Garran Deisceart

Grove Three of the South

Gooseberry

Heather ~ Ur

Crab Apple ~ Quert

Reed ~ Ngetal

Birch ~ Beh

Trees that celebrate Summer Solstice:

Macha's Shield

created by

Bean Morrig

Lough Gur, Aine's Sacred lake, Grange, Ireland

Banrion Banba preparing to dedicate her son, Tristan, to Aine, in thanksgiving for the fertility blessing received in 1994. On this day, Tristan was 18 months old, the year was 1996.

Bandia na Grian -- Sun Goddess

Direction: South -- Deisceart

Timeline: 20 June - 21 July

Primary Festival: An Fheile Eion - June 20 - 22

Secondary festivals: Lamas and Samhain

Lunar mysteries: Bo Finn [White Cow] ~ Full Moon

Within Garran Deisceart, our Beloved Community finds the Heather Tree which houses those that would tread the path of the Green Ways of Healing, be they herbalism, aromatherapy gardening or botany.

All members who have successfully journeyed down the path of the Bhaird via our Bhairdic College find companions in the Birch Tree.

Crab Apple is the sacred tree of our female Bhairds who take up the awesome task of Bansagart (Priestesshood). This is also the tree of our Fine Artists be they men or women.

The Bhairdic College administrators may be found within the Reed Tree. This is also the tree from where our member's only newsletter operates as well as Brigid's Press. Brigid's Press publishes our Liturgy Booklets and all manner of reading material that serves to educate our members as to the ways, past and present of our Faith.

Beanachtai!

Mari Fotla ni Banba

A Bansagart makes record of having been in that other country...

What did I carry away from that country of wide horizons? A sense of spacious skies, of great embattled clouds, of fiery sunsets and rose-red dawns; of moons that glowed like copper-full-orbed harvest moons, rising slowly; a memory of flooded meadows--of a more than usual flood when boats traversed the one crooked street in the little town--the sparkle of ice on long reaches of water; swift motion on skates; the sight of the Bog of Allen flowered knee-deep in heather and honey-loud with bees in August; or patched with silver lichen and emerald moss when the year declined; the Bog of Allen spiced with many scents, stretching away to where three hills showed blue and faint in the distance. So might a continent untrafficked-in show itself beyond untraveled waters; so might cloud shadow, purpling a wilderness entice and elude.

The Meaning of Bansagart

I am a priestess of Brigid

I am a priestess of Macha

I am a priestess of Aine

I am a priestess of Dana

I am a priestess of Morrigu

I am a priestess of Mabd

I am a priestess of Goddess

I am a priestess of Sidhe.

I am called to serve the Beloved Community

I am called to serve Clannad Banba

I am called to serve the Faery-Faith Tradition

I am called to serve the Sidhe.

Flowering Dusk

Ella Young

Presently AE came in. He had in his hands a drawing of an airship, a drawing in coloured chalk. He has seen the airship at Kilmashogue. We fell to talking of airships and of the sacred mountain of Kilmashogue.

"The folk of Dana have these ships," said AE. "I think they go about in them often, and we spy on them now and then."

Violet had seen airships. They were like this one that AE had drawn.

"You can see them at Newgrange, too," said Violet. "Over the mound of Angus a group of us saw three in broad daylight."

"They must have seen them in ancient Ireland, too," said I, "for, in the annals, it is recorded: 'This year, a wonder--three ships in the air over Tara.'"

How far back all these wonders reached in Ireland! One heard faery music on the sacred mountain: did not Finn, thousands of years ago, on a night of the nights, encounter a god from the sacred mountain of Sl;ieve Gullion who brought music with him and devastated Tara.

At Kilmashogue, an old and gracious Master, like a king out of the Golden Age, showed himself at times and instructed disciples. Kilmashogue could open: in a fire-body one could enter it to find a vast chamber and learn wisdom from the Master. AE had been in there many times. Violet had been there. A French poet that I knew had entered and had found an altar. And the Master had said, "This is the altar on which souls are fashioned."

Outside the sunshine took on the colours of evening.

"I think the folk of the gods come out at twilight," said AE. "Do you remember what Yeats said: 'There is one hour when everything is beautiful.'"

A hush fell on all of us till Violet began to recite in her beautiful chanting voice the poem that Yeats had made about Inisfree.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Talk had come to an end. The sky was changing from rose to amethyst. Shadows purpled the streets.

Kilmashogue would be darkening, retreating into its radiant heart.

I walked home, thinking of that mountain.

EVALUATION

I walked in the Land of the Ever-Living with my Ladye. We walked in a wood. It was a wood that had the naked loveliness of springtime, and yet the boughs were glad with blossoms. A wind moved with us, and where it touched the delicated grass under foot slender-stemmed hyacinths sprang up. There was music everywhere and changing colour and motion. The trees changed shape and stood a tiptoe for very lightness of heart.I have said that we walked in the wood: equally the wood walked in us. It moved with us, the trees blossomed in us. The music, the wind, the flowers in the grass patterned our mood; and we patterned the trees: growing tall with their tallness, reaching out joyously with their branches. The music that surged and sounded everywhere was like the heart-beat of our blood.

It would seem as I tell this, that I was thinking more of the wood than of my Ladye, but I was thinking more of my Ladye: for walking beside her again I was whole. I had no wish unfulfilled... I was her Bansagart.

Step Softly

I know a good Irish faery story. One early morning in Ireland my mother called me to the door: I was a young lass at the time.

"Step softly," she said, "and I will show you something."

We came out on a grassy field that was beaded with the dew, and there by the side of a thorn tree were footprints, too small to belong to the smallest child: they began for no reason, and went nowhere--just footprints, with the stretch of the field undisturbed and silvery before and behind them. I never forgot that morning.

"It is a lucky thing," said my mother, "to see the faery footprints.

Bansagart Training