A Little Note for Imbolc
Our Imbolc alter. Our celebration usually involves a blessing of tools. These could be tools for building, gardening, writing, cooking, divination, what ever we use to bring things into the world.
On Saturday February 4th, the Sun reaches 15 degrees Aquarius which is, from the standpoint of tropical astrology, the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and Vernal Equinox. This particular “spoke” in the Wheel of the Year goes by many names: Imbolc, Oimelk, Candlemass, Brigid's Day, even Ground Hog’s Day depending on the tradition. There are common themes of maternal love and nurture, light, awakening and hope. Since my family and I have been making an effort to honor and celebrate these sabots, this particular one has become one of my favorites.
As many of you doubtless know, the idea of the Wheel of the Year is a fairly new framing of the succession of natural events which define the seasons. When we look into the origins of any one of the eight “spokes” of the wheel we see a pattern of dates and practices connected by a web of common ideas. Usually these center on the agricultural cycle of planting and reaping, and the mating and birthing of animals. We don’t have as much information about the observances of our per-agricultural ancestors and the symbolism that colored their seasonal celebrations but, since they were, if anything, MORE tied to the seasons, we must assume that their celebrations would seem familiar to us in their broad outline. At the other end of history, our end, where the majority of people live in the city with livelihoods that have little or no connection with the conditions “outside”, ideas like planting and reaping, birth and death, have more “symbolic” associations. During “harvest” seasons, we are encouraged to see how our efforts have “born fruit”. In “planting” season, we are encouraged set intentions. The ancient rhythms of our biology and the sway of tradition, even religious traditions that claim distance from “pagan” paths, have built into us a need to see each year as a story, or a chapter in an ongoing story. This is perhaps the most human of tendencies, to narritivise our experience.
Imbolc, being a “cross quarter” holiday heralds the start of a season, in this case, Spring. This is one way that the Wheel of the Year differs from the standard calendar. Most of us grew up with the understanding that the Summer Solstice, for example, marked the first day of that season. But even in Shakespeare's time, the solstice was known as Midsummer (as in “A Mid Summer’s Night Dream). It is hard to know exactly when we stopped thinking of the cross quarters as the cusp between seasons but it probably has a lot to do with the increasing urbanization of Western Culture. Imbolc, for example, is usually rendered into modern English as “In the Belly”. Another of the names for this celebration is Oimelk “Ewe’s Milk”. Such names describe the approximate timing of important events here on Earth. The Solstices and Equinoxes are astronomical events and are literally more removed from more concrete events such as the birthing of farm animals or the reaping of grains. Not that our ancestors were unaware of events in the heavens and their relation to earthly pursuits. Monuments such as Stonehenge were constructed to inform our ancestors of the precise time of celestial events. One reason that astronomy was important enough to devote the labor of building massive and elaborate structures to its’ pursuit, and even dedicating entire classes of people to the observation and recording of celestial events was to find the most auspicious times for agricultural activities. As civilization developed and grew in the ancient world, taking the guess work out of agriculture was of ever greater importance. This, more than anything else, probably cemented the idea that events in the sky were critically linked to events here on earth.
The I Ching states that the invention of the calendar granted increased freedom to humanity. A calendar is an unlikely candidate as a path to freedom. But in having a fixed framework in which people could coordinate their efforts we were able to achieve greater things than we might as isolated individuals and small groups. Although it is clear that humanity has always paid close attention to the annual cycle of natural events: the movement of herds, the migration of birds and fish, the flooding of rivers etc, such events do not occur with clock like regularity. The relationship between annual rainfall and the expected birth of lambs, for example, is highly complex. The calendar sets a general tempo as to when we might reasonably expect important important events to occur. More than this, it gives us cause for hope in that, even when we know that spring should be coming soon, crossing those days off the calendar gives us something tangible to hang on to when the weather outside shows no signs of easing.
Another service rendered by the calendar, and especially the wheel of the year, is that it situates us within the unfolding and enfolding story. At Winter Solstice we see the birth of The Sun from the earth or at least the hope for that birth. I have noticed, for example, that the period between Yule and Imbolc is always hard for me to remember clearly once the year is well underway. It is like the prenatal, or at least preverbal experience, only vague sensations and bodily memory is stored during the long and rainy days of Capricorn season.
Imbolc is a celebration of nursing, of nurture. The year, and our intentions for it, are still in dreamy infancy. We pour over seed catalogs and map out projects but most of what the year will be is nurtured be the milk of hope. The dairy foods that are central to Imbolc feasts recalls the first milk of domestic animals which was a welcome change from the dwindling reserves set aside at last year’s harvest. But the archetype of milk, life’s first gift to us, is also represented in the yogurt, butter, cheese (and in our case tzatziki sauce, yum) which reminds us that, as we are always held and fed by the Earth, we too must nourish and shelter our intentions for the season to come. Nothing is rooted yet. What ever this year grows to be, we must keep it alive until it can stand on its own.