A Call to the Goddess and God of Imbolc

February 12, 2011 at 8:00 pm (Uncategorized)
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Brighid Light - Wendy Andrews

 

At Imbolc time we call upon the Goddess of the Sacred Flame, Maiden of the Snowdrops and the first stirrings of spring. Her seemingly fragile blossoming is filled with the strength of the inner fire of life, surviving the harshest frosts, snows and storms, just as the light of our spirit survives the darkness and cold, her love protecting it like hands cupped round a flame. She is that moment of magic as the first glow of light emerges from the dark horizon, signalling the coming of dawn.

She comes with her warmth and energy and quickens the seeds of our new life; she comes with the life-giving heat of her fire to thaw all that is frozen and trapped within us; she comes with the melting release of her healing waters, cleansing away the staleness of our spirits, the winter debris of our hearts. She is the liberation of the land from winter’s grip; freeing us from our own stagnation. She is the bright spark of life and inspiration that burns in us all; the hearth fire at the centre of our homes and hearts, sustaining and warming; a place to gather and draw inspiration, nourishment and comfort. She is the fire of passion that animates our creativity that we may create our world anew, that we too may become the spring. Goddess of the Sacred Flame and the Healing Waters, we open to you now,

We call upon the God of this time of quickening, he who has been held in the still darkness awaiting the warming and life-giving touch of the Goddess’s heat. Her fiery kiss melts the stillness and the first flow, barely perceptible, begins; the movement of new life ever building and strengthening.

As the God of renewing life, at the edge of our senses, we begin to feel his energy increasing, visible in the growing light and the first greening shoots of Imbolc. Like seeds that feel the stirrings of growth in the dark soil, we feel the first call of his desire, a sense that we must soon stretch, moving up from the warmth and safety of the dark to the ever quickening call of the light.  God of youth, beauty and love, we open to you.

Lighting the Inner Fire Meditation: 

It is a cold, crisp night in the hours just before dawn. The starry sky arches it vast, twinkling darkness above you. You are sat upon the earth; the soil is hard and frozen; the grass glistening with frost. The land is silent and asleep. Your body and being are motionless, chilled and inert like the winter earth but you sense inside yourself the stirrings of change and you know that you must prepare for its coming.

Draw your attention inward to the very centre of yourself; this place is the centre of the sacred circle of your being, and it is here that you will light the sacred fire; it is the spark of life; it is the fuelling heat at the centre of the planet; it is the burning sun at the heart of our galaxy; it is the fire of the smith that will magically melt and transform you; it is a candle flame of hope in the darkness.

Standing at the centre of you inner sacred circle, you see the tinder and dry wood of your life, ready to be lit, and in their lighting you know that the heat of this fire will bring a change in the land, will bring the first tender signs of new life and renewal, of growing strength.

Become aware of your solar plexus. There is a flame that always burns here. Take some of this perpetual flame upon your finger and now light the wood at the centre of your inner circle from it. At first it glows only beneath the dark wood. Blow upon it the breath of your ideas and inspiration. As you do this, the flames begin to grow until the fire lights up the darkness.

You find yourself back beneath the vast starry sky, upon the frosty, frozen earth, but now you are aware that there is a glow at the centre of your being. Feel its warmth and light spread out through your chest, down your pelvis, into your legs and feet; feel it moving up through your shoulders, down your arms and into your hands and fingers, up through your neck and into your head, until your whole body is filled with its golden heat and light. You are radiant in the darkness. Stay here in this moment for a while –take note of the feelings and images that rise…

Your attention moves from the inner glow to the land around where you sit. You gaze down at the once frozen soil beneath. The frost has melted into life giving moisture, droplets hanging from the blades of green, and through the earth a carpet of snowdrops rises, drinking in the life giving melt, strengthening themselves in the warmth of your glow. As if by magic you watch their brave green shoots pierce through, their delicate, white blossoms unfurl and hang in gentle bells of white. You have lit the fires of passion within and the land responds with the first tender signs of a new beginning. Pause for a moment; take note of all you feel and see…You gaze at the horizon; along the line of the land, a slim strip of the sky begins to lighten…the dawn will soon be here…

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Shoots

February 8, 2010 at 4:28 pm (Uncategorized)
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I have been feeling massive inner changes with regard my spiritual direction of late and have recently made the decision to take a step back from our ritual group to give myself the space to know where it is I am going. Over the last ten years I have written many rituals for us and have loved sharing the companionship and understanding that the Wheel brings but it seems that something else is trying to take shape within me and I can feel myself reaching for it.

