It's the end of the world as we know it...

And I don't feel fine!

I had all the best intentions of getting back into this newsletter properly in the New Year but I have had a rather hellish start to 2024!

Welcome to AutCasts, a free bi-weeekly newsletter by writer, Aisling Walsh, exploring neurodivergence through cinema’s oddballs, misfits & rebels!

It all started with my partner’s dental emergency on the 1st of January. There followed a week of nursing her while I also nursed a resurgent cold. We had a week’s respite and then I had an extreme allergic reaction to some bad cheese we had in our fridge - it looked and tasted fine but it most certainly wasn’t. I ran off to the nearest clinic and got two shots in the butt to bring the rash down. The next day, I started getting very bad period cramps (I likely have endometriosis) which were so painful they provoked a seizure. I have a history of epilepsy but had been seizure free for seven years! You can learn more about that here:

I panic called my gynaecologist at 10.30 at night. I am very lucking to have the most amazing gynaecologist. She is a staunch advocate of reproductive rights and has just been made Vice Minister for health in Guatemala!! You can read more about her here!

She told me to go straight to her clinic even though the pain had subsided and there was nothing really she could do. The nurses on duty took extremely good care of me and even gave me another shot in the other butt cheek, just to even things out a little.

We had another few days of respite before my partner started getting flu-like symptoms. We took a COVID test, it was negative, and tried to find a doctor who would see her the following day. Because healthcare in Guatemala is heavily privatised, and both the social insurance and private insurance my partner has are woeful, we went to THREE different clinics only one of which actually did anything. They said it was tonsillitis, she got sent away with antibiotics and spent the next four days in bed. Just as she was starting to feel better yesterday, I woke up feeling fluey as well. I thought it was probably because I went for a swim on Tuesday and the outdoor pool I go to was freezing despite the tropical sun. However, yesterday afternoon I started getting joint pain, a headache and a mild fever so I took a COVID test and it turned out POSITIVE!

This is my third time having COVID since 2021 - the pandemic isn’t over and we would do well to remember! Even though I don’t feel as bad as I did the last two rounds, I am doing my best to rest because I do not want to add long COVID to my list of already extensive chronic illnesses.

So January began with an emergency root canal and ended with COVID, my partner and I dragging each other through the multiple crises, taking turns with whose week it was to go to hospital and who gets to play nurse.

A new beginning?

Today is St. Brigid’s Day, or Imbolg the Celtic festival that marks the beginning of the Irish spring. I truly hope the Celtic fertility goddess turned patron saint of abortions will bless us with some better luck for what’s left of 2024 (all 11 months dear goddess)! I’m not sure what the universe is trying to tell us but I hope we figure it out soon, because with are both pretty much at the end of our tether.

In light of the occasion I wanted to share a little something from my personal archive which has nothing at all to do with movies but everything to do with welcoming in the spring and wishing a more compassionate peaceful year for all of us. I wrote this seven years ago, in the run up to Ireland’s Repeal the 8th referendum and I am actually amazed how well it stands up all these years later. It was originally called ‘A Repeal Blessing From Brigid,’ but for today I’ll call it simply:

A Spring Blessing

February the 1st in Ireland is Saint Brigid’s Day. It also marks the first day of the Irish spring. The country fills with daffodils, snowdrops and the promise that the prolonged dreary winter will soon be over. Ireland’s most important female Saint, second in importance only to Patrick, is celebrated with the symbol of Brigid’s evangelism of Ireland: a cross of reeds.

As Irish children weave their St. Brigid’s Crosses at school today, it will hardly be mentioned that the true origin of this religious day is the Celtic festival of Imbolg, a Celtic festival of light, literally translated as ‘in the belly‘. Associated with lactating lambs. It is a key date in the Celtic calendar for celebrating new life, fertility and growth.

It is even less frequently mentioned that the figure of St. Bridgit is a triumph of Christian syncretism. When the Christians first arrived in Ireland, around the 5th century, they began a gradual process of converting the ‘wild and savage’ Celtic, pagans to Christianity. They appropriated Celtic festivals and converted them into Christian celebrations and turning Celtic deities into Christian Saints. So Halloween became ‘All Saints’ and the goddess Brigid became an actual saint.

Christian evangelists were particularly astute in super-imposing the image of the Virgin Mary on local pagan Goddesses, or creating a new Saint out of a goddess image, as a tactic for converting sceptical locals. This was achieved with great success in Mexico where the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin was transformed into the now revered Virgin de Guadalupe. The figure of ‘La Pachamama’ or ‘Mother Earth’ of the Incan civilization was likewise transformed into the Virgin Mother. These processes of syncretism were often accompanied by violence; America was, after all, colonised by the ‘cross and the sword.’. In the case of St. Brigid, however, this process of syncretism took place so long ago that her origins as a Celtic goddess has all but been erased from memory.

The Celtic goddess Brigid, worshipped not just in Ireland but across the Celtic territories, was associated with childbirth, fertility, abundance, healing, women’s wisdom and the creation of new life. Her festival Imbolg marks the re-awakening of the earth following winter. Like all Celtic goddesses she was not a fragile flower, cloaked in white robes who spent her time skipping through meadows filled with new-born lambs. She was a warrior, a healer, a wise woman with dominion over the natural processes of life and death. She was the guardian of pregnant and birthing people. She could aid with fertility and also end unwanted pregnancies.

With the arrival of Christianity to Ireland, and its patriarchal fear and suspicion of all things related to women’s bodies and sexuality, the goddess Brigid became the devout, evangelist we know today. She was obedient and chaste, her most famous act was the establishment of a convent in Kildare. Nevertheless, some of the goddess imagery managed to survive centuries of Christian evangelism. St. Brigid continued to be associated with healing powers, wisdom, kindness to animals and protection for pregnant people. She is also known to have performed the miracle of making a fetus ‘disappear from the womb’ of a virgin who had ‘given into lustful urges’.

Women in medieval times would pray to Brigid to help them in the case of unwanted pregnancies. In medieval Ireland it was in fact a common and accepted practice to abort unwanted pregnancies. Women knew of herbs and remedies for provoking abortions and while it wasn’t socially acceptable it was considered a lesser crime than adultery, requiring penance and mild punishments. In fact, Church teaching in relation to abortion has evolved from a stance of relative permissiveness to one of absolute prohibition. Catholics for Choice are correct to point out that abortion is not an immoral choice, even for devout Christians.

The image of Brigid we know today is little more than a sanitised folk tale, completely divorced from her original spirit. Her enduring symbol: a cross of reeds.

This February 1st, if you feel inclined to weave a St. Brigid’s cross, why not dedicate it to the original spirit of the goddess who once protected reproductive bodies? Spare an intention or a prayer for the pregnant people of G@z@, forced to give birth in the middle of a world ending situation¹, subject to inhumane conditions with little or no access to medical attention or pain relief. Al Jazeera, the only news service that is anyway decent these days, has more on the dire situation faced pregnant people in G@z@ here:

Sign petitions, write or call your representatives, boycott, protests, demand a ceasefire any way you can!

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Death is but a door, time is but a window. I’ll be back with more movie vibes whenever my own little circle of hell calms down. In the mean time, this Dude will try to abide!

1. Indigenous people the world over argue that the g€nocides they have experienced as a result of European colonisation, are ongoing cycles of violence that have caused repeated world-ending catastrophes for indigenous peoples and their territories across all five continents. What we are seeing in G@z@ is the most resent manifestation of g€nocidal, settler colonial violence propelled, in large part, by the US government. For more on this why not check out this succinct article from the incomparable Dr. Kim Tallbear!