From Brigit with Love

Tomorrow night I will be attending the C.O.G. ritual celebrating the yearly return of fire, Imbolc. The goddess sacred to this ritual is Bhride, also known as Brigit. The days have become noticeably longer, and I'm happy to see the light returning. It's still solidly winter white here in Minnesota, which leaves me wishing and hoping for Spring more and more.

So I went online and downloaded some ideas for garden design, and I stumbled across this most glorious thing on my journey: a design of four seasonal gardens for Brigit's Garden on the theme of the Celtic festivals.

Imbolc (pronounced Im-ulk) is the old Celtic name for the spring festival on 1st February, now St. Brigit's Day. The birth of lambs and the first snowdrops herald this season of new life. In the Imbolc garden the path leads through hay meadow and orchard trees to a children's glade with its delightful basketwork swings. Further on, a carved triple spiral symbolises Brigit, who is often represented as three sisters or as the three patrons of poetry, smithcraft and midwifery.

Such is the nature of the imagination that I can take myself there, walk through the gardens and dream of creating my own sacred spaces on this old plot of land here in Minnesota. So tonight I will pick up my Stav and seek guidance from the Old Ones on how best to plan my garden. Such is the imagination of Nature herself that I should be given the dream. I will plan my garden to heal, to dance, to sing, to laugh, to play and make merry in.

There have been many challenges in my life lately, not the least of which is the looming "job transition" which is a nice way of saying lay off. It's to happen sometime in May, they are saying now. It could change, but whether it does or doesn't makes no difference to me. I will have a plan in hand to dig, shape, plant and create my own gardens to honor the Sacred Earth in my life. And I just may have some extra time to work on it as well.

So much thanks to Bhride for the inspiration and aid toward crafting visual poetry and stoking the fire of my imagination, so that I may bring into being a sacred space and pass that gift on.

I go to Stav Huathe, the Hawthorne Tree.

State of the Arts January 2010

It has been a long while since I really talked about art here on the blog. Mainly because I haven't been doing much of it. But now that the new website is in the works, AlfheimDesign.com, I think I should say a few words about where I'm coming from, and where I'm going artistically. After ten years of painting in oils, and redesigning my website year after year, I decided it's time to close the book on that phase of my life. Out with the old, and in with the new. The number 10 represents completion of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one. So here I am working in a totally new media, with a totally new website.

The old way was not suiting me any more. The dirty truth of the Fantasy Art business, and how impossible it was for me as an Empath and a Healer to continue in the field. My life's work is not in fantasy, but in truth, in the visions I have when I go deep into meditation. The visions I have when I pick up the Stav and start banging it with a stick. Here in Minnesota it's easy to see the lands of my ancestors in Norway and Finland, and they are beginning to find expression in my art. Not the art of romantic oil paintings, but the direct art of ink scratched away to find the pure white clay beneath, then brought to life with watercolors until they glow.

And while beyond here there may very well be dragons, they are not fantasies but true spirits of determination, vigor, and power come to show you the mirror of your soul. My life's work is yet to be done, and over the course of the year I will begin retiring my old images from my print shop.

I confess...I watch AI so this is hillarious

I must confess that I do like to watch American Idol...when they're doing the tryouts especially. Seeing all those people sing badly and the few who sing well is incredibly entertaining to me. This past week the Pants on the Ground song was broadcast. And now "Neil Young" has done a cover:

Uh oh...where did it go? Oh well, just search on YouTube and you will find it.

It was Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young and pretty funny stuff let me tell you!

[edited April 25,2011]