Obviously, the recent physical changes of my body are having an impact on the way I have been feeling about my direction in life, and in the thick of all this change, I feel caught between a gnawing stasis and the vague sense that I am on the verge of an opening, a widening out that I can’t fully articulate because it isn’t really clear to me at present. I have been having serious doubts about what or who it is on the end of my prayers – so unsettling after feeling a deep connection and nourishment all these years.

I have been deeply thankful for my Yoga practice amongst all this existential angst. My instincts have been to quieten myself, answering this powerful urge to centre, empty out and just be –no judgement, no expectation; with my body’s hormonal balance struggling to find equilibrium (although I feel hopeful that this is gradually happening), it has felt like the only sensible thing to do.

When we reach for the Divine, it can be tempting to confuse the system or tools with the thing itself. We can become overly attached to the form at the expense of the spirit of something. I have lived long enough to know that when the form becomes a shackle or a boundary that keeps other experiences or interpretations from touching us, then sooner or later something in us rebels. What I am feeling at the moment could be understood as a contraction, a loss of faith or belief, and yet, I suspect that this is being prompted by a deeper part of me – an unknown self that is prodding me towards growth and pushing me to open to a new perspective. So, perhaps this is expansion parading as contraction, or the pulling back of the bow string that the flight of the arrow can have the momentum it needs. Whatever it is, it feels like it might herald some profound changes and this both alarms and fascinates me.

I had forgotten about the pot of snowdrop bulbs from last year. They had been hidden amongst the other plants on the balcony. They had sat on my Imbolc shrine twelve months ago but the heat of the house was too much for them and I placed them outside where they appeared happier. I rarely venture out there in the colder months, checking on the other plants there from time to time. I am not sure why I suddenly saw them tucked away beneath the trailing ivy and was amazed that despite the lack of watering and my unwitting neglect, three green shoots were pushing their way through the soil. I thought how amazing that such a dry and barren environment could still produce those hopeful little shoots of new life. Life is irresistible.

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Wellies and Ice Puddles

January 31, 2010 at 8:03 pm (Uncategorized)
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Trish and I ventured into the wetlands, loaded with bird and squirrel food. The meadows are still flooded; some are frozen – beautiful pools of bluish-grey amongst the sodden green. Icy puddles cracked and slopped under Trish’s wellies, a sound so satisfying I vowed once again to buy Wellingtons this week with the view to do some serious icy puddle walking myself – very therapeutic!

The hazels are sprouting catkins and the birdsong is beginning to swell. We presented our bird and squirrel feast upon the shelves and ledges of the hide and returning back along the wooden stilted walkway, we stopped to listen to a little robin. He was less than three feet from us, on branches level with our heads, singing his gorgeous song. When not open-beaked and full-throated, he would stare at us, his head tilted quizzically, the rise and fall of his feathery chest, rapid and anxious. Occasionally he would fluff out the cream, blue and red of it, until round as a barrel, then deflating, would throw back his head once more and sing to the heavens. We watched him for some time, charmed by his bravery and the beauty of his voice.

Amongst the dead reeds, we had a brief sighting of a wren – I always get a little buzz when I see both of these birds on the same walk; a robin and a wren in the space of a few minutes – birds so much associated with the waning and waxing of the year. It is clear that the waxing is quickening and that beneath the stillness is the faint shudder and hum of the earth stirring.

We walked to our grove. It has been ages since my previous visit– even longer since we last had a ceremony here. We placed bird food upon the old oak and sat beneath it, the channels of water in the meadows below clearly visible through the bare branches; the steep slopes beyond the giant holly are leafless and open – the grove less secret and hidden in the winter months.

Walking back along the river, we fed the ducks at the bridge and felt the chill intensifying, the trees deepening their silhouettes as the sky reddened and brightened before sinking into dusk. I had hoped to see the barn owl – yesterday driving back from Shorwell, Laurie and I saw one crisscrossing the lane, it whiteness tinged with sunset. A little further down, the rapid flight of a little owl came to rest, a round feathery ball clinging wide-eyed to a telegraph pole. Tonight, there were no owls and our pace quickened as the air sharpened, and I thought to myself that all the icy puddles that broke beneath Trish’s wellies, would – over night - heal and mend in the bitter cold.

