Womb of Light
Winter Solstice at Newgrange. Imbas Dispatch #13
A Chairde, Friends,
The other week, my nine-year-old son came home from school with homework he had to do on Newgrange. Part of it was a quiz where he had to answer questions like, ‘Where is Newgrange located?’ In the Valley of the River Boyne in Co. Meath. ‘What is Newgrange?’ An ancient passage tomb complex and UNESCO World Heritage Site. ‘When was Newgrange built?’ Around 3,200 BCE in the Neolithic Age. ‘What’s special about Newgrange?’ It is aligned to the rising sun on the winter solstice so that its 19-metre passageway and cruciform (cross-shaped) chamber floods with sunlight.
If you were to ask an Irish person to name the most famous heritage site on this island, Newgrange would likely fall out of their mouth. It is in a sense, the monument of all monuments, like Stonehenge in England or the Pyramids of Giza, both of which are often named in the same sentence with Newgrange to emphasise its age, as Newgrange is older.
Sacred Circle
When you look at Newgrange from outside on the land, you see a mandala in the sense of a ‘sacred circle’. Its mound rises up from the green flesh it is embedded in. A round green belly is decorated with 97 kerbstones, many of which display exquisite carvings connecting earth with cosmos. Above these stones is a ring of white quartz that glistens in solar and lunar light. At the peak is an earthen swell, a pregnant womb adorned for birth.
Newgrange and its sister temples, Knowth (Cnoc BuÃ, ‘Hill of the Goddess BuÃ’) and Dowth (Dubad meaning ‘growing dark’ or ‘blackening’) are known as Brú na Bóinne, ‘Womb of the White Cow’ in Irish. Brú is most commonly translated as ‘mansion’ but in Old Irish, it also means ‘womb’ or ‘belly’. As my dear friend, Aoife Lowden, shared with me, brù in Scottish Gaelic also means womb or belly. Bóinne, then, is of the ‘White Cow’, the goddess Bóinn, known in English as the River Boyne whose banks hold Newgrange.
Newgrange itself is known as Sà an Bhrú (or Sid in Broga). Sà is an Irish word that describes both the gods themselves—and the fairies—and their dwelling place, because the divine, nature and place cannot be separated in Irish mythos. Again, we have brú here meaning womb, so in a sense Newgrange is a womby abode to the divine.
Dreamtime
The divine lives in Newgrange in the form of Óengus Óg (‘Young Aengus’), the god of love of the Tuatha Dé Danann, son of Bóinn and the Dagda. In this time of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, the deepest dreaming time, we remember Óengus as a god who dreams. Night after night, he has an aisling, a ‘dream-vision’ where a woman appears to him playing a timpán (a type of lyre), but vanishes in the morning when the waking world rises. Óengus is so overcome with desire and grief that he gets a wasting sickness (serglige) and descends into a dark night of the soul.
After a long shift in the void, and with the help of his loved ones and guides, Óengus learns who the mystical woman is. Her name is Caer Ibormeith, meaning ‘of the yewberry’, the yew tree being a symbol of death, rebirth and eternity. She is a shapeshifter; each year at Samhain she metamorphoses, spending every alternate year as a woman or a swan. Óengus goes to the Lake of the Dragon’s Mouth where Caer accepts him if he consents that she can always return to the water. Óengus then transforms into a swan and the lovers circle the lake for three days and three nights.
Return of the Soul
In a Full Moon Fairytale CéilÃ, a few months back in my membership, we explored this myth as a story of the soul, where Caer is Óengus’s soul. Caer comes to Óengus in a dream and ‘naturally, dreams are the messengers par excellence from the unconscious’; they open the channel to dialogue with our soul.1 This glimpse of his soul causes a necessary disintegration in Óengus of his old ways (an alchemical nigredo) so that a new consciousness can emerge, one that is soul-led. Óengus has to transform, and he does, while also recognising, as Caer insists, that the soul must always be able to move between this world and the waters of the unconscious.
After their three nights on the lake, the pair fly to Newgrange. The music induced by their wings is so mesmerising that everyone beneath their flight path fall into a spellbound sleep. It is at Newgrange that the union with the soul, of Óengus with Caer, is anchored and eternally embodied.
And so as winter solstice is now upon us, let Newgrange be a monumental reminder that whenever the longest night of the year comes for us (at any time of year), we can find solace in nature’s truth that light will return, life will come back to us, and we will once more shine in the womb of soul.
Journal Prompt
With your journal and pen ready to respond, close down your eyes or take a soft gaze. As you turn inwards, travel for a moment into the darkness behind your eyelids, into the dreamtime, the place of all possibilities. Breathe here for three deep spiralling breaths. Then ask yourself:
Soul - what do I yearn for in my life this solstice? What will be the bringer of my light?
Then when you are ready, journal in response.
Wishing you the brightest of blessings this winter solstice. If you’ve made it to the end of this imbas dispatch, thank you for being here, from my soul to yours.
Croà isteach,
Jen x
Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination As Developed by C.G. Jung by Barbara Hannah