Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Join me both today virtually and in June physically for a visit to a holy well in Ireland!
St. Patrick’s Holy Well or Tobar Phádraig is a sacred site tucked away in the Maumturk mountains in the Connemara region of Galway, Ireland. Tobar Phádraig is an active pilgrimage site to this day and dates back to the fifth century and beyond.
It’s dedicated to St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, who is reputed to have blessed the site and left behind some miraculous relics. Yet, its holiness can be felt simply by its resplendent beauty—breathtaking views of the lush Ireland landscape.
In truth, this holy well predates the christians. It’s associated with the Celtic harvest festival of Lughnasa, honoring the god Lugh who is associated with the harvest season, light, skill, and crafts.
For millennia before St. Patrick, people have been gathering at this holy well to offer prayers, sacrifices, and gifts to either saints and other deities, as well as to simply enjoy feasting, music, and dancing. It’s also said that at this site St. Patrick encountered resistance from the local pagans who threw stones at him. Having actually visited this area, I can attest that the landscape is full of hand-sized stones and boulders and I’m sure it would have been the easiest ammunition around for the pagans (a pejorative word for the people who previously lived there but believed something other than Christianity) to throw at the johnny-come-lately St. Patrick who was badgering them about joining the new-fangled religion of Christianity.
But as legend has it, St. Patrick put the kibosh to any projectile s coming his way by simply throwing down his staff which miraculously turned into a serpent and chased the pagan rock-chuckers away.
Sounds a lot like the story of Moses from the bible, if you know it.
After chasing away the pagans with his snakes, St. Patrick then built a small church on the site and left behind a holy well with a stone altar and a footprint on a rock. In truth, the well was already there. Thanks pagans!
Today, St. Patrick’s Well or Tobar Phádraig in Irish, is still a popular pilgrimage site. In fact, some of the pagan customs survived into the Christian era, such as climbing the mountain barefoot, drinking water from the holy well, tying rags to a hawthorn tree as a symbol of healing, and leaving coins on St. Patrick’s altar as a sign of gratitude.
Every year, thousands of people make a pilgrimage to Tobar Phádraig on St. Patrick's day to drink water from the holy well, which is believed to have healing properties. You can also leave an offering on St. Patrick’s altar, which is covered with coins and other tokens of gratitude from previous pilgrims.
Like I said, I visited Ireland in 2018 and had the rare opportunity to be led on a mystical and even spiritual walk in the Burren (a majestic landscape in the west of Ireland) with none other than poet David Whyte. He led us not to Tobar Phádraig but to a similar holy well and read us his poem about Tobar Phádraig.
Check out this pic.
It’s the spot that deviates from the road we hiked that leads to the sacred well. I can attest that it’s nothing short of magic!
As I stood there, next to the holy well, listening to him recite his poem, full of heart, tears streamed down my face at the image conjured by last stanza:
And you remember now, that clear stream
of generosity from which you drank,
how as a child your arms could rise and your palms
turn out to take the blessing of the world.
“How as a child your arms could rise/and your palms turn out to take the blessing of the world.”
David Whyte, everyone!
This kicks me in the heart—the image of each of us with our child-like innocence which we demonstrate by our pure and unshakable faith and willingness to simply “raise our palms and take the blessings of the world,” without skepticism, without judgment, without bitterness.
Just take the blessings of the world!
As David Whyte explained the poem, he told a story about the original people who lived in Ireland before it was conquered by those who lived in what is now Spain. The conquerers came over with their ships and swords to conduct the epitome of a hostile takeover yet the original people had reached such a level of spirituality and harmony with each other that when they saw the sanguine nature of the would-be conquerors, it was so anathema to their state of being that they simply “turned sideways into the light” and chose to stay in place but simply exist in a different realm or dimension.
They turned sideways into the light.
I’ll tell you with a straight face that the spirit of those original people is still palpable today and can be felt in every stone and sacred well in this holy landscape.
Check out the full poem and tell me what happens to your heart:
TOBAR PHADRAIC
By David Whyte
Turn sideways into the light as they say
the old ones did and disappear
into the originality of it all.
Be impatient with easy explanations
and teach that part of the mind
that wants to know everything
not to begin questions it cannot answer.
Walk the green road above the bay
and the low glinting fields
toward the evening sun, let that Atlantic
gleam be ahead of you and the gray light
of the bay below you, until you catch,
down on your left, the break in the wall,
for just above in the shadows
you’ll find it hidden, a curved arm
of rock holding the water close to the mountain,
a just-lit surface smoothing a scattering of coins,
and in the niche above, notes to the dead
and supplications for those who still live
But for now, you are alone with the transfiguration
and ask no healing for your own
but look down as if looking through time,
as if through a rent veil from the other
side of the question you’ve refused to ask.
And you remember now, that clear stream
of generosity from which you drank,
how as a child your arms could rise and your palms
turn out to take the blessing of the world.
I mentioned that I wanted to invite you to a holy well both today and in June.
Today, I’m leading a live, online Yoga Nidra class where we are going to use this poem and the image of the holy well as the anchor for deep Awareness in a Yoga Nidra experience. Together, we’ll go to the well and plumb the depths of spirit to recognize the blessings and heart-riches that are placed there for us so that “as a child our arms can rise and our palms turn out to take the blessing of the world.”
Then in June, my good friend and fellow teacher Kim Dastrup and I are co-leading a yoga and mindfulness retreat to Ireland where, among other things, we will be taking a walk through the Burren with a poet to a holy well to have our own, live holy well experience.
The retreat will be a cultural feast of Irish poetry and Irish pipes, connections and concerts, food and folklore, not to mention the daily yoga and meditation.
We have only 3–4 spots left. So, being St. Patrick’s Day and all, for TODAY ONLY if you follow the rainbow (pic below) and check out the deets for the retreat, you can pay your deposit ($500) or full tuition via Venmo and save $100 or click the buttons on the page and use PayPal or a credit card so you can type in the coupon code POTOGOLD at check out to save $100 on your registration for the Ireland retreat.
This will sell out and YOU need to come. It will be nothing short of magical. Do it today.
Whether I see you in my live, online Yoga Nidra class or in the Ireland retreat, or feck, both, may we all, for the love of saints and sinners alike, “turn our palms out and take the blessing of the world.”
Namaste,
