Revisiting Brigid and the "Irish Mind" of both/and, not either/or

Exploring dualistic thinking and how the renewal of Brigid in Ireland might just be the antidote

To celebrate Brigid’s Day, I am offering 10% off my book “Threatening Women: A Cultural History of Why Ireland Shamed and Contained Women” this weekend only. Use code brigid10 over on buythebook.ie (Offer ends 4th February 2025)

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January was quite the month! Globally, locally and personally. For the last few years I have been trying to live with a bit more seasonal sensibility, to work with rather than against the cyclical, dialectical nature of nature. But January, that liminal, in-between time—after Winter Solstice and before Imbolg—is a transition phase I struggle with.

I am impatient, I am not good at the waiting and the gentle stirring that nature instructs. I want to action and launch. I want to get on with things. But this January, this in-between time, everything I ‘launched’ so unequivocally failed there was little I could do but throw my hands up and laugh (after a bit of a cry). In the space of three days I received several rejections from agents and publishing houses on my “Women of Ireland Project” book and was turned down for a job I had interviewed for because I was “too good” (which I think means too experienced). My confidence battered, I reached out to friends.

“What’s for you won’t pass you by,” came the reply.

It’s a phrase, I notice, only my friends in Ireland ever use (and they use it often). And there is something lovely about it — I think it evokes how closely fatalism and trust can exist side-by-side in the Irish Mind. That some things are just down to luck and fate, they are out of our control, but also to keep hope, to keep trust that the good things are coming —they won’t pass you by when you’re ready for them.

This both/and way of thinking was enough to make me realise that I had gotten stuck in either/or thinking.

“Either you get this job or….[insert some dramatic negative thought about finances etc.]”

“Either you get this book deal/representation or…. [insert a variety of thoughts relating to blowing up my life for nothing/need to work harder/re-think the book/keep trying/just being generally screwed]”

That such a hard lesson should come in the approach to Imbolg and Brigid’s Day feels about right, because it has been through Brigid (reading about her and learning of the symbolism associated with her) that I came to learn of the importance and need for Both/And thinking in my life. That it is possible to hold several, seemingly contradictory experiences, emotions or realities side-by-side, that one thing does not have to mean that the other (its opposite) is the outcome.

And so, I need a revisit to something I wrote two years ago now, in the run up to Brigid’s Day 2023, about the integrating beauty of being able to hold opposites and contradictions in “creative confluence” and, given the January we have just passed through, I hope you will find something in it for you too.

An icy Imbolg Dawn

“In this time of Brigid, she is showing me the way of how power can be reimagined; how paradoxes do not have to be contradictions but can be integrated into one powerful existence”

I am shamelessly resharing these words I wrote this time last year about Brigid, not least because tomorrow (6th February 2023) will be the first national holiday in Ireland ever dedicated to a woman —Brigid: Goddess, abbess, saint, woman— but mostly because they (and Brigid) nicely set up what I want to talk about here: contradiction, paradox, and dualistic thinking.

I have long summed up, and theorised, my personal experience as a woman of Ireland, and that of others, as paradoxical. That for everything we are, we are also its opposite. Fierce but kind. Strong but self-effacing. Austere but empathetic. Forceful yet often deferent. I can’t tell you how many lists like this I have made in notes over the last few years — pages of contradictions and oppositions.

Yet, with the benefit of reflexive thinking, I can see how much of that view is influenced by the fact that I am a walking paradox.

I believe in and value mystery — the spiritual, mythic, and transcendental— as much as I believe in and value science — the factual and evidence-based. I accept the illogical as much as I accept the logical.

I am an academic.

I am a water-diviner.

I consider subjectivity valid and question the existence of true objectivity. I trust what cannot be understood with the rational mind just as much as what can.

Western thinking is founded on the dualistic logic of Plato and Aristotle. Theirs is the logic of either/or; that reality is organised by and composed of opposites. It is from this dualistic way of thinking and knowing that we get the splits which have come to characterise much of how we think about and make sense of human experience — mind vs. body, rational vs. irrational, reason vs. imagination, divine vs. temporal, masculine vs. feminine, myth vs. science, public vs. private, logic vs. intuition, good vs. evil, positive vs. negative.

And it is why I have characterised myself as a ‘walking paradox’.

I see the ‘mystical’ and ‘science’ Me’s as being in opposition; as contradictions within myself. The world in which I (and most of us) have grown up in has made it clear that myth and science do not go together, and that creative imagination, intuition and feelings have no place in the domains of rational thought and logic. They must be kept separate.

And so I have kept them separate. These two parts of Me live together like a sort of dysfunctional couple who occupy the same home for financial reasons. They manage to live fairly peacefully, separated out in different wings of the house but regularly get into arguments when they cross paths in the kitchen. The Mystical one puts up a good fight but the Science one has the upper hand with ‘evidence-based’ facts that trump the former’s ‘gut feelings’ and cries of ‘I just know’.

