"Mother of our mothers,
Foremothers strong,
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how to kindle the hearth."
____ Caitlin Matthews
"A Blessing for the Hearth Keeper"
The hearth is a special shrine that is still ceremonially tended in some Gaelic households. Before retiring, the woman of the house 'smoors' the fire - that is, covers any fresh fuel with ashes so that the fire is banked in and slowly burning. In the morning, the fire can then be easily woken without recourse to fresh kindling. Three blocks of peat (turf) are then placed in the grate, their ends touching so that they radiate out in the customary three-legged triskele symbol, and a prayer is made over the fire, normally invoking Brigid as saint or goddess, since she is the protectress of the hearth. Among traditional peoples, the tending of the hearth is one of the chief duties that fall to women,who also tend to be the repositories of practical spiritual traditions. These two tasks seem to be interlinked: keeping the hearth and maintaining spiritual practice are daily, habitual tasks that cannot be avoided without loss of integrity to the whole household. Today, we may no longer kindle the hearth, but this does not exempt us from kindling our spirit. Many people now incorporate small domestic rituals into their daily life: lighting a candle upon their hearth-shrine, acknowledging their guiding spirits and allies with flowers and offerings, spending time in meditation in a quiet room, making an earth-shrine in their gardens and window boxes. As each home becomes again the focus of dedicated spiritual practice, the hearth-light is rekindled and we remember our own part in the reverence of Spirit as ancestral hands guide our unremembering ones.
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews"]
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