Photo by Lucas K on Unsplash

Imbolc, Goddess and Saint

On February 1st in the northern hemisphere the Celtic cycle of the year turns to Imbolc and honors the Goddess/Saint Brigit. Instead of the groundhog a snake shows up to prophesy the next few weeks of weather. The shrine of the Goddess and the monastery of the Saint were and are in Cill Dara (Kildare), Ireland. A perpetual flame burned there for centuries, was put out by King Henry VIII as his thugs stripped the monasteries of their wealth for his use, and was restored in 1993 by Mary Teresa Cullen, the leader of the local Brigidine Sisters at the opening of a peace and justice conference. (To know more visit: https://solasbhride.ie/the-perpetual-flame/) A statue of Brigid holding a torch is in the Kildare town square. My previous blogs on Imbolc are linked at the end.

Brigid is also the patron of blacksmiths who transform metal with fire, and poets who transform thoughts and feelings with words. She is described with the golden, radiant imagery of the sun and holy light. Under her golden energy, her radiant energy, people are protected and prosper.

Gold is a symbol for radiant energy, and a metal that people around the world for centuries and currently count of great worth. I’ve been thinking about the ancient story of King Midas, how he is given a Golden Touch, and what happens because of it.

King Midas and the Golden Touch

I asked my research assistant ClaudeAI for a summary of the story and its history (with references):

The fullest ancient account of the Midas myth comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book XI, 1st century CE). In this version, the satyr Silenus, tutor of Dionysus, was found drunk in the Phrygian countryside and brought to Midas. The king recognized him and entertained him for ten days and nights. When Midas returned Silenus to Dionysus, the god offered to fulfill one wish. Midas requested that anything he touched would turn to gold. When he discovered the peril of his wish, he begged Dionysus to reverse the spell. The god told him to plunge his hands into the river Pactolus.

The first known written mention of the golden touch appears in Aristotle’s Politics (4th century BCE), where he used it to show the dangers of endless desire. Herodotus, Plutarch, Hyginus, and other ancient writers also recorded versions of the Midas story.

Nathanial Hawthorne and Marygold

For my M.A. oral exams on my thesis “Free Will in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (a long time ago) I was required to be prepared to answer questions on an American author as well. I chose Nathanial Hawthorne. It is Hawthorne who adds the daughter to the Midas story in “A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys” (1852).

In Hawthorne’s retelling, Midas’s daughter Marygold comes to him upset because the roses she loves are hard and have lost their fragrance. He reaches out to comfort her, and she turns to gold as well. Here is the moment of her transformation from “The Golden Touch” in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852):

“He felt that his little daughter’s love was worth a thousand times more than he had gained by the Golden Touch. ‘My precious, precious Marygold!’ cried he. But Marygold made no answer.

Alas, what had he done? How fatal was the gift which the stranger bestowed! …. Her soft and tender little form grew hard and inflexible within her father’s encircling arms. Oh, terrible misfortune! The victim of his insatiable desire for wealth, little Marygold was a human child no longer, but a golden statue!

Hawthorne’s King Midas heals when he plunges his hands in the River Pactolus and Hawthorne has him bring back water to sprinkle on his daughter to restore her human form. Adding Marygold deepens the moral lesson.

The river Pactolus is in Türkiye and so interested me as I was recently there. I posted information about it from ClaudeAI at the end of the blog.

Good Kings – Bad Kings

When I facilitate a new group of leaders, I often give them a few minutes to write or remember single words they would use to describe a Good King and a Good Queen. Later I will repeat the exercise for bad Kings and Queens. Take a moment and think of your words if you want to experience this for yourself.

Then we’d go around the group one word from each person, and I’d write all the words randomly on a board (listing them suggested ranking). After each person said a word, I’d ask if other people also had that word and write down the number who did, which was often most of the group.

The words would have little variation whether working with power plant supervisors or executives or programmer project leads or parks & recreation crew bosses. When this happens, you know you are working with archetypes, embedded within each individual whether they are aware of them or not. If candidates for election promise the fruitfulness of a Good King or Queen, people are likely to vote for them.

