O Goddess Brighid, Keeper of the Sacred Flame, Guardian of the Holy Well. Mother of Song and of Poetry, of the Wise and the Gifted, I ask for your blessings on this my ceremony. I ask for your blessings on this seeker of the ways of magic and of Druidcraft. May I be blessed by the power of the earth beneath me, the sea around me, and the sky above

‘You need to nurse the dream, so don’t try to give birth to it too fast. Dreams need nurturing with rumination, with daydreaming around them. They even need ignoring for a while, so they can grow and incubate in darkness.

Don’t keep digging the seed up to see how it’s doing. Focus on something else while feeling happy and confident that the seed is germinating – drink in art and music, poetry and song. Walk in the woods, talk with friends, enjoy being alive.

I am the Fertility of the Furrow, into which you drop the seed of life at planting time. I am co-creator with the Goddesses and Gods, bringing forth life from my great and holy bosom. Boann and Bile fill my loins with teeming seed and fertile egg. and the plough carves my image in the sacred form of the Mother. Receive I the seed, bear I the life.

because if you want to engage in the kind of practical magic that I will teach you later, you will need to know how to work with the energies of sun, moon and Earth – not against them.’

By giving birth to us, our parents ensure that we will die.

Suddenly Elidir turns around, and shouts, ‘Look!’ She moves to one side to reveal a skeleton whose bones are half buried in the sand. ‘Many people are frightened by seeing skeletons. They worry that that is all we finally are; that death really is the end, and there is no great meaning in life at all.’

The Colloquy of the Two Sages.

The festival of Imbolc on the 1st of February, which had always been sacred to the Goddess Brighid, was now Saint Brighid’s Day.