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Lighting the Inner Fire

January 26, 2010 at 3:35 pm (Uncategorized)
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Laurie woke me with a cup of tea and a smile this morning; I had slept the entire night through, uninterrupted, for the first time in days. I immediately felt something was different. I had been dreaming that I was being shown a river. It had obviously broken its banks, the sides crumbling and dislodged from the force but now the flow was receding, the level dropping considerably. A man was stood next to me telling me that I had almost been swept away but had kept my footing.

I didn’t bleed at all through the night – a first in almost two weeks – and today the flow has been very light, just like the river in my dream! I am not about to kick up my heels – I am a little wary of false dawns by now – but I feel something has shifted, my energy level is gradually rising and that dragging heaviness in my tummy is fading. I feel so much better but am a little scared to hope at the moment for fear of disappointment.

Each day the sun has been climbing a little higher in the sky and today it peeped over the roof of our neighbour’s house, flooding both bedrooms. I lay with it covering me and felt a tentative sense of relief, my edges softening. I can’t believe Imbolc is almost here. Thinking about all that this festival stands for – the tender new beginnings that it promises – despite my fear of setbacks, it’s hard not to feel a little jolt of hope within – hope for healing, for renewal, hope that not one of us is a lost cause, no matter what we might go through or struggle with.

I wrote a meditation for our Imbolc ritual last year. As I think about putting together stuff for this year’s ceremony, I got a little buzz of recognition when I read it through again. I include it here:

It is a cold, crisp night in the hours just before dawn. The starry sky arches it vast, twinkling darkness above you. You are sat upon the earth; the soil is hard and frozen; the grass glistening with frost. The land is silent and asleep. Your body and being are motionless, chilled and inert like the winter earth but you sense inside yourself a change and you know that you must prepare for its coming.

Draw your attention inward to the very centre of yourself; this place is the centre of the sacred circle of your being, and it is here that you will light the sacred fire; it is the spark of life; it is the fuelling heat at the centre of the planet; it is the burning sun at the heart of our galaxy; it is the fire of the smith that will magically melt and transform you; it is a candle flame of hope in the darkness.

Standing at the centre of you inner sacred circle, you see the tinder and dry wood of your life, ready to be lit, and in their lighting you know that the heat of this fire will bring a change in the land, will bring the first tender signs of new life and renewal, of growing strength.

Become aware of your solar plexus. There is a flame that always burns here. Take some of this perpetual flame upon your finger and now light the wood at the centre of your inner circle from it. At first it glows only beneath the dark wood. Blow upon it the breath of your ideas and inspiration. As you do this, the flames begin to grow until the fire lights up the darkness.

You find yourself back beneath the vast starry sky, upon the frosty, frozen earth, but now you are aware that there is a glow at the centre of your being. Feel its warmth and light spread out through your chest, down your pelvis, into your legs and feet; feel it moving up through your shoulders, down your arms and into your hands and fingers, up through your neck and into your head, until your whole body is filled with its golden heat and light. You are radiant in the darkness. Stay here in this moment for a while –take note of the feelings and images that rise…

Your attention moves from the inner glow to the land around where you sit. You gaze down at the once frozen soil beneath. The frost has melted into life giving moisture, droplets hanging from the blades of green, and through the earth a carpet of snowdrops rises, drinking in the life giving melt, strengthening themselves in the warmth of your glow. As if by magic you watch their brave green shoots pierce through, their delicate, white blossoms unfurl and hang in gentle bells of white. You have lit the fires of passion within and the land responds with the first tender signs of a new beginning. Pause for a moment; take note of all you feel and see…You gaze at the horizon; along the line of the land, a slim strip of the sky begins to lighten…the dawn will soon be here…

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The Quickening

March 1, 2009 at 2:30 am (Uncategorized)
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There are fulmars nesting in red cliff. Along its upper reaches, the sandstone is pocked with holes just large enough for two snuggling fulmars and a bed of twigs. Each cavity houses a pair, five or six in all, maybe more to come. In recent years fulmars have visited Sandown to breed in the cliffs, their numbers increasing annually. This is the first time I have seen them at Yaverland, their chattering and spiralling patrols of the nesting area a joyful thing to witness.

