Pagan Godspell

The Holy Day of Imbolc/Oimelc/Candlemas is approaching, and I am beset with preparations and ritual writing.  The more I honor these seasons and holidays, the more I am incapable of saying that I love any more than any other – years ago I would have said that Samhain was the best, but now I love them all with the same ecstatic enthusiasm.  They are truly all my favorite. 

Imbolc is a time of quickening – the flexing and stretching of the sleepy Land as it stirs slowly awake, letting out a cold breath or two, murmuring and sighing – a seed of light in the dark.  The Festival of Lights – a branch decorated with lit candles.  After the explosive gorgeous moment with the sun cracks over the horizon on the Solstice, everything seems to fall into a lazy, somnolent torpor during January - exhausted from the frenzy of Misrule, of feasting and partying and dancing and giving gifts.  But the Land stirs nonetheless, and as February approaches I am ready to embrace Newness and the fresh promise of spring, even if it seems remarkable distant as we sit beneath layer after layer of cold snow.

Imbolc is also the Feast Day of Brigit or Bride, the goddess of fire, poetry, smithcraft, healing, etc.  It is beautifully appropriate that Brigit’s day should be in the depths of winter at the very first hint of spring.  Brigit herself is a numinous light – the light of fire, the light of poetry, the forge.  She is a bestower of gifts for the coming year, and a protector of the hearth and home.

To all this week, as the fresh, dazzling, candelit, freezing Holiday approaches, I wish you the mantle of divine inspiration, imbas and awen, draped around your shoulders – the gift of Fire and Verse during the long cold nights.