The Portal of Winter-Turning-to-Spring
Favorite practices to mark Brigid’s Day / Imbolc / Candlemas
Dear Ones,
The world is in turmoil and still, the Wheel turns. Even though we can’t seem to count on the weather patterns we’ve always known, the Wheel still turns. This weekend marks the festival of Imbolc, or Candlemas, or Brigid’s Day, as we welcome in the tide of Winter-Turning-to-Spring in the northern hemisphere. In my neighborhood, we’re anticipating the first major snow of winter, here on the quiet threshold of the first stirrings of spring.
This year, the lunar and solar tides align as Brigid’s Feast lands during a crescent moon phase. (Each of the holy-days of the Wheel of the Year corresponds to a lunar phase.) It makes this day even more auspicious than usual for prayers and songs and all kinds of magic-making. How will you honor this shift, this opening?
I believe it’s more important than ever to root ourselves in the ancient rhythms of sun and moon, to put down our devices and be in touch with the wild. Together and alone, we mark the seasons and the lunar tides, recreating old ways and coming up with new practices that nourish our hearts and fire up our courage.
Here are a few of my favorite ways to mark this portal.
Tie a Prayer Ribbon to a Branch
Tying a prayer cloth or ribbon to a branch is often done on January 31st, the Eve of Imbolc when Brigid travels across the land, but you can do it at any time. When She sees a prayer cloth tied to a branch on a sacred tree (and are not all trees sacred?), she will bless it and give it healing powers.
I invite you to gather prayer ribbons or cloths. Green and white are both appropriate colors, but you don’t need to be limited to them. You can write prayers on the ribbons in ink if you like.
Decide where you’ll tie the ribbons. They can stay on the branch all year long like prayer flags, disintegrating as the seasons continue to turn. If you decide to hang prayer ribbons in a public area, let them be unobtrusive; hide them in the back of a tree where they’re not easily seen. If you can, tie them to a favorite tree or shrub in your yard or near your home.
As you knot and tie your prayer cloths or ribbons to a branch, whisper your prayers — for yourself, for loved ones, for community and nation and world.
A Bare Branch Bouquet
Winter is still the season of the Crone, the Elder, the Old One. But in some stories, she shapeshifts back into the Maiden of Spring at Imbolc.
Gather bare branches, sticks, or twigs from your yard or neighborhood to make a bony-fingered Crone/Elder bouquet. You’ll find an abundance of blow-downs on the ground if you do this after a windstorm. My personal favorites are cottonwood branches because they’re so bony and claw-like, yet have fat juicy buds at their tips. (Might be time to make cottonwood bud salve …)
Arrange the bare branches in a vase and decorate them with prayer ribbons or other adornments, if you like.
Let your Bare Branch Bouquet remind you of the Crone of Winter who will soon transform into the Maiden of Spring.
Weather Divination
When you woke today (February 2nd), was the sun shining, or was it overcast outside?
Remember the folk rhyme:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will take another flight.
If Candlemas Day be cold and rain,
Winter is gone and will not come again.
Candlemas Day has come down to us as Groundhog Day in the United States, when we practice weather divination. In earlier times at Imbolc in Ireland, people waited to see if snakes slithered out of their dens, seeking light and warmth. In other parts of Europe, people looked to the badger or hedgehog as the earliest mammals to awaken from hibernation. When German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania, the local groundhog was an obvious choice.
What does today’s weather predict for your neighborhood? More winter or an early spring?
Pour Out Sweet Milk as an Offering
This is such a simple yet potent practice. There is an ancient, ancestral feeling to the act of lifting a cup or small pitcher to the heavens and then pouring out liquid onto the earth as a libation.
I usually pour out water as an offering to special places when I go on my wild wanders. Water is life, we know, and it’s easily accessible in the water bottle I always carry with me.
At Imbolc, though, we like to offer milk as a symbol of gratitude for the coming spring. Some scholars say that the old Irish word “Imbolc” comes from “Oimelc,” meaning “ewe’s milk.” In Ireland and other northern latitudes, lambing season often begins at this time.
Begin with your favorite kind of milk. If I’m going to drink it as well as pour it out, I’ll go with almond or coconut milk, since I’m dairy-free. But any kind of milk will do. I like to add honey to it for sweetness and to bring in the energy of the bees. Sometimes I’ll steep lavender in warm milk, or add turmeric powder to simmer and make golden milk.
Drink to yourself, to your beloveds, to the sacred earth. Then pour out a libation in gratitude for the coming of Spring.
What are your favorite ways to celebrate Imbolc / Brigid’s Day / Candlemas?
