About the Hearth
The Hearth of Brighid is a small, open community of witches, Wiccans and pagans, rooted in the northeastern United States, among the stone walls and maple woods of New England and the river valleys to their south, and gathered from much further afield, who keep the Wheel of the Year together, tend a perpetual flame for the goddess Brighid, and try to be the sort of people our tradition says we should be.
How it began
With four people and a kitchen table. Three of us had been solitary witches for years and had met, as witches do, by recognising each other's jewellery at a bus stop. The fourth was a lapsed Catholic from County Kildare who had never stopped lighting a candle for Brigid on the first of February and was not sure what that made her. We started meeting at the full moon. We started keeping the Sabbats. Other people heard, and came, and stayed. At Imbolc one year we took a flamekeeping shift each and realised we had nineteen; at the next Imbolc we wrote the covenant and the first Hearthkeepers made their dedication. The kitchen table is still in use. It has a scorch mark.
The website came later, when we realised that most of the people who found us had spent years alone with books and the internet first, and that the least we could do was make the internet part a little warmer.
What we are
- An open hearth: public Sabbats and Esbats that anyone may attend, a study circle, a flamekeeping cell, and a core of Hearthkeepers who carry the work. See Community.
- Rooted in Wicca, with the circle, the quarters, the Goddess and God, the Rede and the wheel; and warmed by Irish and British folk tradition, with Brighid's fire, the rush cross, the dumb supper and the wassail.
- Practitioners. Everything on this site is written by people who do it. We are not scholars, though we read them gratefully, and we try to say so when we are guessing.
- Celebrants. We think witchcraft, Wicca and paganism are good, beautiful and worth rejoicing in, and this website is a celebration before it is anything else.
What we are not
- Not a coven, though one has formed within the Hearth and keeps its own counsel.
- Not a church, a charity or a business. We have no legal form, no building, no payroll and no products. Our costs are met by the Hearthkeepers and a hat.
- Not a lineage. Nobody here will initiate you into anything. We can introduce you to people who can, if that is your path.
- Not the authority on anything. We say what we do and why. Other witches do otherwise and are just as right.
What we value
Harm none. Hospitality. Honesty about history and about what we do not know. The land under our feet and the people who were there before us. The old Craft virtue of keeping silence about what is not ours to tell, and the newer one of speaking up when someone is being hurt. Making things with our hands. Poetry. Bread. Showing up. All of this is written down in the Hearth Covenant, which is the nearest thing we have to a creed and is really a list of promises.
Who is welcome
Everyone who can keep the covenant. In practice that has meant witches of every tradition and none, Druids, Heathens, a Hellenic polytheist, Christians who honour Brigid, a Buddhist who likes the singing, people who are not sure what they are, and a good many who came for one Samhain and never quite left. Our circles are open to people of every gender, sexuality, race, body and ability, and we do not just mean that we will not turn you away; we mean we are glad you came. If anyone at the Hearth makes you feel otherwise, they have broken our covenant, and we want to know.
The people
There are, at the time of writing, eleven Hearthkeepers, nineteen flamekeepers, forty or so friends on the gathering list, and a number of visitors we cannot count because we do not count them. Most of us use Craft names in circle and some of us are not public about our path for reasons of work or family, so you will not find a page of photographs and biographies here. Come to a gathering and we will introduce ourselves properly. Or write, and one of us will write back.
The name
Brighid, Brigid, Bríd, Bride, Brigantia. We have used the spelling with the gh because it is the one the first of us learned and because it looks like a fire. Our page about her says the rest.