“Three fires.”
01
The forge
02
The poem
03
The well
Brigid keeps a fire. She is smith, healer, poet: three crafts that all require heat under control. Wells are hers; Imbolc is hers, the first stirring under winter. In Christian Ireland she becomes a saint without quite extinguishing the older blaze. People still leave cloth out overnight for her blessing.
Some meet a muse who visits. Others meet a craft that stays: tend the fire, tend the well, say the true word, make the useful thing. The cloth on the step can hold both.
Inspect
INTERPRETATION
Brigid arrives when your life wants to be one thing and is in fact three. The forge, the lyric, and the healing are not a confusion. They are a triple office. Burnout is what happens when you tend only one and call the others hobbies.
The shadow
Two fires called hobbies. Heat without a well, lyric without a forge.
Four lookings
Campbell
What is in the forge, what is in the poem, and what is in the well, and which did you abandon?
von Franz
Where do you need heat under control rather than more heat?
Hillman
What small seasonal stirring are you dismissing because it is not yet spring?
Coelho
What cloth would you leave out overnight, as a looking, not a superstition?