Imbolc Feels Important This Year
We really needed this
If you prefer to listen, enjoy the audio of this post, read by a real human (surprise, it’s me!)
The wheel continues to turn and once again, we find ourselves here, at Imbolc.
Imbolc is traditionally a Celtic/Pagan holiday celebrated on February 1st to mark the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. It’s also called Saint Brigid’s Day or The Fire Festival.
Imbolc is about Mother Earth waking up and preparing for Spring, so themes revolve around purification, renewal, inspiration, and growth.
Simple ways to celebrate include:
A spring cleaning of your home to prepare for new things to make their way in
Doing some personal reflection and intention setting so that you can light a fire within you to create new and wonderful things as the spring births all of this beautiful growth energy all around us
Planting seeds for your early spring garden
Any kind of fire or candle magic that honors the return of the sun and blesses your home and the things you’re growing there
An Imbolc simmer pot (try lemon, rosemary, lavender, chamomile, cinnamon, bay leaves, and a splash of milk)
Baking bread or sweets and having a hearty dinner rich with herbs, such as a thick and creamy potato soup.
Here’s a great recipe for an herb and cheese bread
These lemon and poppy seed cookies or these honey cakes would be the perfect Imbolc treat
Brigid
On Imbolc we also honor Brigid, the goddess of fire, poetry, and healing, and a deity often associated with the maiden/mother/crone archetypes.
As someone who’s astrology is really fire-heavy, I feel a connection to Brigid, especially at this stage of my life when I’ve crossed through maidenhood into the mother era of my journey and am now actually getting ready to walk into my crone years, as weird as that sounds. Personally, I would say I’m still in my peak, but within the next decade my son will pass into adulthood and within that time I will also be transitioning into menopause, so it does feel like this part of my journey will be really coming to an end.
To honor Brigid you can do things like making a Brigid’s Cross to hang in your home or put on your altar, this represents the protection and blessings of Brigid for your home.
Other ways to honor Brigid this Imbolc may look like leave offerings of bread and honey, lighting a candle or a fire to honor her, doing some creative work like writing a poem or prayer, or crafting something that helps you reflect on the themes of Imbolc and Brigid’s message of renewal and growth.
As for my Imbolc, it’s tradition to celebrate Imbolc with foods like milk, honey, herbs, and breads, so I’m going to make some honey cakes. I’m also creating an Imbolc simmer pot with things like citrus, cinnamon, cloves, lavender, and rosemary, which all have great correspondences for the energy of purification, renewal, and growth.
Colors for Imbolc are very spring-like, so think yellow, orange, and white and pastels, and items often used in Imbolc altars and offerings are early spring flowers, anything with sun symbolism, fresh herbs, soil, and candles of course, so I tried to think of how I could incorporate some of those into my Imbolc altar and home crafts. I’m also choosing crystals like amethyst for spiritual growth, citrine for abundance, and clear quartz for clarity.
And the last thing I’m doing is caring for my plants and getting outside to do a little bit of grounding. It is still winter here in Pennsylvania and the ground is covered in snow, so for me this will be a very brief foray outside, but hopefully where you live you can take a bit more time to connect with nature and put your bare feet on the earth, feeling into the new life that is laying in wait there, so you can take some of that energy back with you to pour into the things you are planning on creating in the future.
Happy Imbolc, whether you celebrate the sabbats and the turning of the wheel or not, this is a great time to take a day to put the outside world on hold for a minute to see to what you are cultivating in your own home and in your dreams for the future.
If you’d like to see how I celebrated and enjoy a little chat about my feelings on Imbolc, I invite you to join me in the YouTube video below.
Blessed be, friends. I’ll talk to you again, soon.
If you enjoy my YouTube content, you can follow my channel and subscribe to get notified any time I post a new video.