine nuns and a largely Pagan group of women, unaware of the others' activities, relit Her perpetual flame in Ireland and in Canada. the second group, the Daughters of the Flame, live in many areas of the globe and take turns tending the flame every 20 days. the Catholic sisters have groups in several countries besides Ireland, as well.

some years later, a member of the Daughters of the Flame created Ord Brighideach, a solely online group that would make shifts available to women and men and in great numbers.

if you know of other groups who tend Brigit's perpetual flame, we would love to hear of them. please leave a comment at the end of this posting.

the Brigidine sisters in Ireland don't have a website, but can be contacted at this address:

SolasBhríde,
14 Dara Park,
Kildare, Ireland

you may wish to join their lay group or come on Imbolc for the great festival of Brighid each February. their sisters in Australia can be found at:
http://www.brigidine.org.au/

the Daughters of the Flame can be found at:
http://www.obsidianmagazine.com/DaughtersoftheFlame/

and Ord Brighideach's site is:
http://www.ordbrighideach.org/