 

Love, lust, genetic necessity (call it what you will) is in the air. On the wet edges of Alverstone Mead, amongst flimsy willow branches, two grey herons sway in their newly constructed nest; paired hares nibble shoots of wheat in the fields at Arreton; ducks on the Yar, no longer in huddles, are now spread out along its banks in twos, only disturbed by the agitated quacks of squabbling males, keen to claim a female of their own. As the snowdrops blossom and the growing light signals the subtle shifts of early spring, the quickening expresses itself in the tender, and not so tender, pairings of nature.

 

The red squirrels are active too. Although they do not actually hibernate, throughout the cold weeks only the odd solitary visitor was seen on my visits to the hide. Now they come to feed barely inches from me. Peanuts in shells are the obvious favourites, the papery casings light work for frantic teeth. Upon freeing the two peanuts inside, one is eaten, the other buried. Spreading their back legs for a steadier grip, they busily work their near meatless shoulders with comical vigour, digging energetically, burying, then neatly patting down the soil. They have the breathless urgency of Alice’s white rabbit. They still wear their winter coats, the rich red of summer dulled to greyish red/brown, the tufts of their winter ears still visible. Like us, they clearly have the urge to move straight to pudding, peanuts and sunflowers seeds eaten first, dried sweetcorn pushed around the feeding ledge like unwelcome peas upon a child’s plate.

 

The hazel catkins are abundant, the pussy willow whitening with furry paws, but most impressive are the alder of which there are many along the river, their bare silhouettes now taking on a fuzziness, the thick mass of purplish cones and catkins blurring their edges. Alder, willow and poplar dominate the wetland landscape and hold a special fascination for me. I sense a great peace amongst these moisture loving trees; the willow and alder performing the vital task of maintaining the integrity of the river bank, limiting the erosion caused by the constant flow and the rising and falling flood waters. When our own emotional forces threaten to overwhelm us, willow and alder serve as reminders to reach for those steadying roots, encouraging us to become stable channels for our more powerful and difficult emotions. In the summer when the reeds are abundant beneath poplar groves and white willows, the soothing whisper of their leaves is one of the most healing sounds. Reed’s ability to cleanse water can inspire the cleansing of our emotional selves too; the reeds drew me when I was coping with the turmoil of grief – when I found myself tightly circling the stagnant object of my pain – as if to teach that we too need to process any emotionally toxic residue we might be holding onto.

 

For now the reeds are brown and broken down by the floods of winter, their new green shoots poised to emerge. Near the old mill, silt shifted by the high waters has piled itself against the edges of the weir. Across its damp, sandy surface is a network of moorhens’ footprints, tiny tridents crisscrossing and meandering, looking like ancient, unfathomable hieroglyphs; the codes of spring waiting to be cracked. 

 

In our regular ritual spot – the woods above the Yar – I notice bluebell shoots and know that soon the ground will be yellow with primroses. Our beautiful little woods marks the seasons with flowers: bluebells in April; the elegant spikes of foxgloves in June; honeysuckle sweetening the woody scents of mulch and leaf mould in summer…

 

The irresistible sense of anticipation felt as the year gradually accelerates can lead to many a false start when we realise that the chill still nips at us; that our energy still curls in upon itself, not yet fully awake to its own imminent renewal. It is the time of snowdrops, their delicate blossoms deceptively resilient and hardy; they are the tenderness of all new beginnings; the toughness underlying life’s desire to experience itself. I can feel the quickening strongly and yet I also feel my own slowness; my own winter pace, heavy as upon waking from a long sleep. The year breaks us in gently, Brighid’s palms cupped tenderly around the spark that will soon ignite our inner resurgence.

 

 

 

 

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Brighid’s Thaw – For Imbolc

February 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm (Uncategorized)
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Winter had settled over me,

The frost sealing my eyes, my mouth;

My bones as ice,

Stilled

Beneath frozen water.

 

You came

And planted your sun like a seed in me,

Warm,

Precious,

Pearl of light,

And my being became the song of snow-melt,

A river-burst of birdsong

Rising.

 

At your touch my body is a garden

Of snowdrops;

This tender blooming

The greening of my soul.

                                         

                                         Maria Ede-Weaving

 

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