Me and Abby crop

Vicki Rourke, MA, is an Archaeologist, Whale Watch Naturalist and Art Historian. She attended Ball State University, Wilson College, Penn State and NYU. Rourke first discovered Brighid’s Sacred Flame under the mentorship of Ronald Hicks, Ph.D., in the 1970s. Ron is well known in Irish archaeological/archaeoastronomical circles. Vicki was intrigued by this Holy Fire and longed to tend it. Happily, she was gifted with a candle lit from the Flame at Solas Brid in Kildare Ireland by the chanteuse Noirin ni Riain, at a concert in Somerville, Massachusetts in the late 1990’s. Rourke later became a Daughter of the Flame and has served Brighid in her aspects of Goddess and Saint for over 20 years. Her archaeological work includes excavating Native American sites in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. She has taught at New Hampshire College and Penn State Open University and guest lectured at Dickinson College. One of the greatest adventures of her life was working for the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she combined her knowledge of Native American Culture and Cetacean Studies to create Native focused whale watch cruises and Pow Wow cruises. She was given 3 eagle feathers and sweetgrass bundles by Native elders along with the name Boat Woman for her work, in which she used cruises to generate money and food for local Native American food pantries. Vicki is a Pow Wow dancer, has led covens, offered workshops and helped to run Pagan Coffee talks in both Pennsylvania and New England. She now lives in Indiana and is semi-retired, writing and doing research once again with Dr. Hicks. Her most recent work is an archaeologically based Irish Pagan Novel in which a fox and cat travel across the time-space continuum in the Bronze Age.