2.01.2007
Happy Imbolc
Tonight and tomorrow is when most modern Pagans celebrate the fire festival of Imbolc sacred to the goddess Brigid, patroness of poets, healers, and smiths. Today is also the feast day of Saint Brigid of Ireland patron saint of poets, dairymaids, blacksmiths, healers, cattle, fugitives, Irish nuns, midwives, and new-born babies.
Brigid: Saint and Goddess
In Kildare, Ireland's town square, a perpetual flame is kept lit and housed in a statue that pays homage to the Pagan and Christian conceptions of Brigid. Festivities for La Feile Bride in Kildare started on January 26th and will continue through Febrary 3rd.
Here are a collection of quotes on this holiday.
"Tonight we prepare for the visitation of Bride. She comes tonight to bring us tidings for the rest of this year. We are gathered here to honor the Goddess of Poetry, Healing, and Smithcraft. She is daughter of the Dagda, guardian of our hearth and home, an inspiration to poets and a healing Goddess who hangs Her cloak on the rays of the sun." - Danielle Ni Dhighe, La Fheile Bride (Imbolg) Ritual
"Imbolc is rooted in an old British festival dedicated to Brigid, a Celtic goddess who later was canonized as a Christian saint. The day heralds the coming of spring and new life. It is marked by sharing of food with friends, spring cleaning and the lighting of candles." - The State (South Carolina)
"Brigit's holiday was chiefly marked by the kindling of sacred fires, since she symbolized the fire of birth and healing, the fire of the forge, and the fire of poetic inspiration. Bonfires were lighted on the beacon tors, and chandlers celebrated their special holiday." - Mike Nichols, The Witches' Sabbats
"Though we can't see it through the cover of white, at Imbolc we know the spring bulbs have sent runners into the earth, that the ice floes on our lakes and rivers have begun to thin and move, and that the first of the young animals due in spring have been born. Many Wiccans celebrate this holiday as a group by standing in a dark room, with one small candle flame lighting their way, each Wiccan then lights their candle from that flame, until everyone in the room is bathed in the great light of their community's bounty. Prayers are said for a gentle spring, and that stores of food and money, greatly depleted by the festivities of the winter solstice, last long enough to be supplemented by the first crops." - Kaatryn MacMorgan, Beliefnet
"I'd sit with the men, the women of God, There by the lake of beer, We'd be drinking good health forever, And every drop would be a prayer." - Excerpt from "Saint Brigit's Prayer"
"I think of the approaching festival of Imbolc, the midwinter fire festival honoring Brigid, and I picture the beautiful Irish goddess up there beside her sister the Moon, also wrapped in a white gossamer cloak, both of them aglow from the cold air...offering us their gifts of healing and hope as we wait for a brief respite from the single-digit temperatures, a thaw, a day or two when the snows melt away, the buds tremble with incipient growth and all living creatures feel a small, fiery flutter deep within our beings, as we whisper, gladly, 'Spring will come again! Spring will come again!'" - Peg Aloi, Witchvox
Many blessings to you this holiday, meet you by the lake of beer!
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