Photo by Lola Wilcox

The Grimms Brothers story #136, Iron John is the story Robert Bly explores in this book. I explored this story with Robert and about 20 other people in a weekend workshop in the early 1980s in Boulder, Colorado. In the story the Wild Man has been caged by a king, and the prince steals the key from under his mother’s pillow and leaves the castle of his parents to go with the Wild Man to his forest. The Wild Man tells him “I have enough treasures and gold, more than anyone in the world.” He gives the prince the task to guard a clear pool in which swim a golden fish and a golden snake. When the prince’s hair touches the water it turns to gold. Later he serves as kitchen and garden help in the castle of another king whose daughter knows gold when she sees it. He knows to bring her wildflowers, and by the end of the story we know the kind of good king he will be.

Robert Bly in Iron John offers three realms of kings:

The Sacred King

“There is a King in the imaginative or invisible world.” It is this king that is described by so many in the leadership training sessions. I hope you reflected on words to describe the Good King and the Bad King. Our inner wisdom of their archetypes is not confused.

Bly describes the Sacred King:

1. “When the King is present, there is a sacred space free of chaos. The King does not create order; more simply, where he is there is order.”
2. “The Sacred King blesses.”
3.  “…. He encourages creativity in his realm.”

The Earthly King

Bly says “The political king merges the heavenly sun power and earthly authority.” Nathanial Hawthorne adds the daughter to earthly King Midas, deepening the moral lesson. An earthly king focused on gold hardens everything he touches. When King Midas brings the healing water to his daughter he transforms into a life-giving king.

Around 1776 North American English colonists began a long process of refusing to serve an earthly king who wanted their wealth for himself. Most of the colonists rebelled, and eventually, after much disagreement and determination created a new idea: a way to govern without a king. “We the people…” Other young countries used their work as templates for their own governing documents. Now current events around the world threaten that experiment. Many people are depressed and seeking ways to manage anxiety.

In Iron John, in the chapter named “The Meeting with the God-Woman in the Garden,” Robert Bly says of depression:

We could say that in the walled garden, as in the alchemical vessel, new metals get formed as the old ones melt. The lead of depression melts and becomes grief.”

When a transformation is necessary part of the process is to grieve for the life being lost or left behind. Grieve, lament, and movement becomes possible.

I began the blogs on this website during Covid times, and wrote three blogs on how to grieve, to offer lamentations. I just reread them and offer them again. You can find them on LolaWilcox.com by selecting the magnifying glass in the menu and writing the word Lamentations. I’ve also listed titles and links at the end of this blog.

The Inner King

Bly says “The inner king is the one in us who knows what we want to do for the rest of our lives, or the rest of the month, or the rest of the day. He can make clear what we want without being contaminated in his choice by the opinions of others around us. The inner king is connected with our fire of purpose and passion.”

Bly offers this idea, which leads to the question of who carries the King for the young men today.

Leaders, then, need to be strong enough so that the young men can let them carry their inner king for awhile, and then live long enough so that the young men can take it back, still undamaged, and let the King live inside them.

We thrive when the man carrying the King is a King Arthur in service to the Grail, and whose knights of the Round Table protect those in distress. May all young princes and princesses choose carefully who will carry their inner king and queen for a time, and may their chosen one be worthy of that gift and give it back when they are mature enough to carry it themselves.

The story of King Midas is about an Earthly King focused on accumulating great wealth for his use. He is insatiable until the moment when he turns his daughter to gold. His love for her redeems him. In another story his Inner King might admire her more as a gold statue and he continues to feed his insatiable hunger, turning everything into gold for him. Nancy King, author and collector of World Tales, knows a version where everything Midas turns to gold includes his food and water and he starves to death. I think that version describes greed as an addiction.

ClaudeAI on the original story before Hawthorne:

Greed and Transformation: In the King Midas myth, gold represents more than material wealth—it embodies the insatiable nature of human greed. The myth serves as a reflection of cultural obsession with gold and provides insight into the attitudes of ancient civilizations toward wealth and its consequences.

