Happy Imbolc or happy Lughnassadh! I hope you’ve had a wonderful Turning of the Wheel. This post was inspired by the Sabbats, specifically how their stars, Brigid and Lugh, ignore me.
I have been celebrating Brigid and paying my respects to her for about 15 years. Whenever Imbolc rolled around, I set up an altar for her and attended rituals in her honour. She is my coven’s patron goddess, so I had a small shrine to her when I lived in Miami. Last year, I became one of Brigid’s Flametenders at the Mt Shasta Goddess Temple. My old statue didn’t make it across the pond, so I made a little felt doll of Brigid and recently bought a wooden figure of the goddess. On the fourth of the month, I light the candle, make an offering, and speak from the heart. I get almost nothing from Brigid. It’s not that Brigid ignores me entirely. I feel her presence sometimes, but enough to know that she appears pleased and accepts my offerings.
All of the Celtic deities ignore me, and most of the Germanic ones. It’s okay; the indifference is mutual. I have an intellectual curiosity but never felt a spiritual calling towards Celtic or Germanic gods.
As a university student, I took a course on Arthurian literature. Like many Pagans, I’d seen Excalibur, was captivated by the Lady of the Lake and the enchantress Morgan le Fay, and I had an Arthurian tarot. I enjoyed the deeper explorations in the class; I still have some of the books we read, with their broken spines and yellowed pages. Years later, as a student of Georgian Wicca, I had to study a body of mythology I wasn’t familiar with and chose Welsh. I read the Mabinogion and some collections of myths. None of it sparked any religious interest in the goddesses and gods of Britain.
It’s hard to explain why. My European ancestry is mainly from Spain but includes France, Basque, and Portugal. It could be that any ancestral connection to Celtic and Germanic peoples is too distant or disrupted. As a Wiccan, there’s a cultural heritage, but it’s not strong. It could also be because I already have goddesses and gods that fulfil the same roles. For example, returning to Brigid, my tutelary god, Ogun, is a blacksmith. Yemaya provides the healing waters I cleanse in, and Athena inspires me a lot. But it doesn’t really matter why.
There are trends in contemporary Paganism and Witchcraft. You can’t do this; you must do that. Hecate is the Queen Dark Mother-Sometimes-Crone Cosmic World Saviour To Rule Them All (it was the Morrigan a few years ago). Loki is really cute and looks just like Tom Hiddleston. You must know your tutelary deity, and you can find out through a reading available for purchase on Etsy. Insert something about TikTok here. I know FOMO is real, but you don’t need to force a connection to a particular deity to satisfy your religiosity (or your psychological needs), no matter how popular they are. It’s not going to work anyway. Just take your time, explore, follow the winding path that calls you, and see where it leads.
