Imbolc and the Wolf Moon
Monday gratefuls: Easy Entrees bacon wrapped pork tenderloins. Green Beans. Kate’s no nausea days. House cleaning today. LLBean and my new shearling hurricane shirt. The Ancient Ones tell stories around the council fire. Tom’s story. 45 gone. 46 doing stuff I like. Feel better. Imbolc.
The Ewes, the pregnant Ewes. Milk for their Lambs. Means Milk for all. For Cheese. For children. Imbolc. In the belly. In Ireland this is and was the birthing time for Sheep. The Lambs came; the Ewes freshened; the family fed on food not stored over the long fallow time.
It was clear the promise of the day after the Winter Solstice was not false. There would be another spring, another freshening of the earth. All would be well, all manner of things would be well.
What a precious and delightful time. Lambs gamboling. Suckling. Milk squirted directly into children’s mouths. All delighted by the miracle of birth and renewal.
Hard to put ourselves in the place of people who subsisted on stored Grains, Vegetables, smoked Meats over the long fallow time begun on Samain, Summer’s End, and lasting until today.
Brigid, the Triple Goddess. Her day. This from a wikipedia article:
She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare.
Poetry, the smithy, and the hearth were her domains, thus the Triple Goddess. The often week long festivals the Celts celebrated on their four cross quarter days: Imbolc, Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samain (October 31st) gave villagers a break from their subsistence lives. A chance to play, to sing, dance, trade, honor their gods and goddesses.
Imbolc was also a time for discerning weather, peeking into the immediate future. Hoping for Spring, but knowing it could still be distant. It was this tradition that has translated in the U.S. into Groundhog Day. Here’s a Scottish proverb that suggests the link. Bride is Brigit.
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Thig an nathair as an toll |
The serpent will come from the hole |
Imbolc is a good day to consider those freshened thoughts and projects you have. What came up for you during the dark, fecund days of Winter? Are there dreams or hopes or works you imagined then that need a push right now? You can ask Brigit for help. It’s her big day and she’s listening.
If you have an artesian well nearby or know of one, you could also follow the ancient Celtic practice of dressing the wells. On these holidays the Irish, the Welsh, The Scots, the Cornish, the Manx, and Bretons would, in ancient times, take flowers to the well, make corn dollies representing Brigit and leave them there, tie rags with wishes and prayers to shrubs and trees nearby.
These Holy Wells are pathways to the Otherworld, the world of Faery, and a place where the Holy Ones pay attention to the needs of the common person.
Brigit, the Triple Goddess, is a Fire Goddess, and at Kincaid in Ireland a double monastery, men and women, kept her eternal flame alive throughout the year. Might be a good day to have a Fire in the Fireplace, her hearth, and consider the creativity her Holy spirit represents.
Welcome all to the blessed season of Imbolc. May your projects blaze up and warm you and yours.
In Merry England the Twelfth Night was another time for the emergence of the fool, for the inversion of roles, for letting go of the amazement of Christmastide in preparation for the now imminent return to ordinary time. We saw this same impulse on Distaff Day and in the male equivalent, Plough Monday.
If we take the other thread, the pagan/supernatural thread, during Christmastide, Yule, this marks farewell for the Solstice, too. We now know the Sun has committed for another year, the crops and the livestock will feel the heat, the warmth, the energy, the vitality. Whatever fears we had as the nights grew longer and the days colder, have given way to confidence that Spring and Beltane will come once again.
At our elevation the Lodgepole guard the Aspen whose golden leaves in the fall proceed their winter sleep. At lower elevations the Ponderosa, the Spruce stand guard. At the treeline ancient Bristlecone Pines patrol. In other parts of Colorado the Douglas Fir, the Engleman Spruce, the Pinon Pine, the Rocky Mountain Juniper, and the White Fir watch. The Great Spirit reminds us each Winter of the Evergreens special gift.
Andover, 2012, Bees and Apple Blossoms
Folks throng the city streets, drinking early, then drinking all the while it takes to ring in the New Year, and disperse with good cheer not long after.
Yet. Artificial constructs though they may be, New Years acknowledge two important things, at least for me. The first says, yes, our spaceship (thanks, Bucky Fuller) has carried us all the way round our Sol one more time. Unscathed. In this it also acknowledges, even if indirectly, the solar systems flight to the stars, our Milky Way galaxies flight toward Andromeda, and all the other fast movement around us that we cannot even see. Including the earth’s rotation.
Sæhrímnir
Even pagans have a conflicted relationship with nature. Yes, she provides soil for crops, rain and sun from them to grow, and game to supplement domesticated animals like goats and cows and chickens. But she also had predators in the wild like wolves and game animals like the boar, who killed many hunters.
