photo courtesy pixabay
What better day but to spend by the heat of the forge with the sound of hammers ringing on anvils? Like my father before me, wood and words have always been my raw materials of choice. But each time my hands get hold of cold steel, magic begins to happen.
Actually, the magic begins in the forge, where fire does what Fire does -- that is, provide the energy of transformation in its raw state. Then man does what Man does -- impose his will on the mutable metal, changing it from blobs and blocks to tools and weapons and items for clothing.
And with each blow of the hammer on glowing hot steel, I see it molded with my very eyes into what existed until that moment only in my mind. Given my untutored, inexperienced state, the unerring shifting of molecules into something practically and aesthetically. pleasing I can only attribute to the blessing of Brigid, the guiding hands of Gofannon, or the blood of a smithy ancestor come alive once again in my veins.
I've honestly never experienced anything like it. I believe I'm falling in love with this most powerful and ancient of crafts, and that having tasted its fruit just a couple of times, I will remain unsated until I call the skills of a blacksmith my own.
Tomorrow I go back to the forge to finish and temper the hammer that appeared like magic out of a block of steel today. And with this hammer, and a fire, and the gift of Mother Nature's ores -- well, I can build anything, from the rockers on a cradle to the nails that hold a building together, to a temple from which we can contemplate the unknowable in all the very many forms we perceive her.