The Story of Ringing Anvil
Awaken Imagination, Inspire Vision, Create Transformation

What is the ringing anvil?

In 2005, I attended my first event at Diana's Grove Mystery School. Soon after, I began building a shrine in the "Brigid's Grove" area. Brigid had recently become one of my patron deities that I worked with, after painting an 8-foot version of Brigid for the Chicago Reclaiming Imbolc ritual, and working with her in an Aspecting class.

In working with Brigid, I experienced a trance where I remember distinctly hearing a ringing, a hammering. I looked, and a leatherclad brigid stood there, arms muscled from the smithy, and she turned to me, holding the sword. She glared, and said, “Take up your gifts! Take them up! Get yourself out of this apathy and use the gifts you have been given!” She was striking the sword as she did this, tempering it.

The sword…the sword in the stone. That year's Diana's Grove Mystery School story dealt with Arthur. Cynthia tells the story of Arthur and the sword in the stone as taking up our gifts, taking up our destiny. When have we pulled a sword from the stone? When have we claimed our gifts, stepped into our destiny? The sword was the metaphor for the times when our destiny is calling to us, and when we accept it and take it up. Brigid was described as one of the women of Avalon who forged the sword Excalibur, and Cynthia's beautiful retelling of the myth described the sound of that ringing, that ringing of the hammer on the anvil echoing out across the hills and the water.

In my trance journey, Brigid was hammering my sword, the sword in the stone. And she wanted me to pick it back up.

Cynthia asked me to build a Goddess shrine at Diana's Grove, and I began work just after Beltane.

Another woman, Anne, was living at the Grove at that time. She was an artist, and also enthused about building something out in nature. She and I began plans, and based on some mistaken directions, ended up in the wrong area of the Grove property. One of the other Grove staffers thought that Cynthia wanted a shrine built in the outdoor ritual area known as Brigid's Grove, vs. at the Women's altar near the main ritual area.

Brigid's Grove is much larger; it's a circle of trees with a firepit, and space for about 30 people to sit around the fire. Anne and I were not at all concerned. We sketched out plans for what to do. Though she and I had what artists call "creative differences," , we created something intense within about a week.

Brigid's Grove Shrine
We dug up stones, hauled large stones out of the creek, and made a flagstone floor for the ritual area that is about 40-50 feet across. We built a large firepit in the center that is raised off the ground about 3 feet, and looks like a Brigid's well. In the flagstones, I created a path spiralling out and began to mosaic it so that a river of shimmering blue would spiral from the center around the stones. Each direction/element also had a small altar.

We found several stained glass windows with curved gothic arches, and mounted those on posts. I also painted 2 new Brigid paintings on signboard, and hung up the canvas Brigid I'd painted a few months back.

The Grove staff let us take their huge anvil down to Brigid's Grove to use for the Earth altar.

Our plans were ambitious, and we didn't quite finish, but what we had was really something. I lost weight, 10 or 20 pounds during the building of the outdoor shrine. I painted a Brigid for the Earth Altar that was the vision I'd had of her, hammering at a sword on an anvil, looking at me. I painted her as a spell; I wanted to become muscled, and fit, and healthy.

During the May Intensive that year, the opening ritual was at Brigid's Grove. Charles created a “trick” fire that lit itself as the ritual progressed. It looked so beautiful in the twilight as people filed into the area, the soft wind blowing the wind chimes. After the ritual as people walked the land, my friend Amy (the other person who'd aspected Brigid at that class) came with me back to Brigid's Grove, and we each took a turn hammering at the Anvil. Later, people told us they had shivers hearing the sound of that hammer and anvil echoing through the forest in the night.

I moved to the Grove soon after that; I wanted to be in a place where I could do work like this. I learned the irony, though, that living on the land meant having the responsibility to upkeep it, and I never got a chance to work on Brigid's Grove again.

Desecrated Shrine
I was helping to build a shed when Jim drove up to us in the pickup truck. “They've vandalized the main ritual area, ” he said. It was overcast, I remember, but by the time we got to the ritual area the sun was bright and warm. Lucinda, Patti, Jim and I rode out. As we drove past Brigid's Grove to the main ritual area, I noticed that I couldn't see the paintings. The bright, fiery red painting of Brigid wasn't there.

The main ritual area had been desecrated. The large fountainbase/birdbath with Kwan Yin for the water altar had been smashed, the concrete bench shattered. Kwan Yin was in pieces, and later we discovered that they'd taken her head.

They had used the kerosene in the ritual area's tiki torches to light all of the ritual firewood on fire. A whole year's worth of firewood was burned and ash…a long, long stretch of ash, and trees were torched 50 feet high. With the drought that year, I'm amazed there wasn't a forest fire.

I remember looking at the water altar, shattered and looking like broken bone on the ground, and I thought, how many prayers have been left here? How many wishes, how many tokens, how many, how many….I was offended to my core that anyone could desecrate such a sacred place.

I turned back to Brigid's Grove. “I couldn't see the painting,” I said. “I have to see.” By the time I got there, the truck with the others had caught up to me. I don't remember much of walking; the setting sun was in my eyes, and my heart was a hot blade of anger. I was filled with blood hot rage at such desecration.

It wasn't as bad as I expected, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. In retrospect, of course.

The paintings were knocked down, the windchimes had been thrown down, in some places shattered when they were glass. The firepit/well in the center had been torn down. Some of the stones and crystals that had been left on the water altar were shattered. The stained glass windows we'd hung had been shattered.

And her anvil was gone.

I felt a sound, a ringing. It got louder later, but when I saw that the anvil was gone, I will swear to this day that I could hear it ringing.

We decided to leave everything as it was so that the police could investigate. Nothing was harder than leaving those places desecrated and broken, and not being able to fuel my rage into fixing them.

As I looked out at a blood-red sunset, I remember hearing that sound of her ringing anvil. I realized sometime in the next day that her anvil had been taken and used as a tool. That her anvil was likely what had been used to shatter the water altar, and Kwan Yin, goddess of compassion.

When I stood behind the water altar, and looked at it, realizing the anvil must have been what was used to break it, I felt the ringing go right through me. It was a visceral sound, a feeling, like my bones were the anvil. It jolted me.

Building Something Bigger
As we all gathered at the table for dinner, the other staff asked me, “Well, what do you think, maybe something with less glass next time?” She was joking, trying to lighten the mood. Trying to help me feel better.

I felt the fury of fire race through every vein. “No,” I said. “I'll rebuild it with glass. With bigger glass than it had before. And every time they break it down, I'll build it again, bigger.” I felt that ringing anvil again, and I understood. These were my gifts. To build, and to use my rage and channel it into a creative fire to build again.

Though I didn't rebuild the Brigid's Grove shrine, I began to build something else. A larger vision of bringing this work out into the world, using the arts and ritual to transform people, interfaith work, the work of building together.

I, and others, helped to clean up the Brigid's Grove shrine. We put the paintings back up, rebuild the stone well, put the chimes back up, clean up the broken glass. I know that the time will come again to build a shrine, when I can bask in the happiness of hauling rocks until my arms tremble, kneeling on stone to create mosaic until my knees bleed. I know I will build again.

Whenever I think about what I must do out there in this world, I think about that Ringing Anvil, I feel that sound, that echo, and I remember that I'm here to do this, that this is my calling and that this is my sword to take up, my gifts to bring.

I think I will hear the sound of that ringing anvil for the rest of my days, and I hope that it reminds me to stay on my path, to keep hammering away at my gifts to hone their edge, and to take up the sword and go out into the world to do my work with it.

The ringing anvil is my call, and I will answer it.