Sunday 14 August 2016

Bridget's Shrine, Faughart

Today I watched ancient pagan rituals being performed at St. Bridget's Shrine in Faughart near Dundalk, only nowadays, and for the past 1500 years, these rituals have been Christianised with the reciting of Hail Mary's etc. I wonder how long this has been a place of healing and how old these rituals really are?

St. Bridget's healing waters

Lying out on the eye stone

This pilgrim performed a whole series of rituals while here, the whole time reciting Our Father's, Hail Mary's and Glorias.

Wishing well

The knee stone, where you kneel for cures

While at the waist stone, I saw a pregnant girl being told by her father to wrap her legs around the stone. "It's for pregnant women". 
"How do you know?" she asked. 
"Because people have been doing it for hundreds of years!" 
She also splashed the healing water on her belly, and the whole family, including the babies, had their faces and hair wetted by the healing waters.

The waist stone

The head stone, another curing stone

Reciting prayers with one foot planted on the hoof stone

Shrine to St. Bridget


2 comments:

David said...

I visited the Chalise Wells healing garden in Glastonbury a few years ago. I stood behind a woman meditating and I felt a disturbing and very powerful force manifesting and moving in my direction. Of course this well and waters are also rumoured to have been the sight of Druid sacrifice. Either way this has left a negative impression on me reguarding healing sites. After all where does all the negative energy goes after a person is " healed " ?

Aurvandil said...

There is no negative energy, there's just energy, and how it affects you will be down to you. Energy can be passed back into the earth to be transformed. What you were experiencing was most likely the manifestation of your own fears.