Recently I discovered the work of Irish philosopher Richard Kearney, who believes that the “Irish Mind” is different. That it has a very particular form of logic, or way of thinking, which is unusual —unique even— in Western Europe. Rather than dualistic, it is dialectical. It can simultaneously hold two points of view which, according to the dominant Greco-Roman philosophy of dualism, would ordinarily be in opposition to one another.

The “Irish Mind” is one that can hold contradiction in concert. There are no oppositions or contradictions in the philosophy and logic of the “Irish Mind”, just different elements of a greater whole.

The key characteristic of the “Irish Mind” is the logic of both/and, not either/or.

“In contradiction to the orthodox dualist logic of either/or, the Irish mind may be seen to favour a more dialectical logic of both/and: an intellectual ability to hold the traditional oppositions of classical reason together in creative confluence”

Prof. Richard Kearney, The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions

In the spirit of the “Irish Mind” then, I both agree and disagree with Kearney.

The dialectical logic of both/and would explain why I hold such paradoxical and opposing elements as mystery and science within. In fact, it would enable me to work with them as complementary, rather than contradictory, forces of understanding (The “Irish Mind” is not having arguments in the Mind’s kitchen).

And yet, I am (nearly all of us are) a product of a societal system which is dualistic, which is either/or, and the “Irish Mind” is not immune to that.

This is why ‘science-me’ has always won out and been prioritised over ‘mystery-me’, because in the dualistic world we live in, the rational, logical and evidence-based sphere of science will always be ranked superior to the illogical, irrational and intuitive-based sphere of mystery.

For women (or anyone ‘othered’ or marginalised), seeing and understanding dualistic logic can explain a lot. Because dualism is the doctrine that enables and creates othering and segregation. For when you can carve up the world according to either/or rather than both/and it becomes possible to say that one thing is better than the other; that something is more desirable, more powerful, more important, and more sacred than something else. A higher and lower order is created. Them Vs. Us and Superior vs. Inferior become the logic — and I don’t think I need to explain which end of the dualistic scale women have often found themselves.

“Patriarchal societies thrive on the establishment of dualisms; between men and women, the sacred and profane, and between the public and the private. These dualisms do not come naturally, but must be maintained through periodic exhortations, philosophical discourse, and ritual”.

Dr. Mary Condren, The Sacrificial Social Contract

Over the last few months, The negative impact of dualism on women has become a key theme emerging from my Women of Ireland Project interview Data. I have nicknamed how it shows up in women’s stories as ‘The Great Separation’, because that is what it feels like.

It is all the divisions and the segregations that characterise society in Ireland (from the obvious ones like gender, religion and segregated education, to the less obvious like splits between public and private, sacred and profane) and, consequently, create separations within ourselves (between our bodies and our minds, and the Self we are and the Self we are expected to be). I have come to see (and begun to research) how dualistic thinking has enabled and shaped this ‘Great Separation’ by acting as the logic behind the development of social structures which have defined the spaces and spheres women can be in, and/or how they have to behave within them.

This negative impact of dualism on women is something Irish feminist theologian Mary Condren has long written about. And it is here that she has (quite significantly) drawn on Brigid, to argue that Mercy, which is symbolised by Brigid’s cloak, is the antidote to dualistic thinking (if you are interested in this train of thought, I recommend this talk by Mary on the subject).

“Brigid’s Cloak” by kind permission of artist Róisín Mallon, and is generously available to download here

In the run-up to St. Brigid’s Day (1st February) this year, I found myself feeling very resistant to it. I can’t really explain that, but I felt challenged by all of the hubbub and narrative that, understandably, accompanied the first year Ireland would officially celebrate its matron saint.

Then, last week, as part of Mari Kennedy’s Wheel of the Year, I heard Dolores Whelen speak about how Brigid represents both/and; that she is the antithesis to either/or thinking.

That Brigid represents an ability to hold opposites and contradictions in harmony was not a new idea to me, but how Dolores explained it and Brigid’s relevance to current times gave me a profound ‘Ah-ha’ moment.

Having spent several months engaging with the damage done by duality, to hear Dolores speak of how Brigid represents a time of newness; that she (with her cloak of mercy) brings a new way of seeing things and a new way of knowing that is the both/and, the current excitement and hubbub around Brigid clicked into place for me. She clarified why I couldn’t stop seeing the ‘Great Seperation’ in my Women of Ireland Project data, and why I need to bring it to light at this time.

Brigid will mean and signify different things to different people (and absolutely nothing at all to others). For me, she represents the possibility of moving away from strict dualities and towards integration. Of bringing together what has long been framed as contradictory and opposing into one powerful whole.

We can be both/and not only either/or, and I think if there was ever a time the world needed a bit of “Irish Mind”, it’s probably now.

To celebrate Brigid’s Day, I am offering 10% off my book “Threatening Women: A Cultural History of Why Ireland Shamed and Contained Women” this weekend only. Use code brigid10 over on buythebook.ie (Offer ends 4th February 2025)