The implicit spiritual idea of blacksmiths in the pagan world was an expression of the reforging of nature each year as part of the annual cycle. In the temperate regions of Atlantic Europe this was so explicit that it became a core part of the religion and was celebrated through a cycle of annual festivals personifying this process. It was also an important part of the mythos of southern Europe and was also a key part of the mysteries of Eleusis, Orphism and the Dionysiac rites of ancient Greco-Roman religion. As with the southern forms of paganism, the northern forms portrayed the year as the life-cycle of a woman – the producer/guardian of developing life and human continuity. As each year progressed, so she aged – only to born again after each final ‘death’!

The Gaelic words ‘Caillin’ (Young Woman) and the name ‘Cuillin’ (a legendary ‘blacksmith’) have such an interesting concordance in Gaelic and Norse mythology that it is time for European pagans to start examining this in greater detail…

Who was she? I will leave this answer to a medieval Irish sage named Cormac:

BRIGIT i.e. a poetess, daughter of the Dagda. This is Brigit, the female sage, or woman of wisdom. i.e. Brigit the goddess whom poets adored because very great and very famous was her protecting care. It is therefore they call her goddess of poets, by this name. Whose sisters were Brigit the female physician, woman of leechcraft. Brigit the female smith, woman of smithwork, from whose names with all Irishmen, a goddess was called Brigit.

(p.23 of 1868 Whitley Stokes edition of John O’Donovan’s translation)