NEW YORK — On a chilly Saturday afternoon in February, a dozen people from all over New York City gathered in The Meadow, a creative arts studio under the Manhattan Bridge overpass in Brooklyn. The practitioners of Celtic spirituality sat around a wooden table littered with half-eaten cookies, teacups of wildflower tea and piles of long stalks of wheat.
They came together to celebrate the Irish holiday of Imbolc, based on the Celtic Wheel of the Year and the Druidic calendar. Julie Flynn, a woman known as the Keeper of The Meadow, provided each person at the table with a pile of damp wheat stalks, a couple inches of twine and a paper printout of a plaited pattern. For the men and women gathered at the studio, the creation of Saint Brigid’s cross connects them to an Irish tradition that’s been around for centuries.
Flynn soaked the stems in water for 30 minutes to soften them before the lesson and stood up at the front of the room to demonstrate the crisscross design. With one stem held vertically and the other horizontally, she folded the second stem over the first and turned the wheat 90 degrees counterclockwise. With each turn she added one more stem, over and over until a T-shaped cross with a diamond center began to form. As she weaved, she explained that the symbol of Ireland is usually fashioned out of rushes and hung above the front door of a home to ward off evil.
The sound of rustling wheat stocks filled the room as devotees began to build their emblems. A woman near the head of the table finished making her cross within minutes, and people at the table stopped to admire her handiwork. Eventually the other practitioners caught up and began tying the arms of their tokens with twine to hold their shape. Flynn then explained how Brigid’s cross is different in design from the Christian symbol because it is hung with the arms at an angle instead of parallel to one another.
Along with the lesson, Flynn played a video from Marisa Goudy, a local scholar of Irish mythology. “Imbolc is really associated with being the season of Brigid herself,” said Goudy. “It’s when the snowbells are beginning to emerge, and it feels as if spring is touching the island of Ireland again.”
Goudy appeared on Flynn’s computer screen, wearing a scarf around her neck patterned with Brigid’s cross. “You’ll hear many people refer to Brigid as goddess and saint in one breath because they really are indistinguishable in the modern imagination,” said Goudy. She sees Brigid as more of a goddess, one associated with witchcrafts, healing and poetry.
Imbolc honors a long arc of history in which Brigid was embraced by both pagan and Christian traditions. Some historians believe the ancient Celtic goddess was syncretized with Saint Brigid of the Christian faith. It isn’t known for certain whether Brigid and Saint Brigid are one in the same, but the overlap of Druid and Christian belief continues to this day.