know thyself:

'Thresholds' at Imbolc

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Imbolc, or Candlemas, & a self-study one-day retreat
It’s hard to imagine in our current wild weather here in Brittany, as in the UK, how delicate February can be, occasionally, in the northern hemisphere: gentle enough to sit outside in pale sun, albeit well wrapped.

The coming weekend will see the ushering-in of February with the Celtic/pagan festival of Imbolc, or Candlemas in the church calendar. This fire festival is a celebration of new possibilities symbolised in ewes coming into milk, and the birth of lambs: ‘i mbolg’, or ‘oimelc’, means ‘in the belly’. (Personally, I feel such an early lambing, driven by consumer demand for tender young meat, is brutal: we can also have extremely harsh days when a lot of new lambs pay the price with their lives.) As the word suggests, the time is ‘milky’; in parts of Scotland, until recently women still offered milky porridge to the ocean at this time of light and water. It is also often a misty time in the southwest of Britain, as it is here in Brittany.

Even with hard frosts, there is a sense of anticipation as the days grow longer: the sense that the midwinter spark of fire will soon spread.

I’ll speak a little more of this potent cross-quarter fire festival. First, I want to mention that for more than 30 years, since not long after my counselling qualification in Transpersonal Psychology, I’ve offered a holistic workshop called Thresholds, relevant from now until the spring equinox. (Well, and actually for our whole lives!) Feedback has been generous and excellent.

Thresholds has had many incarnations, from a one-day group retreat to a residential weekend, and more recently it’s been a guided self-study day of intensive inner work that includes, of course, our relationship to the outer. I’m told that its current form, a 16-page self-study PDF for a solo but guided day retreat, is extremely helpful, and many people repeat it year after year (after year), as I do myself.

This day is a chance really to look at your life, in guided detail. Far from being a selfish act, as some people fear, such attention given to our inner life and how that aligns with our outer life is one of the most valuable of activities. The advice of the oracle inscribed at Delphi – ‘Know Thyself’ – is about as wise as it comes. Taking such advice frees us into the possibility of becoming all that we may be, and can also free others from the weight of our projected expectations and blames.

It seems to me that we all need a chance, frequently if possible, to spend time alone and quietly, with our attention turned inwards in a way that is rarely possible with our accelerated, full and populated lives. This gives us an opportunity to take time to breathe and to be slow, to notice the earth waking up around us here in the northern hemisphere, to reflect on how our life echoes our values – or doesn’t, on how we nurture ourselves and our soul life, what is out of balance, where the piece of grit in the shoe is, what is now outdated in our lives, and where our ‘bliss’ might lie (it’s a sad indictment of our society that most of us don’t know where our bliss lies). During this day retreat, we also look at our own unique gifts that we might offer to the collective. We look at our place in the universe. We look back, and we look forwards; inwards and outwards.

The day challenges you; it nourishes; it sets a course for you to take for the year. It’s soulwork.

Taking such advice (‘Know thyself’) frees us into the possibility of becoming all that we may be, and can also free others from the weight of our projected expectations and blames.

If this is something that interests you, and you can commit the best part of a quiet day to it, it is available via this link.

Imbolc is possibly my favourite of the 8 Celtic festivals (vying with the autumn equinox). Like the other 3 cross-quarter festivals, although falling exactly midway between a solstice and an equinox, it sees the beginning of a season. After the harshness of winter it offers the promise of gentle fruitfulness; albeit only as a distant possibility. Nonetheless, 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. I can almost hear the earth creaking; the hazel tree canopies are turning rusty, willows blaze, silver birch tops are magenta. Birds are coming into their mating colours.

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 move away from the time of the Crone, or Cailleach, sometimes known as Cerridwen, towards the time of the Flower-Maiden, Blodeuwedd, also Brighid, 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 suggest in the PDF.

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

Nine months on from Beltane, May 1st, with its old midsummer fires and fertility rites, many children, too, would once have been born at this time.

Here, the catkins are fully out now, dusting the bare hedges with their gold. Some years, snowdrops will have been open for a week or two; the first daffodils would have appeared; hundreds of periwinkles are studding the hedgerows, hellebore are shaking out their greeny-rose flowerheads – and some years (not this) I’ve been able to pick the first wild garlic on February 1st to make a delicious creamy leek vegan croustade with leeks from our garden and our purple sprouting broccoli as an Imbolc feast.

One of the trees dedicated to the goddess of the late winter/early spring is the blackthorn, whose blossom arrives before the leaves. I haven’t yet seen any blackthorn trees in flower; sometimes the sheltered valleys are white with them in Devon even in January (hawthorn flowers don’t come till May, as their other name, may blossom, tells us).

Candles’ soft light reminds us of the stirrings of new if delicate life as the returning sun fertilises the waiting earth. In your own home, light the candles and dream new life into incarnation.

As always, thank you for reading. It makes such a difference to know that many of you do. And I always love it when you ‘like’ my posts, or comment – I’d like this to be a conversation.