Imbolc is celebrated on the first day of February and is a traditional Celtic holiday that falls halfway between Yul (Winter Solstice) and Ostara (Spring Equinox). Imbolc is the mid-point festival within the Celtic Wheel of the Year that marks the middle of Winter, which is traditionally the beginning of the lambing season and signals the beginning of Spring and the stirrings of new life. It is Feile Brighde, the 'quickening of the year'. The original word, Imbolg, means 'in the belly'. The wild world is pregnant and hopefully expectant after being in the generative darkness of Winter. It is the promise of renewal, of hidden potential, of earth awakening and life-force stirring and emerging. What has laid dormant in the dark earth is beginning to stretch its legs awake. Early Celtic poetry links this celebration with the quickening of the ewe’s milk before lambing. It’s that day that we begin to wax towards spring. The world is stirring and stretching its limbs; faint glimpses of green can be seen on tree limbs or beneath snow cover. The world is beginning to awaken from winter’s slumber. This is a cross quarter festival that centers on will, hope and preparation. At this time of new beginnings in the wheel of the year, all is possible, all is pregnant with possibility, if only lying just beneath the surface, waiting for the sun’s warming rays to burst it forth.

Imbolc is traditionally fire-festival and honoring of Brigid (Brighid, Bride, Brigit), so loved as a pagan Goddess that her worship was woven into the Christian church as St Bridget and honored on this day as her feast day. She is a Goddess of healing, poetry and smithcraft. She is a Goddess of Fire, of the Sun, and of the Hearth. She brings fertility to the land and its people and is closely connected to midwives and new-born babies. In our modern age, we are invited to reflect too on the ways that we continue to work our will, tend our hearth-places, nurture a creative response to the world, and cross thresholds with intention and clarity. What are we are birthing this spring? What new ideas, concepts, intentions, and hopes are seeding and forming within you? These are all resonant reflections that are held within Imbolc and connecting with Brigid.                                                                  

This virtual, live mini-retreat will include:

• Officiated ritual and blessings;

• An overview and teaching on the significance of Imbolc and of Brigid, goddess from Celtic mythology, Christian saint, and a symbol of feminine power;

• Live instruction for making your own Brigid’s Cross;

• Guided personal reflection time;

• Facilitated space to hear from and connect with one another;

• Support to create your own personal ceremony to deepen into the sacramentality of this festival day.

Our time together will be a potent set-apart time, a time dedicated to the seasonal energies that are moving within and throughout us, in our own inner-nature, as well as throughout the wild world. Inspired Imbolc is a time for you to reflect on the spring-ing energies within you, and to engage with the symbols of Brigid as aids to support you as you cross the various thresholds of your own life.