True Gold

Gold: Please take the next moment and explore what words, images and feelings the word “Gold” calls up for you. When I asked my husband what he thought of when I said the word “gold” he said “I think the papaya fruit is a gold gift.”

The word Gold also has archetypal connections, and they are multilayered. Let’s explore three layers: physical, symbolic and spiritual gold.

Physical gold

Have you ever held a piece of gold in any form in your hand? Panned for it in a Colorado or California river? Invested in shares in a gold mine? Seen images of gold bathroom handles in a wealthy-beyond-belief mansion? Been warned not to wear gold jewelry in unknown environments? Consider it interesting that other countries are buying masses of it?

Symbolic/Metaphorical Gold

Have you ever worn or known a person who wore a gold wedding ring? What does winning the “gold” mean at the Olympics? Did you get a gold star at school if your answers were perfect? Do you know that medieval alchemists believed that transforming base metals into gold was a metaphor for spiritual transformation? Do you associate gold’s radiance to the sun, saying things like “in the sun her hair shines like gold.”

Spiritual Gold

Did you learn about solar deities like Apollo (Greek)? Do you know that gold doesn’t rust or decay? Do you know Egyptian pharaohs were wrapped in gold to keep them from decay? Do you associate the sun with being lifegiving? With divinity? With immortality?

From ClaudeAI:

Divine Connection & Immortality: In ancient Egypt, gold was considered the flesh of the gods, and pharaohs were buried in gold to ensure eternal life. Its resistance to corrosion led many cultures to associate it with immortality and divine perfection.

In Hindu mythology, gold represents immortality and truth. The sacred Mount Meru was believed to be made of gold, symbolizing spiritual illumination and divine knowledge.

Eternity and Permanence: Gold doesn’t change, rust, or tarnish—it keeps its shine even after centuries. This consistency made gold a symbol of permanence throughout the ages and was seen as proof of its divine nature.

Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash

Radiant Flame

At Imbolc the growing radiance of the spring sun in the northern hemisphere is a radiant flame warming the earth, kindling growth. In The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum the rune Sowelu stands for life force from the sun’s energy and wholeness. There is no reversed position for its jagged lighting backward “Z.”  On page 110 Blum offers a prayer and visualization about becoming a radiant flame:

There is a prayer known as the Gayatri that embodies the spirit of Sowelu. Address the sun in this fashion:

You, who are the source of all power,

Whose rays illuminate the whole world,

Illuminate also my heart

So that it too can do your work.

While reciting the Gayatri, visualize the sun’s rays streaming forth into the world, entering your own heart, and then streaming out from your heart center. This is a powerful and life-enhancing prayer.  

For centuries 19 priestesses tended a perpetual flame at Cil Dara. Since 1993 when the flame was re-lit in Kildare, the Brigidine Sisters at their center, Solas Bhride, keep the tradition as a symbol of hope, justice, and peace. Around the world there are circles of nineteen Flamekeepers, some both women and men, rotating through the cycle with each person tending the flame in their home or spiritual center for 24 hours. On the twentieth day the nineteenth person in the cycle says “Brigid, guard your fire,” and she takes a turn. A note from the AI: “it is thought to represent the 19-year Metonic lunar cycle, an important astronomical period in Celtic tradition where the phases of the moon realign with the solar year on the same dates.” 

I like the idea that the Radiant Flame itself helps us tend it. If no one lights a candle the flame still burns, waiting for companions to rediscover it.

We tend the Radiant Flame each time we choose

to honor our earth’s cycle around the sun,

to use our gold in service to all life,

to live in the light.

Fire consumes what it burns, and to burn as a Radiant Flame consumes something in us. It may be the old life passing away, a relationship no longer possible, an addiction, our depression…. Then we remember, as Martín Prechtel teaches, “Grief and Joy live in the same house.” 

 Kindling our souls in the Radiant Flame

We become a source of light and hope,

Offering warmth in a time of coldness,

Giving the golden gift of love.