Imbolc

the breakthrough of the light

Hello lovely readers

This is one of an occasional posting for each of the 8 seasonal turning points of the Celtic year, Imbolc. If you have signed up for the more frequent (normally weekly) ‘Middles of Nowhere’ posts about sustainable micro-farming, please know that I’m mid-post now for the next instalment. That post has been a difficult one to write – not for personal reasons but for fairness and focus – there is so much to say!

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For about 25 years I offered a workshop called ‘Thresholds’ at this time of year. Many people repeated it year after year, and I feel it’s still a useful solo retreat workshop. I will be offering it again here, but not this year. If you want to find out more, there is a PDF available from my website The Wild Ways.

Imbolc is the first of the fire festivals in the Celtic new year, or at least the first after samhain. Situated at 1st/2nd February, we could see it as the cracking-open of the earth now that the light is returning as we move further away from the darkest night of the midwinter solstice.

Very much dedicated to The Lady, at Imbolc, or Candlemas as it has become in the Christian era, we celebrate the birth or rebirth of the Maiden from the darkness, like Persephone. At this time, we start to move away from the time of the Crone, or Cailleach, sometimes known as Cerridwen, towards the time of the Flower-Maiden, Blodeuwedd.

We’re now exactly poised in our movement around the sun between the solstice and the vernal equinox, when Maiden and Mother share a moment.

It’s a misty time in the southwest of Britain, as it is here in Brittany right now. In the Celtic Tree Calendar that I follow, detailed at length in my book A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees, we are now in Rowan month, ‘Luis’ in the old Goidelic Irish tongue. The mythic keynote for this tree month is ‘I am the mist over a wide river-valley’.

Sometimes the weak sun allows us to sit outside; but elsewhere, and sometimes here, it can be a harsh time, with the snowdrops and catkins seeming merely a faint promise.

This festival is presided over by Bride (or Brighid, Brig, Brigit), the Lightbringer, one manifestation of the Great Goddess, who gave her name to so many places in Britain (which itself is a variant on her name). She is associated with sacred fire, the fertile earth, poetry, smithcraft and weaving, and healing. You can make a Brigid’s Cross, as I have below (info on Youtube).

As the word ‘imbolc’, or ‘oimelc’ tells us in its early Irish etymology, the time is ‘milky’, with ewes coming into milk and bearing the the first (white) lambs (those that weren’t born in November). In parts of Scotland until recently, women still offered milky porridge to the ocean at this time of light and water. (It should be said that their ‘normal’ porridge was made with water: milk was specifically in tribute to Brighid.)

Imbolc being nine months on from Beltane, May 1st, and its old midsummer fertility fires, many children, too, would be born at this time.

Snowdrops are, of course, the perfect symbol of this new life being reborn through the snows of the winter. Here in Brittany the catkins are fully out now, dusting the leafless wooded hillside with their gold. Snowdrops, usually open by now in South Devon, along with the first daffodils and hundreds of periwinkles, not to mention the first wild garlic (frequently picked by me on February 1st to make a delicious creamy leek vegan croustade with leeks from our garden as an Imbolc feast), are not yet in flower here, 100 miles further south.

One of the trees dedicated to the goddess of the late winter/early spring is the blackthorn, whose blossom arrives before the leaves. The blackthorn trees are a way off being in flower here yet.

I like to bring in a glass of water with a few snowdrops and catkins as an offering at this time. I will sit a candle in a little soil from the land here, and light the flame in air and fire. The soft light reminds us of the stirrings of new if delicate life as the returning sun fertilises the waiting earth.

Light the candles and dream new life into incarnation.

Please come back later, when I will be posting complete and detailed practices for this and the other 7 stations of the Celtic year, to include also relevant poems, stories or myths; plants, trees or flowers connected with this time; vegan recipes; and suggestions for creating your own ritual celebration for each turning point of the year. There will also be writing tasks. I have yet to decide if we will have a zoom meeting on each date.

Thank you for reading.