Getting back to my recent visit to Kildare town, there is a rather interesting structure which is located on the north side of St. Brigid’s Cathedral grounds. This is the site of the ancient Fire Temple associated with the Gaelic Goddess Brigid. In Irish Lore, Brigid was the daughter of Dagda, a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann and a deity in her own right. Brigid has long been associated with Kildare going back as far as the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland, circa 1897 B.C. Being seen as a Triple Goddess, Brigid encompassed the three aspects of Fire, Healing and Poetry. And it was on this very spot were the Priestesses or female Druids were said to keep Brigid’s sacred flame alight. With the arrival of Christianity in Kildare, the goddess Brigid’s influence was so strong that it could not be ignored or suppressed and so much of her rituals and influence were incorporated into the new religion.
When St. Brigid arrived in Kildare to found her monastery around 470AD, she two continued the ancient tradition and kept the flame of the Goddess alive. The infamous Welsh chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis whom had visited Kildare once described the Fire Temple as being ‘’ surrounded by a hedge, made of stakes and brushwood, and forming a circle, within which no male can enter; and if anyone should presume to enter, which has been sometimes attempted by rash men, he will not escape the divine vengeance’’. Sadly the flame which had been kept alive for centuries was finally extinguished in the 16th century after the suppression of the monasteries by King Henry VIII of England. The flame stayed extinguished for over four centuries, until 1993 when the flame was relit by the Brigidine sisters. Since then, the Brigidine Sisters in Kildare have tended the flame in their Centre, Solas Bhride. A small fire is often lit in the fire temple for ritual on St. Brigid’s feastday on the 1st February.