“If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Come, winter, have another flight;

If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,

Go winter, and come not again.” Credit to my friend Jack, original author unknown.

I don’t know about that gopher critter, but here on the midatlantic seaboard, it was clouds and rain, so I for one am banking on a quick coming spring.

Today is Candlemas for the Catholics, and traditional first light, or Imbolc or Brigid’s Day for folk cultures in different places.  It is when the light of the new harvest year breaks the first germinated seeds free.  Brigid is my patron Goddess, lore of the Celts, and also a saint. I honor celebrations of the soulful aspects of tending the inner heart, home and hearth-fire light in her name, as well as veneration for my first true religion, poetry, and the Sacred Imagination.

Lunar Imbolc is a celebration that also connects the holiday to planting tides.  It occurs during the new moon when the sun is in the constellation of aquarius.  This year, lunar Imbolc occurs  overnight, Valentine’s Day into the next day.

It is a cross-quarter celebration on the Medicine Wheel, highlighting the Northeast corner, a quickening period for ideas when the vision for new upcoming life is perceived but not seen, as winter and its dormancy wraps round the dreamer.  When the dark space cooks the light within.

It is an initiation time in the women’s work, aligned with tasks of discernment in the house of the dark mother as well as oracle, prophecy and visioning.

Tend your dreams.

We are in this medicine until the next new moon.

Between the worlds of what was last year, and what will come.

Oh Imbolc–and that part we so struggle against–sacred in between.

One of my favorite parts about walking an earth path is just doing my life and getting to be surprised by the magic.  I’m not talking about right now concentration on minding mind to lose yourself to the moment being.  I’m talking about the last week has been messy house and piles of dishes and falling asleep in front of the tv.  Just total flop mode. I took off from producing anything creatively for the whole month of January.  It was my intent to track along with winter’s fallow season.

So this week I started getting inspired to like, color, journal, create.  I aimed for Wednesday to hit the drawing board professionally.  Wednesday came and felt like sludge.  No go.

Instead, I could barely tumble from bed fast enough this morning, with the creative stirring and vision tiptoeing across my spirit, so soft and easy, so sweet and free as I woke.

Traditional Imbolc.

The seeds break free, the light is cast.

As for me, I’m going dancin 🙂