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Pagan Christianity?
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drewbhoy
drewbhoy
2557 posts

Re: Bride/Brigit
Oct 27, 2009, 03:12
tjj wrote:
drewbhoy wrote:
Sounds like part of an old faith being adapted for a newer one. And as for St Bride her story does take some believing!


I’m guessing that Brigit and Bride are the same person and according to folklore Brigit ruled the Celtic feminine trilogy with her sisters governing the arts of healing and smithcraft. Brigit was older than Celtic Ireland, having come with Gaelic Celts from their original home in Galantia.
Much is written about her, this is interesting though; from The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends by Barbara Walker

“According to *Dr MacCulloch the number of Brigit’s priestesses at Kildare was 19, representing the 19-year cycle of the Celtic ‘Great Year’. Greeks said the sun god of the north, who they called Hyperborean Apollo, visited the norther ‘temple of the moon goddess’ once every 19 year, a mythic expression of the coincidence of the solar and lunar calendars. In reality the period of coincidence was 18.61 years, which meant the smallest regular unit to give a ‘mating’ of the sun and moon was 56 years, two cycles of 19 and one of 18. This astronomical data was well known to the builders of Stonehenge who marked the span of the Great Years with the posts around their circle”

*J A MacCulloch, Scottish author of The Religions of the Ancient Celts 1911

Hello TJJ and Branwen,

Once again I'll pinch from Before Scotland

"Christianity shaded into paganism in its earliest centuries and these old traditions have much to say about beliefs before the new faith.......Old deities were readily converted into saints. The fire goddess Brigantia became St Bride, Brigid or Bridget and she was given an apocrphal, but very Celtic, role in Christ's upbringing. She was his foster-mother. Her feast-day replaced the quarter day of Imbolc and a real St Brigid was said to have flourished in Ireland as an abbess in the 5th century. Perhaps she did."
Is it true that Columba met a community of Druids on Iona, whom he later expelled? Equally fascinating is that we now have the Iona community. Correct spelling for Iona being Iova.

Sorry for being a pain, but it's good to learn different stuff. The text book has been flung out......
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